Honolulu Climate Financial Risk Assessment and Funding Strategies

October 16, 2024 / Comments Off on Honolulu Climate Financial Risk Assessment and Funding Strategies

HR&A is supporting the City and County of Honolulu to assess the City’s climate-related financial risks and define strategies for funding and budgeting vital adaptation measures. As climate hazards like coastal erosion, flooding, and hurricanes become more frequent and severe, this initiative marks a significant opportunity for Honolulu to safeguard its future by investing in resilient infrastructure and long-term solutions. 

Communities in Honolulu are already contending with the impacts of climate change due to sea level rise, heat, drought, wildfires, hurricanes, and storm surge. Meeting the scale of this challenge requires systemic change in approaches to funding, financing, policy, and procedures. The City and County of Honolulu engaged HR&A to build an understanding of the city’s financial risk and develop a proactive, strategic approach to prioritizing investments in climate solutions. This includes preserving existing revenue streams for climate solutions and identifying additional funding and financing sources.  

 

Through this process, HR&A will develop a comprehensive roadmap and toolbox to ensure the City and County of Honolulu and its constituents understand the scale of fiscal risk; who is responsible for specific risks (whether it’s the City, County, State, Federal government, or private sector); the magnitude of needed investments and the City and County’s ability to manage their cost, and actionable strategies to develop a budget and financial approach to address and mitigate risks.   

Los Angeles County Rent Stabilization Ordinance Study

August 27, 2024 / Comments Off on Los Angeles County Rent Stabilization Ordinance Study

Amid high inflation, rising costs, and the ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, HR&A collaborated with Los Angeles County to address the critical issue of rental housing costs by developing six potential rent increase formulas for the County Board of Supervisors’ consideration. These options integrated real-world scenarios and input from renters and owners alike, aiming to address market realities, mitigate overburdensome costs, and support the needs of all parties in the rental market.

Nearly all low- and moderate-income renters in unincorporated Los Angeles County are housing cost-burdened, which means they spend more than 30% of their income on rent. Consequently, any rent increase will exacerbate housing instability for these renters and could potentially lead to evictions.

 

HR&A was proud to support the County Board of Supervisors in exploring and refining its approach to stabilizing rents and protecting tenants. As part of this work we engaged with diverse stakeholders, including tenants, advocates, and property owners, to ensure that our analysis reflected the real-world experiences and challenges of impacted groups. Our engagement supplemented analyses of rental market trends, operating costs, ongoing pandemic impacts, and the policy environment for rent stabilization in California. Based on this work, we developed six potential rent increase formulas for the Board’s consideration, and carefully evaluated each for its impact on all parties involved.

 

Our analysis and recommendations empowered the County to make an informed decision on changes to their Rent Stabilization and Tenant Protections Ordinance, with the goal of reducing housing instability and prevent evictions, while also considering the needs of landlords. This work not only supports the County’s vision for more equitable affordable housing access but also helps address a pressing community need with housing prices continuing to rise across the State.

Supporting Municipal Power in Puerto Rico

July 11, 2024 / Comments Off on Supporting Municipal Power in Puerto Rico

HR&A was instrumental in the formation of La Liga, an organization that equipped Puerto Rican mayors with unprecedented communication channels in the wake of Hurricane Maria, and we continue to provide strategic and analytic support to help the organization build collective action, resilience, and more effective local government on the Island.

La Liga is a first-of-its-kind, community-focused, collaborative vehicle for Puerto Rico to address fiscal, economic, rebuilding challenges and gain deserved visibility and support from the U.S. mainland — work that emerged from necessity in the wake of a climate disaster and continues to build a more resilient and prosperous future for the people living there.  
 
In the years since La Liga was formed, HR&A helped design and execute La Liga’s Municipal Innovation Laboratory, which offers a tailored, comprehensive curriculum to promote equity-driven community power, transparency, fiscal responsibility, and economic well-being for local governments in Puerto Rico. HR&A also designed La Liga’s Federal Funding Navigator, an online platform that streamlines municipalities’ access to funding opportunities provided by the Investment in Infrastructure and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). This tool simplifies the process of accessing over $107 billion for which Puerto Rico is eligible for climate change and infrastructure projects.  

Supporting Trinity Church Philanthropies to End Mass Homelessness and Mass Incarceration in New York City

July 11, 2024 / Comments Off on Supporting Trinity Church Philanthropies to End Mass Homelessness and Mass Incarceration in New York City

For the past several years, HR&A has provided strategic partnership to Trinity Church Philanthropies to help them advance their goals of ending mass incarceration and mass homelessness in New York City.

HR&A supported Trinity Church Wall Street to launch Faith Communities for Just Reentry (FCJR), a coalition of over 40 faith leaders across New York State demanding that City leaders take action to ensure that New Yorkers leaving city jails transition home effectively during the COVID-19 pandemic. HR&A supported the development of the coalition’s policy platform, which includes keeping people safe during the pandemic, ensuring justice-involved families can access housing, and calling for the creation of a coordinated reentry system.  
 
HR&A also provided direct support to Trinity’s grantees, including helping Fountain House — a national nonprofit that serves and advocates for people living with serious mental illness — plan for the expansion of its effective clubhouse model, which has been shown to dramatically reduce homelessness and improve health outcomes for its members. To support Trinity’s goals, HR&A analyzed how public hospital real estate assets could be repositioned to address the needs of patients experiencing homelessness and on the workforce it will need over the next decade to implement evidence-driven, community-based programs —  such as permanent supportive housing — that have been shown to reduce homelessness, hospitalization, and jail admission.  

Transition for Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato

July 11, 2024 / Comments Off on Transition for Allegheny County Executive Sara Innamorato

Starting the morning after Sara Innamorato was elected as the first female County Executive in Allegheny County, HR&A provided intensive daily project management and strategic guidance to her transition and helped create an Action Plan to guide her Administration.

First, we structured and supported a Transition Committee of over 200 diverse community leaders, organizers, local employers, academics, and government experts. With this committee, HR&A sourced, vetted, and recommended appointments to critical leadership positions in County departments and the Executive Offices. We also designed and implemented All In Allegheny, the largest community engagement initiative in County history. Nearly 19,000 residents responded to the All In community issue survey, sharing the actions they would like County government to take on topics including housing affordability, infrastructure projects, neighborhood safety, small business support, reducing pollution, and supporting young people. HR&A project managed the development of the All In Action Plan, in which the Innamorato Administration lays out the 91 actions it will take over the next several years to deliver on the community priorities articulated in the survey findings and workshops held across the County. This Action Plan was released on County Executive Innamorato’s 100th Day in Office, in mid-April 2024.  
 
HR&A’s proven ability to translate newly elected leaders’ campaign promises into tangible reforms has been enshrined in a playbook prepared for Local Progress, a movement of elected municipal officials who activate the powers of local government to advance racial equity and economic justice. 

Supporting the Creation of a San Francisco Public Bank

July 11, 2024 / Comments Off on Supporting the Creation of a San Francisco Public Bank

After soliciting extensive input from community members, city officials, banking experts, and business stakeholders, HR&A developed a Business and Governance Plan for the City of San Francisco’s public bank to support affordable housing, small businesses, and green investments.

The banking ecosystem in San Francisco, like many cities across America, has historically failed to serve everyone and leaves significant gaps in the capital available to develop and preserve affordable housing, support small businesses, and ensure the rapid adoption of decarbonization technologies. An HR&A-led team helped the San Francisco Reinvestment Working Group (RWG) identify unmet financing needs and craft a Plan with tailored lending products to fill these banking gaps. As part of our analysis, we determined the viability of a public bank and developed detailed pro forma financial statements and governance plans to guide the City’s efforts to establish this new entity. In September 2023, the City’s Board of Supervisors voted to adopt the Plan, positioning San Francisco at the vanguard of the growing public banking movement with a critical step towards the establishment of California’s first municipal public bank.
 
HR&A Advisors led a team consisting of banking experts Gary S. Findley & Associates and community engagement consultants Contigo Communications to define the vision, mission, and structure of the public bank with an emphasis on transparent and community-driven operation and details on a range of products and services to promote economic equity across the city. Throughout the process, we engaged a variety of stakeholders including community members, small businesses, nonprofits, housing and environmental justice advocates, financial experts, City agencies, and more to gain insights around what services would be most impactful from a public bank.

 
With this inclusive approach, the City has a robust roadmap to create a public bank that will help address financial needs and more equitably serve the needs of lower-income, BIPOC, and marginalized communities who have been excluded from access to reliable, affordable capital for far too long.

 

Explore

Check out the full San Francisco Public Bank Business and Governance Plan and Viability Study 
San Francisco Board of Supervisors Unanimously Accept Plan to Implement the First Municipal Bank in the Nation

 

Press

San Francisco Green-Lights Nation’s First City-Run Public Bank — KQED
What’s next for San Francisco’s public bank plan — Axios
San Francisco given go-ahead to start creating nation’s first municipal bank — CBS News Bay Area
Proposed S.F. public bank gets first review by supervisors — San Francisco Chronicle

 

Photo via: Shen Pan

Supporting SEIU State Public Banking Legislation

June 8, 2023 / Comments Off on Supporting SEIU State Public Banking Legislation

HR&A Advisors worked with a coalition of racial and economic justice organizations, financial access advocates, and labor unions, including the California Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the California Public Banking Alliance, to provide analysis of the financial and social impacts of unfair banking access to support advocacy for the California Public Banking Option Act (AB-1177). Our findings showed how inadequate and disparate access to free and safe banking accounts results in billions of dollars lost to the California economy annually, contributes to people remaining in poverty, and increases the use of taxpayer dollars towards providing social services.  

In October 2021, the California Assembly and Senate passed the California Public Banking Option Act and Governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law in a move that sets the foundation for providing universal access to banking that will benefit households, local economies, and taxpayers. This is the first bill in the nation guaranteeing universal banking access, paving the way towards giving all Californians access to high-quality, low-cost financial services. 80.7% of unbanked Californians earn less than $15 per hour, and nearly half of Black and 41.1% of Hispanic households in California are unbanked or underbanked. Unbanked communities lack access to basic financial services — like checking and savings accounts — that are critical to financial stability.  

 

HR&A Advisors novel analysis examined who is not being served by the formal banking system, where they live, what the financial costs are to individuals and to the economy of un- and under-banking, and the economic benefits of the legislation to California. AB-1177 established a framework to study the feasibility and implement the CalAccount public banking option program, an alternative to the high fees that many Californians face from existing predatory banking options that stand as a barrier to wealth accumulation. 

 

Our analysis delineated how the CalAccount program could offer critical services to Californians and become self-sufficient within the next five years. CalAccount could draw on existing state programs to reach a customer base of millions of Californians resulting in an estimated $3.3 billion in savings for low-income households, potentially creating 22,000 jobs, and boosting the California economy by an estimated $4.2 billion by redirecting spending away from costly interest and fees.   

 

 

Photo: Louis Velazquez

NYC Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Assessment for For-Hire Vehicles

February 14, 2023 / Comments Off on NYC Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Assessment for For-Hire Vehicles

In 2022, Uber engaged HR&A to assess the current state of electric vehicle (“EV”) charging infrastructure available to New York City’s for-hire drivers and what is needed to reach the Mayor’s goal for zero emissions by 2030.

The report revealed critical gaps in the New York City’s infrastructure that will pose significant challenges to achieving this transition in the next 7 years and identified a set of strategies that bring together the City, utilities, EV charging companies, and mission-driven landowners to work together to accelerate the path to a cleaner, greener future.

The report recommends 10 strategies that will support enhanced access and affordability to EV charging infrastructure, build the processes and systems to support for-hire driver needs, and help achieve the 2030 zero-emissions goal:

 

  1. Identify high-need neighborhoods that overlap with where for-hire drivers live to prioritize where to place low cost and fast chargers.
  2. Work with utilities to identify high-volume pick-up and drop-off areas in which the grid currently has capacity to support new fast chargers.
  3. Develop a comprehensive EV infrastructure deployment plan to strengthen coordination with utilities, optimizing the City’s ability to achieve its emission reduction and environmental equity goals, and electrify the for-hire vehicle fleet.
  4. Aggressively pursue new federal funding opportunities to direct investment to target neighborhoods.​
  5. Streamline the permit process for EV charging as part of the City’s ongoing efforts to improve land-use processes.
  6. Leverage real estate assets owned/managed by public or faith-based entities to provide land for accessible, affordable chargers in targeted neighborhoods and near high-volume trip areas.
  7. Explore land use incentives for private developers to integrate public chargers with no gate/parking fees into new developments.
  8. Continue targeted outreach and engagement specific to the for-hire vehicle industry.
  9. Support EV charging operators in communicating electricity prices and charger availability with drivers, as well as in developing driver-centric incentives to reduce charging during peak load times.
  10. Further develop a new pricing structure for the cost of power for charging operators that makes charging more affordable.

 

The report findings were announced within this Op Ed in the Gotham Gazette on February of 2023.

 

Read the report here.

 

 

 

FLOW Youth Center

October 10, 2022 / Comments Off on FLOW Youth Center

HR&A has been working with a coalition of advocacy groups including JusticeLA (JLA) and Designing Justice+Designing Spaces (DJDS) in their efforts to advance projects around L.A. County’s transformative Care First Community Investment (CFCI). JusticeLA is a collaborative of several L.A. based organizations organizing with communities to disrupt where and how L.A. County incarcerates justice-involved individuals. DJDS is the nation’s foremost design nonprofit working to build and transform communities through restorative Justice. DJDS will steward an authentic, ground up engagement effort with community to design, build and operate new infrastructure that challenges the traditional paradigm around justice and incarceration. HR&A developed a concept plan for a pilot campus in Long Beach that builds on DJDS’s argument: that community-based solutions including mental health, substance abuse treatment, jail diversion, and quality design can disrupt the revolving door for justice-involved individuals.  In 2022, DJDS, JLA, and HR&A released a concept paper, proposing the development of a piece of the FLOW (For the Love of Well-being) Youth Center.

The FLOW Youth Center will be a new prototype for juvenile restorative justice, designed to break the cycle of investing in punishment by reinvesting in spaces and programs focused on care and healing. The Center will proactively address the root causes of youth incarceration and the lack of physical infrastructure and associated programming for holistic health services, education, and employment. Our concept paper describes an innovative and replicable process for radically inclusive, equitable, community-engaged design for restorative justice.

 

HR&A worked with JLA and DJDS to develop a robust engagement strategy and the estimated time and budget to complete the work outlined within the concept plan. With this concept paper as a guide for development, DJDS is currently looking for partners in government and philanthropy to invest in their concept development fund and inspire grass roots efforts to design and build these centers throughout Los Angeles and the country. We look forward to continuing this partnership as DJDS and JusticeLA work with communities to transform the built environment and L.A.’s criminal justice system.

Richmond Business Recovery Action Plan

October 5, 2022 / Comments Off on Richmond Business Recovery Action Plan

There is no comprehensive playbook for how local communities should recover from COVID-19, but it’s critical to balance meeting immediate needs with building a more equitable and resilient economy.

In Richmond, HR&A collaborated with the City and the Economic Development Commission to develop guiding principles for inclusive recovery that set the foundation for a comprehensive Business Recovery Action Plan focused on addressing the short-term needs of small and locally-owned businesses. The team identified recovery needs and available resources and made recommendations such as expanding available grants for small businesses, often owned by people of color and reluctant to take on additional debt in an uncertain economic environment; removing barriers to access and consolidating information about City services, recovery resources, and regulatory approvals; and identifying opportunities to use federal recovery dollars to support workforce recovery and capital improvements.

 

 

 

The plan focused on identifying priority actions that could be meaningfully advanced within a six-month timeframe and that aligned with equitable recovery principles including addressing community needs, building local capacity, and improving equitable access. HR&A has since helped the City to advance several recovery actions including the creation of a new Economic Development Working Group, and to identify longer-term economic development strategies with a focus on building the capacity of the City and local businesses. As we help advance the plan, including forming the initial agenda for the multi-stakeholder economic working group and framing a buy local campaign, we look forward to applying lessons to other communities across California and beyond. The City of Richmond continues to demonstrate its commitment to supporting underserved residents and recently retained HR&A to lead a community-centered engagement process for allocating the City’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars.