Keep Safe Florida

What is Keep Safe Florida?

Keep Safe Florida is a comprehensive technical support system created to help affordable housing owners in the Miami, Orlando and Tampa regions with the tools and resources to assess and address threats from climate change and natural disasters.

Keep Safe Florida helps you:

Set Your Priorities: Analyze your risks and identify the most and least resilient properties in your portfolio
Assess Your Building Climate Risks: Evaluate specific needs of your properties and identify resilience strategies at the building level
Act and Fund: Access information for affordable owners and portfolio managers about available financial resources as they work to secure capital to implement relevant resilience strategies
Learn from Your Peers: Join a learning collaborative with owners across Florida to address mutual needs regarding climate risk. Participants will access training and technical assistance in completing building assessments and applying results

Select one of two options to participate in Keep Safe Florida:

Do It Yourself: Access tools, online guides and recorded trainings independently to assess your buildings risk. Portfolio Protect and Building Protect Assessments will be completed independently, within four weeks of enrollment.
Keep Safe Learning Collaborative: Join a learning collaboration of owners across Florida to address mutual needs regarding climate risk. Participants will engage in three training sessions over eight weeks and will access technical assistance in completing building assessments and applying results. Please note that participants will be required to attend all three training sessions.

Resilience Resources

Access Keep Safe Florida Tools and Guides

Portfolio Protect

The Enterprise Portfolio Protect Tool helps owners, operators and developers of affordable housing understand which properties are at highest risk from flooding, fire, earthquakes and other natural hazards.

Portfolio Protect (User Guide)

The guide provides the step-by-step instructions on how to effectively use the Portfolio Protect tool.

Building Protect (User Guide)

With Building Protect, users can identify strategies for high risk properties and access recommendations and resources to help minimize potential harm to their properties and keep residents’ homes safe.

Hazard Strategies Guide

This guide outlines strategies related to the potential vulnerabilities identified during the self-assessment, also linking to additional resources.

Funding Resources Guide

This guide will help nonprofit and for-profit affordable multifamily property owners and operators identify and better understand resilience project financing and funding.

Business Continuity Tool

This Toolkit equips multifamily affordable building owners & managers with a plan to address crisis.

Keep Safe: A Guide for Resilient Housing Design in Island Communities

Build back stronger with this guide for designing resilient homes in island communities.

Ready to Respond: Strategies for Multifamily Building Resilience

This manual provides practical guidance for multifamily building owners on a variety of retrofit and mitigation strategies.

Keep Safe Florida Funding Database

This Keep Safe Florida funding resource is meant to serve you on your journey of identifying potential funding sources for resilience strategies identified during the Keep Safe Florida program.

What's at Stake?

For owners of multiple properties, even one damaged building can undermine the financial health and integrity of an entire portfolio. Any resulting property loss or extensive damage can also significantly impact resident well-being, lead to displacement and cause economic distress across entire communities.

Between 2006 and 2016, climate-related events cost an average of $359 million dollars in property damage, and this was before the devastating impact of Hurricane Irma in 2017 and Hurricane Michael in 2018. Aging affordable housing properties must act now to mitigate the risks of extreme weather conditions to their buildings and protect residents’ access to safe, healthy homes.

Who's Involved?

Keep Safe Florida was developed in partnership with the City of Miami, City of Orlando, Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, Florida Housing Coalition, and IBTS, and made possible thanks to the generous support of Truist and Southeast Sustainability Directors Network.

Partners and supporters logos for Keep Safe Florida

Keep Safe Florida is supported through a grant from Truist Financial Corporation through its Truist Charitable Fund, a donor-advised fund at The Winston-Salem Foundation.

Learn More

Download the Keep Safe Miami fact sheet.

I felt the Building Protect Assessment Tool was user friendly, especially if you are at the site and going through the questions in real time. More importantly, the assessment tool generates a report with specific recommendations that are weighed in terms of critical need, which makes prioritizing decision making easier from an operational standpoint.

Sal Russo, Carrfour Supportive Housing, Property Management Vice President