(The Center Square) – California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a new round of $789 million in investment from the state’s cap-and-trade revenue towards building 2,483 price-controlled homes and some transportation infrastructure as a means of climate change mitigation.
This is the eighth round of funding for California’s Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program, which uses Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund revenue from the state’s cap-and-trade program that requires greenhouse gas emitters to purchase emissions credits. With this new round, total AHSC spending comes out to $3.8 billion.
“Today, we’re reinvesting more than three-quarters of a billion dollars generated through cap-and-trade funding to build thriving and affordable communities for California families,” said Newsom in a statement. “By creating livable communities with sustainable transportation options, we can meet both our state’s climate targets and our goal of providing affordable housing for every Californian.”
In addition to “affordable” housing with price controls, the new funding round also funds 52 “zero-emission transit vehicles,” “100 new bus shelters, construction of approximately 60 miles of bikeways, as well as repair and construction of more than 60 miles of sidewalks.”
Notably, California’s 2020 wildfires, which experts attribute to poor forest management practices such as lack of timber harvesting, forest thinning or controlled burns, released twice as much as California’s total emissions reductions from 2003 to 2019.
