MATSUI, LA FAMILIA COUNSELING CENTER, ANNOUNCE OVER $17.8 MILLION IN FEDERAL FUNDING FOR CLIMATE RESILIENCE AND POLLUTION REDUCTION EFFORTS
SACRAMENTO, CA – Today, Congresswoman Doris Matsui (CA-07) and La Familia Counseling Center announced $17,842,452 in federal funding for La Familia’s Greening North Franklin Project, an initiative to reduce pollution and build climate resilience in South Sacramento.
“La Familia is a community pillar – providing comprehensive services from mental health resources to job training and youth programs for over 40 years. Our Sacramento community relies on La Familia’s transformative work,” said Congresswoman Matsui. “Climate change continues to be the defining fight of our lives, but air pollution and extreme heat are not experienced in the same way across Sacramento’s communities. This infusion of federal dollars will allow La Familia to once again use their innovative ideas and knowledge of the community to develop a community resilience hub, assist their neighbors with energy efficient upgrades, and create new, much needed green space. I’m proud to be a strong advocate for La Familia and their forward-thinking approach to bring resources, training, and sustainable programming where it is needed most.”
“La Familia is very excited and grateful for this grant that will provide the opportunity to lay the foundation for resilience and adaptation to climate change in the Sacramento North Franklin area,” said Rachel Rios, Executive Director, La Familia Counseling Center. “This grant represents the importance of the partnership that currently exists between federal, state and local agencies and our North Franklin collaborative to implement economic and environmental strategies to improve neighborhood conditions. Our “Greening North Franklin” project brings together multiple partners to provide this community with the environmental investments to improve health outcomes for many children, families, and businesses, such as through a new Resilience Hub Opportunity Center, planting new green spaces, and creating a green jobs workforce, to name a few. We are grateful to the EPA and to Congresswoman Matsui for her support to do this vital work to transform disadvantaged communities.”
La Familia Counseling Center will implement several projects—identified through comprehensive neighborhood assessments and planning—to reduce pollution and build climate resilience in South Sacramento. They will develop a community resilience hub to serve as a cooling center during extreme heat events and provide services to meet community needs in an emergency. To reduce energy costs and pollution, the project will provide energy efficiency upgrades, install solar on qualifying homes, and provide workforce training in electrification, housing retrofits, and solar installation. The project also will create a public park in a neighborhood without current green space.
The funding comes from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grant Program. The program, created with $2 billion in Inflation Reduction Act funding, is focused on environmental and climate justice activities to benefit disadvantaged communities through projects that reduce pollution, increase community climate resilience, and build community capacity to address environmental and climate justice challenges.
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