Transformative Climate Communities Grants Announced

The Strategic Growth Council today awarded two implementation grants and four planning grants to communities around the state to encourage and assist in community-led efforts to plan for community resilience in the face of climate change.

Sacramento and Pacoima will each receive $23 million to implement community projects designed to meet residents’ needs while making their communities more sustainable and resilient, and helping them produce less greenhouse gas emissions.

In Pacoima, community groups including Community Partners and Pacoima Beautiful will develop the Green Together Network, which will include urban greening, mobility, active transportation, and job-training projects that incorporate anti-displacement policies and programs. The plan is based on community needs identified in previous planning processes.

The second grant will go to the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency for its proposed Sacramento Integrated Multimodal Place-based Living project in the Twin Rivers area. That project which will include a new light rail station and 480 new units of affordable and market rate housing, solar panels and bioswales, a community garden, and urban forestry.

Two other projects also submitted applications, but although “worthy of being funded,” according to staff, there wasn’t enough funding in this second round of TCC funding. Those two were affordable housing and mobility projects in Oakland and Riverside.

SGC also awarded four planning grants aimed at helping communities begin the process of planning for a resilient future. These grants, for $200,000 each, will go to:

• South Los Angeles, for the “South L.A. Climate Commons Plan, a neighborhood-level climate resiliency plan. The process will be coordinated by Los Angeles Equity Alliance, Brotherhood Crusade, and South Los Angeles Transit Empowerment Zone (SLATE-Z), who will work with TreePeople, Enterprise Community Partners, and the Los Angeles Department of City Planning. It will happen in parallel with, and in conjunction with, planning on the Slauson Corridor Transit Neighborhood Plan and Metro’s Rail-to-River Active Transportation Corridor project.
• Tulare County, which will develop a community-level climate adaptation plan for the rural community in the Matheny Tract.
• The City of McFarland, which will host community workshops to solicit input on strategies to increase housing affordability and transportation options, and ultimately a “healthier McFarland.”
• The City of Bakersfield, where community partners Kern Council of Governments, Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, Bike Bakersfield, and California Walks will conduct studies and community outreach activities to develop a plan that prioritizes alternative transportation, affordable housing, and workforce development projects.

This is the second round of awards allocated through the TCC Program. In the first round, the City of Fresno, the City of Ontario, and Watts (in Los Angeles) received a total of $133 million in TCC Implementation Grants, and ten cities split $1.6 million in Planning Grants.