CRLA's Community Equity Initiative (CEI) advances environmental justice in disadvantaged communities by reversing decades of exclusion from public decision-making.
Throughout California hundreds of thousands of people live in Disadvantaged, Unincorporated Communities (DUCs). DUCs range from urban pockets that are excluded from cities to more remote, densely settled rural communities.
Residents in DUCs often live without the most basic features of a safe and healthy environment—potable drinking water, sewer systems, safe housing, public transportation, access to healthy food, sidewalks, streetlights and parks—due to decades of systematic neglect and exclusion from formal decision-making by city, county, and state governments.
CEI is an interdisciplinary effort designed to address and eliminate social, political, and environmental factors that negatively impact DUCs.
Through legal advocacy, policy advocacy, and community education, CEI fights alongside community leaders to:
- advocate for equitable development.
- promote environmental justice.
- guarantee fair representation.
- build leadership capacity within the community.
- engage in public decision-making processes to improve their neighborhoods.
