Sustainable Communities Investment Accelerator (SCIA)
The Sustainable Communities Investment Accelerator (SCIA) supports local teams working to advance resilience, energy independence, and equitable investments in their communities. Launched by the Center for Community Investment, SCIA helps teams advance sustainability and overcome systemic barriers to investment while centering community ownership and justice.
Why SCIA?
Across the U.S., communities are making bold efforts to build healthier, greener, and more equitable neighborhoods. Yet, their leaders often face significant challenges such as fragmented funding sources, complex financing structures, and limited institutional support.
SCIA was created to address those challenges by developing and testing strategies for overcoming them and sharing what we learn with the field. Over two years, teams from Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis will receive:
- Grant funding totaling $1.8 million in the first year
- Technical assistance and strategic coaching
- Support building capital stacks and financing structures
- Access to a peer learning cohort to share ideas, lessons, and breakthroughs
- Grounding in CCI’s Capital Absorption Framework, a tested approach to aligning people, policy, and capital for systemic, equitable investment
Meet the SCIA Teams
Urban Oasis Development
Atlanta, GA
In partnership with the Atlanta Land Trust, Grove Park Foundation, Southface Institute, the Reinvestment Fund, and the Mayor’s Office, Urban Oasis Development is bringing together city leaders, community partners, and green building innovators to develop permanently affordable new homes in the Grove Park community.
By incorporating green building practices, energy-efficient systems, and sustainable materials, the project aims to lower utility costs, improve indoor air quality, and model environmental stewardship. Community engagement is central to this work, and the Atlanta team will be implementing workshops and on-site demonstrations along with supporting residents to lead a citywide movement for sustainable development.
Sustento Group (Retrofit LA)
Los Angeles, CA
Sustento Group is leading Retrofit LA, a coalition of community-based organizations and affordable housing providers, including East LA Community Corporation (ELACC), Little Tokyo Service Center, Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, and California Housing Partnership (CHP). Starting with the Vallejo pilot, a “net zero carbon” retrofit of a 100-year-old affordable housing complex in Boyle Heights, the team is developing a new approach for decarbonizing affordable housing.
This project will combine multiple public incentives with construction financing via an innovative revolving credit facility, which will provide a replicable model for decarbonizing Los Angeles’ aging affordable housing stock while preserving affordability and livability.
Cooperative Energy Futures
Minneapolis, MN
Cooperative Energy Futures (CEF) is collaborating with Sabathani Community Center, Unidos MN, and other partners to advance two projects using solar and geothermal energy. The first, Sustainable Homes, is a fully integrated home energy retrofit program for low- and moderate-income families that aims to guarantee lower energy bills while substantially off-setting the costs of energy retrofits.
The second is the development of a neighborhood-wide, cooperatively owned geothermal heating and cooling system, which will eliminate the need for fossil gas in the homes and buildings it serves. Collectively, they will explore and demonstrate community-owned paths to decarbonization.
OUR APPROACH
The Capital Absorption Framework
CCI supports all SCIA teams through the lens of our Capital Absorption Framework (CAF), an equity-centered model that helps communities organize people, policies, and projects to effectively attract and deploy investment. We will be sharing our emerging knowledge about resident engagement and ownership, capital deployment, equity impacts, and effective multisector collaboration with the community development field.
Through SCIA, CCI aims to:
Help teams advance their priorities and pipelines of projects more efficiently and effectively
Integrate tools, strategies, and skills from community development and sustainability to better support communities
Ensure that sustainability projects benefit community residents directly, substantially, and over the long term
Support a deeper field-level understanding of what it takes to create, fund, and build resilience
“We are looking forward to the SCIA program equipping our team with the tools, resources, and expertise needed to scale our impact—helping us integrate sustainability at every income level more effectively in Urban Oasis Development.”
— Joel Dixon and Wole Oyenuga, Co-Principals, Urban Oasis Development
“Through SCIA, our vision is to leverage our collective learnings, expand our project pipeline, and in the process, create a framework that will create a scalable pathway for the renovation and preservation of affordable multifamily housing in Los Angeles and beyond.”
— Dave Hodgins, CEO, Sustento Group
“SCIA can help make our projects into reality by pushing us to think bigger and work in an ecosystem of like-minded community efforts.”
— Timothy DenHerder-Thomas, Co-founder and General Manager, Cooperative Energy Futures
Stay Connected
Contact
Want to learn more about the SCIA program or future opportunities to partner?
Contact: [email protected]
SCIA is made possible with support from Wells Fargo & Company.
