Earth House Center -- Oakland, California

As a member of the 6 Big Wins for Social Equity Network, Breakthrough Communities contributed a memorandum that laid the groundwork for strategic collaboration of major working groups. The coalition has partnered with over 30 social justice, faith, public health, and environmental organizations to advance policies in sectors that are essential to building a stronger and more equitable future for the people of the Bay Area. With this goal in mind, we are very pleased to announce that the Plan Bay Area Environmental Impact Report and Equity Analysis is set to publicize that our Equity, Environment and Jobs (EEJ) alternative is the "environmentally superior alternative," performing better than the others on environmental, health and equity metrics.

Together we are working to advance:
1. Affordable Housing in High Opportunity Neighborhoods
2. Operating Expenses for Public Transit Service
3. Investment without Displacement
4. Environmental Justice, Healthy and Safe Communities
5. Economic Opportunity
6. Community Power

Our model would add housing growth, including affordable housing opportunities, in both low-income and high-opportunity places. This means increasing housing not only in the places that volunteered to be Priority Development Areas but also in other job-rich, transit oriented, high opportunity communities that did not volunteer for such growth. The program would also invest an additional $8 billion into transit services, tailored to fit our more inclusive housing distribution plan and it would create anti-displacement incentives via the One Bay Area Grant program for local cities.

Compared to the other alternatives, the proposed EEJ alternative would have the most favorable environmental impacts as well. In Air Quality it would result in the lowest criteria pollutant emissions as well as the lowest amount of Toxic Air Contaminants. This is a result of placing a greater emphasis on aligning compact land use development with transit service and increasing transit capacity. In Greenhouse Gas Emissions the proposed plan performs better in terms of total GHG emissions reductions, achieving a 17% reduction from 2010 to 2040.

The EEJ alternative puts much less displacement pressure on overburdened renter households than the other alternatives, demonstrating a substantially lower potential for displacement. In the
EEJ, 21% of communities of concern are at risk of displacement, while in the draft Plan 36% are at risk. EEJ also has the lowest combined housing and transportation costs as a share of income for low-income households.

On health metrics, the EEJ scenario performs better than the draft Plan on reducing premature deaths from fine particulates, reducing coarse particulate emissions, and increasing average time walking and biking. It also shows lower increases in injuries and fatalities from collisions in communities. The EEJ alternative also has the strongest transit ridership of all alternatives considered - 5% more than the proposed plan.