About this archived opportunity

Recent and ongoing climate events and public health emergencies impact every part of California.Such events encompass shorter-term events like earthquakes, extreme heat, mudslides, flood,wildfires, power outages, and disruptions; they also include longer-term events like the COVIDpandemic, sea level rise, drought, and rising temperatures. Due to historic redlining and cycles ofunderinvestment, communities across California face differential access to local communityresilience opportunities including public health resources, clean energy infrastructure, andemergency response services. Given California’s range of geographies and biomes, diversepopulations and their needs, and existing infrastructure, building local community resilience offersthe most appropriate, comprehensive, and relevant approach for each community to achieveequitable outcomes in the face of climate impacts and disruptions. Since projects developed forand by community residents have greater success and are better designed to meet and effectivelyrespond to unique challenges and opportunities, community resilience center projects andprogramming must demonstrate robust, inclusive, consistent, and effective engagement withresidents throughout the ideation, development, implementation, and feedback processes. The California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) Community Resilience Centers(CRC) Program described here builds on this foundation, in alignment with California’s StatewideAdaptation Strategy and other efforts, to build local resilience across California communities. It isa priority of the CRC program to fund resilience center projects in disadvantaged communitiesand disadvantaged unincorporated communities, or sites serving these communities. The CRC Program will focus on improving community facilities to enhance the state’s emergencypreparedness capabilities, particularly in response to climate change. Funding shall be used tosupport infrastructure for emergency evacuation, shelter, base camps during emergency events,and critical deferred maintenance. Elements for this infrastructure may include cooling andheating centers, clean air centers, and extended emergency evacuation response centers,equipped with community kitchens, shower facilities, broadband, back-up power, and othercommunity needs during an emergency or climate events. A secondary goal of the CRC Program is to equip facilities to provide long-term, year-roundcommunity services and activities to enhance the community’s resilience through civic, social,educational, and economic development programming.