SPARCC 2017 Progress Recap!

Bay Area 4 All (BA4A), is GCC’s partnership with the 6 Wins for Social Equity Network (6 Wins) and Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII), as part of the national SPARCC initiative.  Check out highlights of our progress this year! 

Preservation Strategy: In Oakland, our work is focused on the community development system (developers, city programs, CDFIs, and capital dollars) and how they work together to advance community-driven vision and process for acquiring existing homes and taking them off of the speculative market.

• In December 2017, BA4A convened and facilitated a working meeting of affordable housing developers, base-building groups, and resident leaders to launch the development of a collective strategy for the preservation of affordable housing in Oakland. More here.
• The BA4A preservation subcommittee, which includes CJJC, APEN, ACCE, Public Advocates and is led by Enterprise developed a method for collecting and sharing properties, clarifying priorities for acquisition and identifying a few potential priority properties using this methodology.

Public Lands Strategy: The regional public lands strategy engages public land holders at the site level, strengthening community voice on near-term development opportunities near transit to model new ways for public agencies to act when disposing of and developing on their property.

• The regional scale and impact of the newly emerged Google at Diridon project has made it the primary focus in the South Bay strategy. BA4A member Working Partnerships USA, along with other community allies has co-convened a community coalition that has engaged over 1,500 residents in an ongoing campaign to ensure that both the public land sites and the public infrastructure investment are leveraged for public good. Working Partnerships was recently appointed to a seat on the Station Area Advisory Group (SAAG) and successful advocated for 3 additional community representatives to be added to the SAAG.  
• In December, the Public Land Working Group, including many BA4A members introduced recommendations related to Prioritizing Publicly-Owned Lands As A Critical Resource For Affordable Housing to the CASA process.

Regional Systems Change: BA4A gets to regional outcomes and systems change by engaging local place-based work in our regional networks (GCC, 6 Wins, BARHII) as well as the other regional networks in which BA4A partners are engaged to create broad political will, to share lessons learned, and to create momentum across jurisdictional lines to adopt and implement the practices established through the other two strategies.

• In 2017, BA4A partners, PA, EBHO, and EBASE participated in a campaign for a public land policy in Oakland. As the campaign wraps up, PA is creating a case study on the unique process that included negotiating with city staff, and is developing a model public land policy to share with allies and jurisdictions around the Bay Area, as well as to bring into the CASA process.
• The San Francisco Foundation’s CEO, Fred Blackwell, is one of three CASA co-chairs, and with an eye to deeply embedding equity into the CASA process, has created an advisory CASA “Kitchen Cabinet” led by the 6 Wins and is staffed on CASA by BARHII and GCC staff.  This has allowed the BA4A relationships to align even more deeply in the work on a regional scale.