By John Hayden
With rent jumping 30 percent or more and housing prices skyrocketing, South Florida is facing a housing crisis with seniors and children most vulnerable.
The Housing Authority of Fort Lauderdale works to help alleviate the problem, and its board has a new member who brings a world of experience to the table. Dr. Ty Richardson was recently appointed by Mayor Dean Trantalis.
“I met with Dean and he said housing could use some diversity and help,” Richardson tells OutClique. “I said absolutely. Let’s go for the Housing Authority.”
Fort Lauderdale doesn’t have rent control, but Richardson says there are other ways to attack the problem of affordable housing.
“What is our current state of housing here?” he asks. “I personally feel like the prices of housing in Fort Lauderdale are through the roof. We can’t impact that, but we can make sure that the city has a space for people who can’t afford that.”
The crisis is driven by demand. Richardson believes with more people working remote, they want to leave colder areas and live in South Florida. Many of those people are willing to pay premium prices to reach their goal, but Richardson’s goal is to make sure people don’t get left behind.
“All we can do is make sure everybody rises,” he says. “We have to make sure our local folks are rising, not just victims to a flood of people coming in. That’s a symptom of education. We have very low unemployment in Broward County. We have to make sure people are aware of job opportunities.”
Richardson, a world traveler his entire adult life, grew up in Trinidad with a passion for travel and banking. He rose in both fields by the time he was 30.
Just before turning 18, American Airlines hired him in security to find drugs and bombs on planes.
“I was responsible for standing on the runway and making sure I didn’t miss anything,” he exclaims. “Talk about the fear of God in a kid!”
He later lived in Dublin running American’s European call centers, which opened the world to him for travel. Eventually, he fulfilled his other passion, banking, by working in business development at American’s credit union. Along the way, he came to the U.S. and lived in Washington, D.C. where he got his undergrad in advertising and a masters in international commerce.
Living in the D.C. area, Richardson developed a love of government work. He also lived in Dallas and started a consulting firm that introduced people with ideas to people with money.
“I became a digital nomad,” he says. “I opened up my laptop and started a marketing agency and did networking events across the Caribbean for youth and young professionals. What that did for me is, it allowed me to build a company from nothing into a six figure company in a matter of two years.”
Eventually, he found Fort Lauderdale.
“My passion for this city is more than any other city I’ve lived in,” he says. “For me, Fort Lauderdale is amazing.”
Richardson became part of the business community, joining the Tower Club and Chamber of Commerce.
“It means leading,” he explains. “Leading a council, having your voice heard, making a difference, and I’ve been able to do that over the past years. Now, sitting on the board and running the Rising Leaders Council, I’ll be running the Membership Council next year.”
Now, he wants to lead at a more grass roots level.
“I decided this year I wanted to do more at the community level,” he says. “I’ve done the business community. I’ve worked, made a change, and done the impacting thing. How can I go bigger and to the next level? For me, that is the community.”
On the Housing Authority, Dr. Richardson says we have to look beyond downtown.
“It’s oversight. It’s the ability to make sure we do what we said we would do and that we’re doing the right things. We have enough suburbia around us for people to live and still be 10-30 minutes away from where they work.”
Serving seniors and the poor is Richardson’s core mission.
“A lot of those factors don’t allow us to say we need to institute policy regulations as a city or county to address it,” he says. “We’re still a little ways from that. The impact we can make at the Housing Authority is limited to poverty and seniors that need assistance. If we take care of those people we’ve done our job.”
