Christine King

Bio

City of Miami Chairwoman and District 5 Commissioner Christine King is passionate about serving the public and has been since an early age. Commissioner King serves as the Chairwoman of the City of Miami Commission, as well as the District 5 Commissioner representing Liberty City, Little Haiti, Model City, Overtown, Wynwood/Edgewater, and the Upper East Side. Born in Guyana, she moved to Miami at age 5. She would go on to serve her community as Chief of Constituent Services for a Miami-Dade County Commissioner and later as an executive with the Community Action Agency (CAA). Subsequently, she studied at Nova Southeastern University earning her Juris Doctor Degree and became a practicing attorney. She most recently served as President and CEO of the Martin Luther King Economic Development Corporation, where she managed meaningful community programs like ‘Wheels to Work’ which addresses transportation hardships for families in need of vehicles to function within their daily lives.

In November 2021, when Commissioner King entered office, she was the first Guyanese American to be elected in the City of Miami and the first female to be named Chairwoman of the Commission. Early in her role, she began making significant strides in transforming her priorities into accomplishments. She continues to focus on increasing the availability of affordable and workforce housing, addressing climate change along with sea level rise, and supporting the creation and maintenance of elderly and child community services. Only days into office, Commissioner King voted in favor of the Miami Forever Carbon Neutral program, officially placing the Magic City on a course to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. She invested more than $750,000 in programs and services that support District 5 families, to create wealth through employment opportunities, housing provision, and education. She also brought iattention to the City’s homelessness crisis by supporting the Functional Zero initiative and Lotus House endeavors. She has placed a focus on the affordable housing crisis by sponsoring programs like the First Time Home Ownership Program which works to create generational wealth for district residents, co-sponsoring legislation to continue the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERA-2), and approving funding for the Overtown CRA to provide rental assistance to Overtown residents.

Commissioner King believes that when a community is surrounded by beauty, it instills a sense of unity and respect, not just for the land but for one another. To that end, she continues her efforts to beautify the city through actions such as personally monitoring illegal dumping reports, overseeing the installation of new street landscaping within the district, and installation of banners in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. along the boulevard bearing his name.