Community Capital Investment Initiative

The Alliance for Community Development is a participant in a broad coalition of Bay Area organizations called the Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Communities ("BAASC"). Led by the Bay Area Council, the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Sierra Club, and Urban Habitat, BAASC seeks to address the issues of poverty reduction and smart growth in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. A key strategy of BAASC is a region-wide initiative is called the Community Capital Investment Initiative ("CCII").

Poverty Reduction and Smart Growth

In Growing Together, Manuel Pastor Jr., Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, reported that regions with large wealth disparities are less stable and grow more slowly. "…regions need poverty reduction in order to grow, and the poor need regional growth in order to escape poverty." This means that poverty reduction is in the interest of the Bay Area as a whole. Smart growth is also in the interest of the whole Bay Area. Without smart growth, farmland and open space will continue to be consumed at the region's edge, traffic and air quality will worsen, and regional prosperity will be degraded.

In response to this situation, CCII is building a regional community investment infrastructure of sufficient scope to be able to guide market forces to address the integration of poverty reduction and smart growth without displacement.

The Initiative

CCII is focusing on underserved neighborhoods in the ten county Bay Area that have concentrated, persistent poverty. The priority neighborhoods are contiguous census tracts with income levels that are less than 80% of the county median income, including residential, retail, commercial, and industrial areas. CCII is organized as a Business Council, a Community Council, and a Government Advisory Council cooperating to encourage private and public, financial and non-financial investments in the priority areas.

The Bay Area Council (www.bayareacouncil.org)—the regional, business-sponsored, CEO-led public policy organization representing 275 major employers in the Bay Area—is the lead organization for the Business Council, which is made up of regional business leaders. The National Economic Development and Law Center (www.nedlc.org), PolicyLink (www.policylink.org), and Urban Habitat (www.urbanhabitat.org) are the lead organizations for the Community Council, which includes 30 significant Bay Area community organizations. The Government Advisory Council includes 12 federal agencies, 12 state agencies, and 5 regional bodies.