Plan Bay Area

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About the Campaign

Decades of unjust policy choices have systematically excluded low-income communities of color from opportunity by promoting segregation and disinvestment, while creating sprawl, dependance on cars, and highways that pollute the low-income neighborhoods they cut through. A 2008 California state law, Senate Bill 375, aimed to decrease sprawl, driving, and pollution requires regional agencies to coordinate planning decisions that would bring housing, jobs, and transit closer together through a regional plan known as Plan Bay Area. Since 2012, Public Advocates, as part of the 6 Wins for Social Equity Network, has advocated for Plan Bay Area to meet the following goals:

Frequent, reliable, and affordable bus service: We are pushing for a fair share of funding to support bus service through Plan Bay Area to ensure affordable fares, provide free youth bus passes, add new routes, and increase frequency and service hours.
Quality jobs in communities struggling with high unemployment and low wages.
Affordable housing in areas including suburbs and near transit.
Investment without displacement policies, such as rent control and just cause for eviction ordinances.
Healthy and safe communities: Investments must be made in low-income communities so that our neighbors living in more marginalized neighborhoods do not shoulder all of the burdens while more affluent communities continue to receive increasing benefits.
Greater community power for low-income communities of color—Black, Brown, Indigenous, immigrant— in the decision making process.

Equity, Environment, and Jobs Scenario

In 2011, the 6 Wins for Social Equity Network developed a proposal for the Bay Area’s regional agencies to consider as they planned for decades of growth and development affecting the housing and transportation needs of millions of people throughout the region. This proposal, called the Equity, Environment, and Jobs Scenario (EEJ) clearly demonstrated that policy solutions driven by grassroots, community-identified needs are the most beneficial for everyone. After months of organizing by 6 Wins members, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) agreed to study the EEJ, ultimately concluding that the EEJ was not only better for low-income communities of color but was “the environmentally superior alternative” for the region as a whole. While MTC and ABAG ultimately did not adopt the full EEJ scenario, they did pass three important amendments, including:

A comprehensive strategy to develop a regional funding program to increase local transit operations
An inclusive public process to set priorities for $3.1 billion in cap and trade revenue, with an explicit focus on benefits to disadvantaged communities as required by SB 535
Moving the One Bay Area Grant closer to our goals of tying regional funding and grants for transit-oriented development to the adoption of anti-displacement measures and affordable housing production.

Plan Bay Area 2050

In February of 2021, Public Advocates joined with fellow 6 Wins members and the Bay Area Community Land Trust to demand that MTC and ABAG:

Prioritize solutions that immediately stop displacement and prevent homelessness;
Adopt an actionable anti-displacement rubric and timeline for meaningful community engagement;
Support a right to counsel for tenants facing eviction and create a regional rental registry;
Provide direct funding for housing preservation;
Support deeply affordable housing production on public land; and
Create a land bank strategy to acquire or finance the acquisition of sites for permanent supportive housing.