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The Resilience Advantage: Build Your Small Business Resilience Plan in 5 Steps
September 2, 2025
Developed by Climate Resilience Consulting, “The Resilience Advantage” is a web-based guide designed to help small businesses understand their disaster-related risks and better prepare for disaster events to ensure resilience and business continuity.
Author or Affiliated User: Joyce Coffee
Resource Category: Planning
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S. 3875: Community Disaster Resilience Zones Act of 2022
December 20, 2022
In December of 2022, President Biden signed S.3875, the Community Disaster Resilience Zones Act, into law. The Community Disaster Resilience Zones Act designates zones in disadvantaged communities that are “most at risk to natural hazards.” If a community is designated under the Act, it will receive targeted federal funding and increased federal cost-share for projects that reduce the impacts of natural hazards and climate change. In May 2023, the Federal Emergency Management Agency published a notice and request for public input on implementation of the Act, including the process used to designate community disaster resilience zones. The comment period closes July 25, 2023.
Related Organizations: Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Resource Category: Law and Governance
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Maryland Senate Bill 901 (2021): Resilient Maryland Revolving Loan Fund
May 30, 2021
Maryland Senate Bill 901, enacted in May 2021, establishes the Resilient Maryland Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) — a special fund that provides low- or no-interest loans to local governments and nonprofit organizations for local resilience projects to mitigate hazards including natural disasters.
Related Organizations: State of Maryland
Resource Category: Law and Governance
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New Jersey Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes (PILOT) Program
In 1971, New Jersey implemented the Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes (PILOT) Program. Through this program, the state pays municipalities to protect and conserve open, undeveloped lands owned by the state and tax-exempt nonprofit organizations. This program was created to benefit environmental quality, quality of life, and economic health in New Jersey by conserving open space for natural resources and recreational purposes. While this program has been amended throughout its tenure, it is a noteworthy example of a state program that creates incentives for local governments to create open space by mitigating the impacts of lost tax revenue and land maintenance costs. In a managed retreat context, a similar program could be coupled with hazard mitigation buyouts and open space acquisitions to encourage local governments to conserve vulnerable properties impacted by sea-level rise and flooding.
Related Organizations: State of New Jersey
Resource Category: Funding
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How State Governments Can Help Communities Invest in Climate Resilience
September 2020
In 2020, the Innovation Network for Communities, Climate Resilience Consulting, and The Summit Foundation released a report, How State Governments Can Help Communities Invest in Climate Resilience. The report presents recommendations for how states can better support climate resilience efforts at the local level. The report includes a framework for how states are already adapting to climate change (e. g. , governance structures, state plans), outlines six key recommendations for developing a state-local resilience financial system, and offers a state assessment checklist to help states implement those recommendations.
Related Organizations: Innovation Network for Communities
Authors or Affiliated Users: Joyce E. Coffee, LEED AP, Peter Plastrik
Resource Category: Planning
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Case Study: Irvine Community Land Trust - Irvine, California
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.
Related Organizations: Irvine Community Land Trust
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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Case Study: Oakland Community Land Trust - Oakland, California
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.
Related Organizations: Oakland Community Land Trust
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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Case Study: Homestead Community Land Trust - King County, Washington
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.
Related Organizations: Homestead Community Land Trust
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
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Case Study: Sawmill Community Land Trust - Albuquerque, New Mexico
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.
Related Organizations: Sawmill Community Land Trust, City of Albuquerque, New Mexico
Resource Category: Solutions
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Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Boston, Massachusetts
The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) in the Dudley Triangle neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts is one of the first examples of a city-land trust partnership designed to address a range of community challenges including housing affordability, and racial and economic inequality. In the 1980s, DSNI created the community land trust, Dudley Neighbors, Inc. (DNI) to combat blight in the Dudley Triangle neighborhood, which as a result of disinvestment had numerous vacant properties and became a frequent site for dumping and arson. The goal of the land trust was to facilitate redevelopment of the neighborhood without displacing existing residents and to empower community control over future development. DNI acquired 60 acres of land and currently stewards 225 units of affordable housing, an urban farm, a greenhouse, a charter school, parks, and a town common. The DSNI is also notable because of the unique partnership with the City of Boston. The City granted the land trust eminent domain authority to condemn lands in the Dudley Triangle neighborhood and provided the land trust significant financial resources to support the development of affordable housing and other community projects in the neighborhood. DSNI’s work has helped to enhance the resilience of the community by preventing displacement in the face of rapid gentrification in the city, enhancing food security for residents, creating and stewarding green space that help to reduce urban heat islands, and by increasing social cohesion in the neighborhood through community activities and a community-led governing Board. DSNI shows how innovative public-partnerships between land trusts and cities can be fostered to address climate resilience and other community stressors, such as the lack of affordable housing, blight, and disinvestment.
Author or Affiliated User: Jessica Grannis
Resource Category: Solutions
