Leveraging the Stimulus:

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Leveraging the Stimulus

Community Innovators Lab

• Retrofitting Communities to Build Equity
  Sustainability
• May 11th, 2009

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Maximizing the Impact

• Leverage different funding sources build
  partnerships
• Invest in deep retrofits to maximize gains to
  prevent lost opportunities
• Infuse equity into allocation of funds and design
  of programs
• Ensure that short-term gains are investments into
  long-term triple bottom lines

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Only Top 20 With Significant Income Increases
from 1998-2006
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ENERGY BURDEN
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Strategies for Mitigating Effects on Low-Income
Capacity-Building

• Utilize Stimulus Funds
• Increase Energy Efficiency
• Manage demand through education Smart Grid
• Create economic development opportunities for
  shared wealth generation through green jobs,
  green businesses, etc.
• Ensure equitable access to educational and
  communications technologies such as broadband

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Example of Demand management
Source www.gridpoint.com/curve/overview/
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Some Green Funds in the Stimulus

• Total in energy efficiency alone 12.35 billion
• 3.1B State Energy Programs
• 3.2B Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grants
• 5B Weatherization Assistance Programs (WAP)
• Up to 1B Training TA from WAP
• .5B Green Jobs
• .3B ENERGY STAR Rebates
• .25B HUD Section 8 Housing
• 6B Innovative Technology Loan
  Guarantee
• 4.5B Smart Grid Investment Program
• .1B Jobs Training for Smart Grid
• 7.2B Broadband

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Examples

• Low Income Weatherization (WAP) 5 billion,
  expanded from 400 million (est.)
• Includes up to 20 for Training and Technical
  Assitance
• Increase per-house expenditure from 2,500 to
  6,500
• Increase eligibility from 150 to 200 of poverty
  level
• Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grant
• Opportunity for funds to be used for
  comprehensive planning
• Includes both formula competitive grants
• Up to 15 can be used for revolving loans
• Up to 20 can be allocated to non-profits
• Section 8 Energy Retrofit
• 250 million directed to project based section 8
  housing for energy retrofits
• HUD is responsible for implementation. No more
  details yet
• Green Jobs Training
• 500 million
• Dept. of Labor, Office of Employment and Training
  Administration
• Includes research, job exchange and training

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DUSP Stimulus Project - Work Plan Coordination
Plan Model
General Proposal
Specific Proposal
Policy Argument
Mission
Mission
Assessment Questions Programs That Fit
Analysis Coordination
Diagram
Comprehensive Roadmap
Matrix
Best Practices at Scale
Technical Assistance Sources
Technical Assistance Resources
Community Role
Community Role
Civic Action Advocacy
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Broad Mission Goals

• Encourage comprehensive community-based planning
• Why Communities are more likely to participate
  if they are involved in decision-making.
  Innovations require a high amount of community
  education and input
• Build community capacity improve community
  resilience
• Why Improving the capacity of low-income
  communities to act on their own behalf will help
  to blunt the negative effects of economic
  downturns and will also support communities in
  seizing positive opportunities.
• Leverage existing funding sources with each other
  and with private investment
• Why Leveraging sources will increase multiplier
  effects, create synergies, and help to capitalize
  on the short-term stimulus to provide
  infrastructure for long-term projects and
  programs.
• Perform Deep Retrofit buildings in low-income
  communities of color
• Why These communities tend to reside in areas
  with the worst building stock, deep retrofits
  deliver the greatest bang for the buck and
  helps to increase savings for communities
• Reduce global warming pollution
• Why Cutting carbon emissions and other types of
  pollution will improve health conditions for all
  people and reduce negative environmental impacts.

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Specific Mission Goals

• Increase Equitable Access to Resources
  Opportunities
•  
• Conserve resources (ie. Materials, waste water,
  energy, etc)
• Why Taking action on conservation is a built-in
  income generating program with multiple spin-off
  effects
• Ensure convenient access to healthy foods
• Why Low income people are experiencing spike in
  diabetes and other nutrition related diseases and
  access to healthy foods is critical
• Green public facilities (schools, hospitals,
  public housing, waste stations)
• Why They tend to be located in low-income areas
  and greening them could produce opportunities for
  improving facilities, creating local businesses
  (cooperatives, private, non-profits) and
  maintaining community level systems (energy,
  food, water)
• Increase broadband access
• Why The poor have least access to broadband and
  are most in need of 21st century education and
  economic development opportunities
• Prioritize the needs of disabled and impoverished
  elderly and children
• Why Poor communities have high concentrations of
  these vulnerable populations, which need
  additional help during the retrofitting process
  and other greening processes.

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Specific Mission Goals

• Create Train for Well-Paying Jobs Local
  Economic Development
•  
• Create jobs, training opportunities, and career
  ladders for communities with high unemployment
  and poverty
• Why Self help system reduces spin-off costs from
  unemployment and poverty
• Build sustainable economic development by
  supporting and investing in minority and
  women-owned businesses
• Why Such businesses tend to encourage
  entrepreneurship in and capacity-building for
  under-resourced communities and can be next
  steps on green jobs career pathways.
• Invest in Measures to Aid Communities in
  Addressing Prohibitive Costs of Adaptation
•  
• Retrofit homes in neighborhoods with high
  foreclosure problems
• Why Such retrofits will help to reduce cost to
  homeowners and prevent further foreclosures
• Prevent displacement of low-income residents by
  maintaining housing and cost-of-living
  affordability
• Why Saving energy and transportation costs is
  increasingly critical in ensuring low-income
  communities are not displaced from their
  neighborhoods

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6 Components of Deep Retrofits

• A coherent vision for maximizing the benefits of
  green retrofits must jointly address six critical
  and interrelated elements
• 1. Infrastructure Retrofits require an informed
  and context-sensitive choice of technology and
  materials at the building level.
• 2. Employment Equitable retrofits can contribute
  to the economy through credentialed training
  programs, broad labor-community-business
  consensus on job access and performance, and the
  design of inclusive labor standards.
• 3. Business model Small business development
  requires new, sustainable business models that
  ensure high quality work.
• 4. Financing Leveraging existing funding sources
  with each other and private investment will
  create programmatic synergy while increasing the
  multiplier effect of the stimulus plan
• 5. Community planning Thus, an optimal retrofit
  plan will include high community involvement in
  project design advanced leadership training for
  key local actors and additional support through
  public policy and regulations.
• 6. Coordination  These scaled urban retrofits
  are both extremely attractive social projects and
  enormously complex. Thus, their execution
  requires extensive coordination.

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Community Assessment Programs That Fit

• Excel tool that allows cities/coalitions/organizat
  ions to answer assessment questions and link
  those answers to stimulus programs that are a
  good fit
• Evaluate current context of organization/groups
  of actors
• Evaluate goals capacity of specific orgnization
• Evaluate capacity and goals of potential partners
• Identify the most pressing needs of the
  communities
• What synergies that might exist between stimulus
  programs?
• How to coordinate multiple programs to achieve
  specific goals?
• What are strategies for partnering with the
  public and private sector to maximize funds?
• What capacity is needed by base-building
  organizations to leverage the stimulus?

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Step 1 - Community Assessment
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Step 2 - Community Assessment Answers
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Step 3 Identifying Programs that Fit
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Best Practices for 6 Components (In Progress)

• 1. Infrastructure
• Whole House Weatherization
• Retrofitting Public Facilities
• Energy Generation
• Smart Grid Broadband
• 2. Employment
• Career Bridges Pathways
• Coupling job training with ACTUAL jobs
• Creating community/training/private sector
  partnerships
• 3. Business model
• Emphasis on minority women-owned enterprises
• Procurement of contracts
• Scaling up
• Financing

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Best Practices for 6 Components (In Progress)

• 4. Financing
• Tax breaks
• On-bill financing
• Selling energy to the Forward Capacity Market
• 5. Community planning
• Comprehensive neighborhood planning
• Popular education decision-making
• Building capacity for implementation
• 6. Coordination
• Models for coordination between key stakeholders
• Leveraging partnerships to gain power to
  implement
•  

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Civic Action Advocacy

• No guarantee that funds will be spent in a manner
  that promotes jobs, job training, and community
  organization in underserved communities
• Civic action advocacy is the key to properly
  investing these funds. 
• National organizations released toolkits to
  assist local actors organize for green jobs.
• Link for Green For All Recovery Toolkit
  http//www.greenforall.org/resources/recoverytoolk
  it
• Link for Sierra Club Cool Cities Activist
  Toolkit http//newjersey.sierraclub.org/ConCom/Co
  olCities/Cool_Cities_Activist_Toolkit_4-4-0623.PDF
  
• Community Innovators Lab (CoLab), in conjunction
  with the Emerald Cities Initiative, is also
  seeking to catalyze civic action.

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Leveraging the Stimulus

Community Innovators Lab

• Retrofitting Communities to Build Equity
  Sustainability
• May 11th, 2009