City of Coachella receives $22 million for affordable housing, transit, parks, trees and more

The city of Coachella will receive over $22 million in state funding to improve green spaces, provide affordable housing, and create workforce development opportunities all centered on addressing climate change at the local level.

Coachella is one of four California cities awarded this year’s set of Transformative Climate Communities grants, a competitive grant program funded by the state’s cap-and-trade program that focuses on local projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions through projects that both address climate change and provide other health, economic, and quality of life benefits to the communities most impacted by pollution. The program prioritizes community-led solutions in said highly impacted areas.

“What we're talking about is really thinking about how climate change has impacted our community. We've seen hurricanes, we've seen droughts, we've seen dust storms, we've seen more days of hotter weather. And so, for us, this is about making sure that our residents can adjust and thrive, the best we can in this new predicament of global warming,” said Coachella Mayor Steven Hernandez during a press conference announcing the grant on Tuesday.

Hernandez continued, “It’s about making sure that seniors can have a place to live and our farmworkers and our most vulnerable communities can have readily accessible transportation and green transportation. This is about making sure that we have a good workforce for our youth, and that at the same time, our youth and adults have places to recreate, and places to call home here in the beautiful city of Coachella.”

Coachella is the first city in the Coachella Valley to receive an implementation grant from the program, which is in its fifth year. Implementation grants fund on-the-ground projects like bike paths and affordable housing. The program also offers planning grants, which help communities prepare to apply for future implementation grants.

Coachella and Indio both applied for implementation grants last year but were not selected. Indio did not reapply this year, but has received a planning grant in the past and may reapply in the future. 

Riverside County received a project development grant of $4 million, also announced this week, that will be used to develop a climate resiliency plan for Mecca and North Shore.

What will the money be used for?

The $22,125,000 grant will fund multiple projects under a plan called Coachella Prospera, which aims to form a “more equitable and climate-resilient community through neighborhood planning that supports climate change adaptation, the healthy development of children, the ability of older adults to age in place, and an overall sense of connectedness that benefits all residents,” according to a press release from the city.

The planned projects are wide-ranging, spanning transportation, housing, parks, energy and other categories. The Coachella Prospera initiative was developed by the city in collaboration with eleven community partners: Chelsea Investment Corporation, Pacific Southwest Community Development Corporation, GRID Alternatives Inland Empire, Southern California Mountains Foundation (Urban Conservation Corps), Bound Corporation, The LEAP Institute, Alianza Coachella Valley, Desert Recreation District, Regents of the University of California at Riverside (UC Riverside Campus), Kounkuey Design Initiative, and the Center for Employment Training.

The projects include:

• The Sixth Street Senior Apartment Community will build 53 affordable housing units for seniors, with all electric appliances and free or reduced-price transit passes for residents.

• A total of 300 trees will be planted throughout the city, including at parks and along Sixth Street from Date Avenue to Palm Avenue, Grapefruit Boulevard from Ninth Street to Avenue 52, Sixth Street from Date Avenue to Palm Avenue, and Shady Lane between Ninth Street and Orchard Street, along with other locations.

• The Coachella Transit Hub will be improved with a new restroom facility, charging lockers for e-bikes and e-scooters, and public WiFi and charging stations for cell phones.

• The city will close gaps of missing sidewalks and bicycle lanes along Grapefruit Boulevard and Shady Lane.

• Bagdouma Community Center will be converted into a Wellness Hub with a botanical garden, demonstration kitchen, classrooms for fitness classes, and sauna and steam rooms.

• Sierra Vista, Veterans’ Park, Bagdouma Park, Dateland Park, and the Avenue 53 Tot Lot will all see significant renovations and new amenities, including splash pads, shade structures, water bottle refill stations, outdoor fitness courts, and new playground equipment.

• GRID Alternatives Inland Empire will install solar panels on approximately 155 income-qualified single-family homes.

• A new zero-emission rideshare program operated by the LEAP Institute will provide subsidized rideshare vouchers and a mobile app where people can request rides in English and Spanish.

• Bound will bring 75 e-scooters and 75 e-bikes to the city, and the program will include subsidized ride vouchers for those whose incomes qualify.

About $1.4 million of the funding will go toward workforce development programs that focus on career pathways in climate-related industries, including green building construction, solar installations, HVAC technicians, electricians and urban forestry.

“This is going to bring mobility, it's going to bring access to green spaces, it's going to bring access to housing, it's going to bring employment, it's going to bring training, things that are critical to workforce development. And all of those things are components of what a good quality of life is, and what every city should be providing, and the future of how cities will be building, with wellness and well-being at the center of how we build,” said Councilmember Denise Delgado.

What is the Transformative Climate Communities Program?

Local officials on Tuesday emphasized the importance of Transformative Climate Communities funding going to a city like Coachella, which is smaller and more rural than many of the cities that have previously received funding under the program, and where over 97% of residents are Hispanic or Latino.

For the past five years, the program has awarded funding for a few communities each year with money from the state’s cap-and-trade program, which caps the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that can be emitted in the state each year. Polluting companies can comply with the program by reducing their emissions or obtaining permits to emit, or pay purchasing “offsets’ that fund greenhouse gas reduction programs elsewhere.

“When we wrote the cap-and-trade legislation, AB 32, we were very intentional that we wanted to see communities that traditionally don't compete well and don't receive these dollars be at the top of the priority list. Because not only will we be meeting the objectives of reducing the carbon footprint, but we will also be able to bring a lot more cobenefits of these investments in our communities ... And all of the folks that are involved in this grant are a perfect example of what the cobenefits of these investments look like in communities like Coachella,” said state Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia during the press conference.

This echoes a concern that some local officials of suburbs and rural areas in the state have expressed for years, which is that the time and resources needed to put together a competitive grant application for major state and federal grants make it difficult for smaller communities and those with smaller budgets to compete with urban areas and bigger-budget localites.

Last year’s three implementation grants went to South L.A., Richmond and Stockton.

Garcia added that after the unsuccessful application last year, some in Coachella felt like “We’re seeing these dollars and putting these applications forward, but we’re not seeing anything make its way back to Coachella or other communities that look like Coachella.”

Garcia and the Coachella City Council emphasized that they’d spent the past year working with California’s Strategic Growth Council to improve the city’s application, while also advocating that more dollars go to communities like Coachella “so that we could be thought of in the process,” Garcia said.

In addition to the $22 million, the state is also planning on partnering with the city to seek an additional $7 million for Coachella Prospera.

The Transformative Climate Communities program has provided implementation grants to 15 communities across California in the past five years. The first three communities awarded grants were Ontario, Fresno and the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. The UCLA Luskin Center has been tracking outcomes of the program in these initial communities, referring to the program as one that “may be the most innovative, comprehensive and equitable experiment in community-scale action ever.”

Ontario, the only other Riverside or San Bernardino county recipient of the grant so far, began implementing its grant in March 2019. As of June 2022, the grant has resulted in 247 trees planted, 108 people placed in jobs, 100 new units of affordable housing built and occupied, and 37 solar systems installed for low-income households, along with other outcomes, according to the UCLA Luskin Center. 

The program is also being eyed as a potential model for similar federal investemnets. And as the Biden Administration pours billions into climate change programs, and looks to prioritize the communities most burdened by pollution, it’s looking at the California’s Transformative Cliamte Communities program as a potential model, as LAist reported earlier this year.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Coachella wins $22 million for affordable housing, climate change