Model and Strategy
California is one of the most climate-stressed places in the world. And in the Bay Area (specifically in the heart of Silicon Valley), soaring housing costs have closed off opportunities, leading to a devastating increase in housing insecurity and pushing many to the outer fringes of the region. This development pattern has increased greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to the historic heatwaves, drought, and wildfires. Put simply, housing policy is climate policy and swift action is necessary to protect the people and places we love.
That is why Greenbelt Alliance is bringing together environmental and housing advocates to advance climate SMART—Sustainable, Mixed, Affordable, Resilient, Transit-Oriented—development within urban areas. Doing so will ensure we have sufficient housing for residents across the income spectrum in places close to jobs and services while protecting the critical natural resources our open spaces provide, including carbon capturing trees, wildfire buffer areas, and groundwater supply.
Battery Powered support will help Greenbelt to work with local communities to:
-Educate the Bay Area on climate SMART development to create more housing choices within our cities and towns, in turn reducing emissions and building resilience.
-Advocate for the right kinds of land-use policies that prioritize affordable, low-emission, climate-resilient development in the right places, away from climate hazard areas.
- Greenbelt Alliance will particularly activate community members to leverage their voices and voting power to support the environmental case for housing.
- Collaborate with local leaders to bolster civic engagement, ensuring equitable regional planning efforts that foster community resilience, social equity, and climate justice outcomes.
Impact
Greenbelt Alliance’s education and advocacy programs work. In the past six years alone, along with our education and research work, Greenbelt Alliance has endorsed 16,515 new climate SMART homes and protected 71,758 acres of land from sprawl development. And yet, while we’ve had some big successes over the years, the challenges today are bigger than ever. The damaging effects of development on our hillsides, farmland, and wetlands, coupled with the devastating impacts of saying no to development within urban areas, has left us on a path to a more exclusionary and risky future.
Fortunately, we can reverse this trend. Mobilization of existing residents, particularly environmental and climate activists who don’t traditionally speak up in support of housing, can combat the exclusionary impulses of vocal residents that oppose everything from housing for the unsheltered to apartments for families in their communities.
Too many people simply do not know that the most impactful climate action they can take is speaking up to support more housing within their own communities - and that this action combats homelessness and housing insecurity as well, and is a great way to combat rising inequality and preserve and enhance our region’s diversity. Education, advocacy, and collaboration supported by Battery Powered will allow us to rapidly accelerate our impact - providing that boost needed to increase housing production at all income levels throughout the region in the areas where we most need housing - close to transit and jobs, away from wildfire zones, fragile wetlands, and areas subject to extreme heat.
Leadership
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Amanda Brown-Stevens
Executive Director
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Zoe Siegel
Senior Director of Climate Resilience