Pilots to Advance People-Centered Abundance

To successfully promote abundance across California, the Possibility Lab’s Abundance Accelerator seeks to build a community engagement infrastructure that is responsive to a necessary paradigm shift. In the old paradigm, community engagement was mostly a tool used by NIMBYs to block new infrastructure development. In the new paradigm of People-Centered Abundance, we need community engagement that:

1. Gives communities a sense of ownership over projects 
2. Leverages input to shape projects, as opposed to just saying yes or no to development
3. Leverages input in the planning phase to convey what communities want and then gives developers the chance to design projects in accordance with those community-oriented goals

Getting this right will be critical to preventing backlash to Abundance-oriented policies, and will also ensure that policies don’t produce excessive harm to local interests. In this spirit, the Possibility Lab invited proposals for innovation projects in Housing and Renewable Energy aimed at finding new ways for communities to engage productively in these conversations. 

Innovations in Renewable Energy Development

California law requires a transition to 100% renewable electricity by 2045. Transitioning to a decarbonized electric grid in the next 20 years will require a significant buildout of renewable energy infrastructure, including solar, wind, and transmission. Local acceptance of energy projects can vary widely, creating circumstances of uncertainty for project developers, public officials, landowners, and community members around how long projects will take to develop, whether or not they will be approved, and what their economic impact and benefits will be. 

Host communities contend that current siting practices often lack transparency or constructive dialogue between developers and community members. In addition, project benefits may seem diffuse or unclear, while project costs are more readily identified and debated. On the other hand, there’s potential for clean energy development to serve as an engine of economic growth, particularly in rural areas of the state, though economic benefits are not always widely or equitably shared.

The Abundance Accelerator sought out pilot projects aimed at developing and testing innovative methods for community engagement related to clean energy development. Specifically, we sought out projects that considered the following higher-level goals:

• Balancing the pace of clean energy infrastructure development with host community input;
• Increasing a community’s ability to co-produce clean energy infrastructure, as opposed to responding to infrastructure proposed by others, through planning, design, ownership, dialogue, and governance frameworks throughout the lifecycle of projects;
• Increasing a community’s ability to proactively plan for and indicate their interests in the siting of clean energy projects prior to the proposal of any specific project.

Rural Communities Rising

In response to an open RFP, our team selected a project, Rural Communities Rising, that sought to develop new community engagement processes working to deliver a rapid and equitable buildout of clean energy. Rural Communities Rising (RCR) is a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting rural, historically-underserved communities in Western Fresno County to collaboratively navigate the opportunities and significant changes brought by clean energy development. Established in response to the upcoming transformation of over 200,000 acres of agricultural land into utility-scale solar, battery storage, and green hydrogen production facilities, residents and leaders from 36 impacted communities—many of which have been neglected for decades—are working together to be in a position to lead and not be left behind. Their goal is united communities, with organized resident voices that are heard, respected and prioritized in this rapidly evolving landscape, being fully capable to secure self-determined long-term health, well-being and economic benefits.

At the heart of Rural Communities Rising is the commitment to community-driven leadership. Through grassroots organizing, the group aims to build a unified, powerful voice capable of negotiating directly with developers and policymakers, and improving all Vital Conditions for Health and Well-Being. With funding from the Possibility Lab’s Abundance Accelerator, Rural Communities Rising worked to establish enforceable Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) that will deliver tangible improvements to health, infrastructure, and economic well-being for all residents. By organizing from the bottom up, they aim to secure a future where the communities most impacted by environmental and economic challenges can lead the way in shaping solutions.

Innovations in Housing Production

In response to the statewide shortage of housing, many California cities and counties are implementing new policies and programs with the aim of increasing housing production. State law requires jurisdictions to plan for a certain number of new housing units, as determined by the Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) process, and present an actionable plan to achieve this in the jurisdiction’s housing element.

Additionally, local governments are required to meaningfully engage all segments of the population in developing housing policies. However, many of the opportunities that currently exist for public participation are shallow and perfunctory, unrepresentative of the full community, or take the form of adversarial debates about individual housing projects rather than meaningful engagement on a comprehensive or longer-term plan to achieve overall housing goals.

As cities and counties adopt policies to mitigate housing shortages, our team of researchers sought out projects exploring new methods for community engagement with the potential to meaningfully bring residents into the conversation in a way that is more conducive to the development of much-needed housing. Specifically, we sought out projects that considered the following higher-level goals:

• Increasing a community’s sense of agency in shaping how their city or county meets its housing needs;
• Expanding or creating new opportunities for community members to proactively indicate their needs and preferences;
• Increasing a community’s ability to co-produce plans and policies, as opposed to responding to policies proposed by planners and/or elected officials;
• Promoting infill housing production to meet the supply and affordability needs of the jurisdiction’s current and future residents.

Grayscale Collaborative 

In response to an open RFP, our team selected a project by Grayscale Collaborative, which was founded in 2015 as a 100% minority-owned urban design and planning firm to work with public and private clients in diverse cultural and political environments as they address equity challenges, build relationships, and advance more inclusive communities. Grayscale’s cross-disciplinary team works with a range of partners to imagine and create more inclusive communities, infrastructures, and plans by leveraging urban design and planning processes toward more equitably distributed resources, opportunities, and power.  

With funding from the Possibility Lab’s Abundance Accelerator, Grayscale worked with local stakeholders to document, evaluate, and enhance the long-term viability of new models of housing production that have been adopted, or are actively being debated, in two Southern California communities: 

1. Eastern Coachella Valley (ECV). ECV is a largely agricultural area, where mobile homes account for over 20% of housing stock. More than 100 additional unpermitted developments (“polancos”) have been established by groups of farmworkers pooling together funds to purchase and build on agriculture-zoned land—effectively leveraging the 1992 Polanco Bill to create informal mobile home communities. Polancos have developed out of necessity and local ingenuity, but the sustainability of many of these communities is threatened both by non-codified ownership arrangements and by variable housing quality, access to services (i.e., water, sewage), and overcrowding. 
2. South Los Angeles. South LA is a historically black neighborhood in Los Angeles facing some of the greatest development pressures in the metro area. Many longtime residents’ ability to remain in the community, benefit from surrounding investment, and build generational wealth is constrained by high land costs and a dearth of affordable homeownership options. Though there are recently enacted state and local policies designed to increase housing production, these have not been fully availed. Across community and government groups, there are wide-ranging (and often divergent) perspectives on the cultural and financial feasibility of deploy-ing these newer models of housing production in South LA.