“OUR STORY QUALIFIES US ENOUGH”

As climate gentrification reshapes Miami, Sarahi Perez is bridging the gap between communities and policy.

By Alexandra Escobar

Sarahi Perez | Climate Correction Conference 2026, powered by The VoLo Foundation

For Sarahi Perez, the climate crisis didn't arrive as a distant sea-level projection – it arrived as a rent hike. 

Growing up in a tight-knit Nicaraguan community in Little Havana, Sarahi witnessed a rapid demographic shift as the "high ground" of her neighborhood became a premium commodity for developers.

"I grew up really close to my neighbors... everyone felt like a family," Sarahi says. "But pretty fast, things changed. Rent prices were increasing, and a lot of residents had to move away. I kind of just accepted that was how it was. It felt confusing and frustrating."

This displacement is the core of climate gentrification, a process where inland neighborhoods with higher climate resilience are targeted for luxury redevelopment, pushing out the low-income residents who originally inhabited them.

Sarahi had a front-row seat to this phenomenon in Little Havana, but once she became a student at Miami Dade College, she moved from observation to data-driven investigation. Her research targeted the River Landing Mall redevelopment, a massive mixed-use project in Allapattah that replaced aging apartments with high-end shops and residences. While the project marketed itself as a "green" urban revitalization, Sarahi identified a systemic "resource gap" – the transition was erasing the community's existing residents rather than protecting them.

"A lot of those buildings were low-income houses like mine," Sarahi says, "torn down to create this huge mall."

Recognizing that this displacement stripped the local economy of its customer base, Sarahi began volunteering with the Allapattah Collaborative Community Development Corporation (CDC), a nonprofit focused on stabilizing legacy businesses struggling in the shadow of the new development.

While government grants were technically available to help the owners of these small businesses, the funds were often inaccessible to those lacking digital literacy. Many shopkeepers were older or spoke only Spanish, leaving them unable to access the very resources designed to help them. Sarahi acted as a technical liaison, helping these owners create their first email addresses and digital profiles to secure their standing in the changing neighborhood.

The Two-Minute Catalyst

Sarahi's work in Allapattah caught the attention of the CLEO Institute, a women-led nonprofit empowering frontline communities through climate education and advocacy as it was pushing to add youth seats to the City of Miami Climate Resilience Committee. The organization invited her to provide public comment, a task that felt like a tall order at the time.

“I started organizing when I was 18, so it always felt like I was the youngest in the room. At the time I felt like I didn’t have the right terms to communicate my ideas,” she recalls.

Photo courtesy of Sarahi Perez

The CLEO Institute staffers mentored Sarahi, helping her to reframe Sarahi’s lived experience as a specialized form of expertise. With the organization’s support, she navigated the paralysis of her first public comment at a City of Miami Climate Resilience Committee meeting. The experience was eye-opening.

“It felt like something I did had a tangible impact – just a two-minute speech. Even though I was terrified to do it, I did it,” she says.

On the day of her appearance, the resolution to include youth voices passed. At 19, she became the committee's youngest member. She has served there for three years and today, at 22, she serves as vice chair.

Following the success of the resolution, the institute brought on Sarahi as the first Campus Organizer for Miami Dade College. She started by founding a campus chapter for GenCLEO, the institute’s youth arm, moving beyond hypothetical ideas and implementing physical sustainability infrastructure.

Collaborating with the Earth Ethics Institute, which serves as Miami Dade College’s dedicated center for environmental education, she helped install a campus Zen garden and an aquaponics system to provide students with independent, organic food sources.

These hands-on projects served as stepping stones toward a larger goal,  lobbying the administration for a comprehensive zero-waste policy.

Within 18 months Sarahi was promoted, earning the title of Miami lead organizer. In her new role, she managed teams across all MDC campuses, as well as at other schools like the University of Miami and Florida International University.

Her strategy focused on continuity, recruiting freshmen for a two-year involvement cycle and leveraging relationships with honors programs to secure paid internships for student advocates.

“My main goal coming on the (committee) was to highlight youth voices,” she says. “I'm usually the youngest in the room wherever I go, and it's made me a lot more confident. I just hope I can inspire others to do the same.”

The Human-Centered Shift

Sarahi’s tenure on the Climate Resilience Committee has been marked by a shift toward "human-centered" climate policy. Initiatives include successful advocacy for transit equity by pushing for better bus shelters to protect daily commuters from Miami's increasingly lethal heat.

Additionally, she led the committee in passing a resolution to oppose the reconstruction of the county’s waste-to-energy incinerator, an industrial project residents feared would jeopardize air quality and public health.

Although the committee acts in an advisory role, meaning they recommend actions rather than passing laws, she believes these formal stands create a vital paper trail for the public. Its primary goal, after all, is to serve as a liaison between residents and the city commission.

“Coming together as a board to oppose something that the county is doing is impactful, it shows our community that we are someone that you can count on,” she says.

Sarahi has consistently brought the stories and concerns of university students directly into board discussions. Inviting professors and students to present their research and lived experience to the committee. But her most impactful contribution remains her leadership of the annual Lobby Day in Tallahassee, organized by the GenCLEO Action Fund. Since 2022, she has coordinated the Miami hub while watching the movement’s efforts grow into a sustained statewide force. What began in Miami has expanded to include students from Tampa, Orlando, Gainesville and Tallahassee, all mobilizing to engage directly with state lawmakers.

The mobilization is high-stakes and intentionally strategic. Rather than traditional protests, the event emphasizes respectful advocacy through structured press conferences and a strong, unified visual presence. Under Sarahi’s leadership, training sessions held before the trip ensure that every advocate can navigate the halls of the Capitol with poise.

During the most recent session, Sarahi and a coalition of over 100 youth activists met with more than 60 state representatives. Their legislative agenda focused on immediate climate risks, supporting HB 1007 to protect environmentally sensitive lands from energy intensive AI data centers and advocating for heat exposure protections for outdoor workers. These efforts resulted in direct constituent meetings with key leadership, including the offices of the speaker of the house and the senate president, centering youth as primary stakeholders in Florida’s future.

For Sarahi, these high-level meetings aren't about seeking validation from the powerful, but about bringing the community's reality into rooms where it is often ignored. The impact is a "ripple effect" of engagement: Students repeatedly return year after year, indicating deep empowerment and a growing pipeline of youth leadership in climate policy. Sarahi credits the experience not only with sharpening her own organizing skills but with deepening the community ties that make Florida’s climate movement so resilient.

“Our story qualifies us enough,” Perez said. “It’s a catalyst.”