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Equitable Development

What’s at stake?

Historically, people of color and low-income communities have been locked out of local and regional economic, political and environmental decision-making processes. Past land use policies, such as discriminatory zoning, and practices, such as redlining, have isolated people of color and the poor from economic opportunity and exposed them to high levels of concentrated poverty and pollution. These practices, combined with federal and state transportation and regional development policies have encouraged suburbanization, which in turn contributes to the inequitable distribution of the region’s resources and opportunities.

Program Vision

Urban Habitat partners with a range of stakeholders including community-based organizations, government agencies, and policy makers in order to promote regional smart growth and equitable development. Smart growth and equitable development are essential components of a healthy region in which all residents benefit and have access to opportunities. Equitable development provides an alternative to the current practices and policies that have led to gentrification and displacement of low-income residents. It does so by ensuring that development results in concrete community benefits including affordable housing, local hiring, living wage jobs, opportunities for locally owned businesses, effective public transit, open space, and opportunities for effective community participation.

Program Goals and Strategies

The following goals and strategies have been established to advance the vision of Urban Habitat’s Smart Growth and Equitable Development program:

  • Develop and promote a regional equity vision and agenda that strategically links equitable development advocacy and organizing efforts to the broader movement for smart growth at the regional level and beyond.
  • Advance equitable policies that effectively meet the needs of the Bay Area’s low-income communities and communities of color for affordable housing, mobility, jobs, education, and healthcare.
  • Create long-term systemic change and a fundamental shift of power in the region by increasing the capacity of the most impacted communities to effectively participate in land use decision-making processes that affect their lives.
  • Create more effective partnerships and alternative problem-solving strategies by working in cross-sector, cross-issue coalitions.

Current Campaigns and Projects
Community Capital Investment Initiative

Urban Habitat is co-chair of the Community Capital Investment Initiative, a regional public/private approach to revitalizing Bay Area low-income, low-wealth communities. CCII, led by business, community, environmental, and government representatives, has a commitment of more than $150 million dollars with investment goals focused on achieving a double bottom line—financial returns for investors as well as economic and social benefits for residents. The resources are invested into low-income communities through three funds, which are focused on smart growth and transit oriented development, brownfields cleanup, and small business and economic development. CCII is now moving towards a more focused, place-based approach. This will mean that rather than focusing on the 52 most impoverished communities throughout the Bay Area, CCII will select between 3-5 neighborhoods to target for investment. Richmond has been identified as one of the priority neighborhoods within CCII. As Co-Chair of CCII, Urban Habitat is committed to positioning Richmond as a competitive location for investments from the funds. In the next year, we hope to see at least one Richmond project invested in by the Smart Growth Fund of CCII.

Tax and Fiscal Policy Project

Urban Habitat is partnering with Working Partnerships USA, SCOPE, ACORN, and the Community Coalition to craft a progressive tax reform agenda for the Sate of California. This coalition, brought together by the California Alliance, represents hundreds of thousands of Californians across the state and over fifty years of collective experience in grassroots organizing and policy solutions for poor and working class communities. We are working with a polling company to generate current data on the opinions of California residents on tax and fiscal issues, the reasons for these opinions and the opportunities for opinion change. Our education, organizing, and policy initiatives will be shaped by the result of the polling.

Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities

Urban Habitat is on the steering committee of the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities (Bay Area Alliance) a multi-stakeholder coalition established in 1997 to develop and implement an action plan that will lead to a more sustainable region. The Bay Area Alliance provides a unique and valuable forum in which representatives of the Three Es of Sustainable Communities (Three Es) - prosperous economy, quality environment, and social equity - and government leaders at all levels come together to address major regional challenges.

California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)

In the past, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has been the target of “reform” efforts by the Schwarzenegger Administration. Our goal in participating in this debate is to ensure that “improvement” means an improvement in the lives of the most vulnerable and polluted communities. Administration proposals to remove “unnecessary” barriers to construction can easily remove regulations that are important safeguards for communities of color and low-income people across the state. Our plan is to ensure CEQA’s integrity by working with our partners towards a process that takes into account health impacts of housing, transportation and public infrastructure development. We believe such accounting will inform better policy and land use decisions on urban infill development. We want CEQA processes to allow for ordinary people to learn about proposed development and voice concerns about the potential damage to their neighborhoods when necessary.