Climate Adaptation Resources related to Low-income Communities
This tab includes resources that address the disproportionate impacts of climate change for low-income communities.
Resources are automatically presented by date. Apply additional filters to narrow the list by resource category, organization type of resource author, impact, jurisdictional focus, state, or region.
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Resource
June 16, 2022
The Maggie Walker Community Land Trust (MWCLT) in Richmond, Virginia, is the first community land trust (CLT) in the nation to be designated a land bank, the Richmond Land Bank. In creating the Richmond Land Bank in 2018 — via a formal Memorandum of Agreement with MWCLT — the City of Richmond merged two separate yet complementary mechanisms for expanding affordable home ownership opportunities for low-and-moderate income residents: a land bank, which acquires and sells vacant, abandoned, and deteriorated properties; and a CLT, which conveys permanently affordable housing to residents in need. As of spring 2022, the Richmond Land Bank is the only formalized land bank and CLT partnership in the country. The land bank, which operates as a program under MWCLT, is one of three MWCLT initiatives working to produce permanently affordable housing in the Richmond metropolitan area. The Richmond Land Bank illustrates an emerging approach of combining two existing types of mechanisms to produce additional affordable housing options for low-and-moderate income residents, preserving community control over developable land, and collaborating with local stakeholders to integrate environmental and adaptation benefits in affordable housing development. This case study is one of 24 case studies featured in a report written by the Georgetown Climate Center, Greauxing Resilience at Home: A Collection of Lessons and Case Studies from Louisiana and Beyond
Resource Category: Solutions
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Resource
June 30, 2021
The New York City (NYC) Rezoning Commitments Tracker (Tracker) is an online tool that enables city residents to monitor the city’s progress in implementing several neighborhood-level comprehensive plans. The neighborhood plans, referred to generally as “rezonings,” include zoning code changes as well as city commitments to specific capital and programmatic investments. The tool can be used to both inform the city’s internal coordination and project management as well as provide external transparency for community members. The Tracker also serves to help users understand how zoning changes will manifest in tangible projects, translating the technical information from neighborhood rezoning plans into specific initiatives. Other local governments could consider developing and maintaining similar online tools to support and implement community-led decisionmaking processes including for adaptation and resilience.
Resource Category: Data and tools
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Resource
2021
Resource Category: Funding
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Resource
February 16, 2021
In February 2021, Enterprise Community Partners and the City of Miami, Florida released Keep Safe Miami, a set of tools aimed at owners and operators of affordable multifamily housing properties in Miami-Dade County. The tools can help property owners identify potential adaptation actions to increase the resilience of existing affordable housing to local climate change hazards, including sea-level rise and extreme weather events. Owners and operators of affordable housing units can use Keep Safe Miami’s resources to compare climate-related risks, prioritize adaptation strategies, and access local, state, and federal funding sources. As part of the program, the City of Miami also set aside $500,000 in deferred loans for owners and operators participating in the Keep Safe Miami program.
Resource Category: Data and tools
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Resource
January 2021
Housing insecurity and the impacts of climate change are two interrelated issues increasingly affecting cities across the United States. This report provides an overview of how community land trusts (CLTs) can present a solution to help cities mitigate both of these challenges by promoting community ownership and decisionmaking and providing permanently affordable and resilient housing. CLTs are nonprofit organizations with community-led governing structures that hold land in trust for the benefit of the community, often providing and preserving affordable housing, stewarding community amenities like parks and greenspace, and providing low-cost commercial properties that can support small businesses and economic resilience.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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Resource
December 6, 2020
The Bristol Community Land Trust (Bristol CLT) operating in the City of Bristol, in the United Kingdom, presents an example of a CLT that is benefiting from low-cost transfer of city-owned surplus land and delivering sustainable, resilient, affordable housing options for lower-income residents. Bristol CLT is building shared-equity and affordable rental units that meet the highest standards of energy efficiency and incorporate renewable energy with back-up batteries, air-source heat pumps, shared green space, “car share,” and other environmental and social amenities. The city adopted a policy in 2020 that will help the CLT develop affordable housing by recognizing the social, environmental, and economic benefits delivered by a project as part of the “consideration” it receives in exchange for the transfer of the land. This policy will better enable Bristol CLT to access low-cost land by rewarding the unique values of CLT-housing, including engaging residents, building social cohesion, and delivering permanently affordable housing. It also demonstrates how cities can change policies related to how they dispose of surplus lands to facilitate transfers to community-led organizations that will redevelop these properties for publicly beneficial uses, like affordable housing.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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July 26, 2020
The Irvine Community Land Trust (Irvine CLT) presents an example of a city-established CLT designed to support infill development of sustainable, permanently affordable housing. The CLT’s developments meet the City’s green housing standards by incorporating green design features (like energy and water saving utilities, low-energy lighting, renewable energy power). Housing developments also incorporate other community amenities like parks, community space, and community gardens. Additionally, Irvine CLT is building housing to provide services to residents with special needs; for example, its Doria housing project reserved 10 percent of homes for people with a history of homelessness, including veterans and people with mental illnesses.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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Resource
July 26, 2020
The Oakland Community Land Trust (OakCLT), in Oakland, California, presents an example of how land trusts can help to reduce displacement pressures in gentrifying cities. It was created in 2009 to stabilize housing threatened with foreclosure as a result of the recession and mortgage crisis. Through mobilization of residents and a local community organization, Urban Strategies Council, the Oakland CLT was formed to acquire and rehabilitate properties in foreclosure. Since it was established, OakCLT has acquired and preserved approximately 50 units of housing and stewards multi-use and commercial properties that provide affordable rents for culturally important businesses and grassroots organizations.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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July 26, 2020
In Seattle and King County, Washington, the Homestead Community Land Trust (Homestead CLT) is helping to preserve existing and build new affordable housing that incorporates green design features. The CLT currently stewards 13 acres of land with more than 200 homes for low- and middle-income homeowners earning 80 percent or less of area median income (AMI). Recent projects have incorporated green design features to increase the sustainability of land trust homes. The CLT is currently building twelve “net-zero” energy townhomes in area Renton, WA near transit, which will reduce both energy and transit costs for homeowners and help the region meet greenhouse gas reduction goals.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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Resource
July 25, 2020
The Sawmill Community Land Trust (Sawmill CLT) in Albuquerque, NM provides an example of how CLTs can support community redevelopment and reduce displacement of existing residents. The Sawmill CLT was formed out of a community-driven planning process to redevelop the Sawmill-Wells Park neighborhood (between Old Town and downtown Albuquerque). The neighborhood had become blighted due to underinvestment and pollution from industrial facilities. The CLT’s first project, called Arbolera de Vida (Orchard of Life), was developed on a 27-acre formerly contaminated industrial property that it acquired from the city and facilitated clean up and redevelopment to include permanently affordable housing and other community amenities.
Resource Category: Solutions
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