From displacement and dirty air to health and hope
A little-known state program is doing remarkable things in neighborhoods that endured too many decades of redlining, environmental racism and disinvestment. We know because we’re making it happen here in Oakland.
East Oakland is a vibrant community, rich in culture and alive with young people. Beginning in the 1930s, these neighborhoods experienced an influx of Black residents after World War II and now have a large Latinx population. The area has seen skyrocketing housing prices and the displacement of Black and Brown residents at an alarming rate.
East Oakland also is one of America’s most environmentally burdened neighborhoods. Homes sit side-by-side with heavily polluting industrial facilities and trucks going to and from the Port of Oakland. The area remains desperately short on access to parks, green space and clean transportation. The predictable results are some of the dirtiest air in America and high rates of respiratory disease.
A few years ago, California recognized that communities such as East Oakland sit on the front lines of climate change. That’s why The Greenlining Institute worked with our partners and communities to design a model to cut greenhouse gas emissions while making their neighborhoods healthier and more prosperous. It’s called Transformative Climate Communities, or TCC.
TCC gives the communities most impacted by poverty and pollution the power to define their own goals and solutions — with the funding to develop those plans. This community leadership, baked into TCC’s structure, makes all the difference. This is a program for the people, by the people.
East Oaklanders put together a plan they called “Better Neighborhoods, Same Neighbors” aimed at building a healthier neighborhood and curbing displacement. It identified five priorities: green space and healthy surroundings, housing as a human right, safe and accessible transportation, growing community wealth and arts and culture.
A $28.2 million TCC Implementation Grant has been used to leverage other funding to kick off projects that will weave climate strategies together with affordable housing, community health, active transportation, workforce development, food system resilience and green space projects:
Two thousand street trees will reduce the urban heat island effect. At the San Leandro Creek Urban Greenway, a 1.2-mile trail will provide access to green space plus a safe route to access key community assets, including the Planting Justice Food Hub, which provides produce to Sobrante Park residents.
Funding leveraged through the TCC project has launched a bike-share program that’s not only expanding clean transportation options, it’s training young people to do bike repair and giving them good jobs. Also in the pipeline are 54 units of 100% affordable housing with solar power and multiple transportation improvements nearby, along with an urban aquaponics farm to address the community’s food desert. It will create 27 living-wage jobs and provide youth education, health/wellness, community development and business incubation programming.
When The Greenlining institute recently studied TCC’s impact, we found incredible results, and see this as a model that should be expanded nationally. Unfortunately, funding for TCC here in California hasn’t been stable or adequate, a problem that the governor and legislature are finally moving to address.
California has created a model for how climate programs can help build stronger, healthier communities. We should make sure TCC has the resources to make lives better all over.