Santa Ana Environmental Justice Innovation Zone
Innovative Housing Opportunities, Inc.
Recipient
Santa Ana, CA
Recipient Location
34th
Senate District
68th
Assembly District
$998,612
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
Innovative Housing Opportunities is working to perform community engagement to solicit input from the community throughout the design process. The project team is hosting a series of events that also includes targeted stakeholders to share updates on the design process and incorporate feedback into the project. In tandem, the project team is working to prepare the building conceptual drawings and design plans for the mixed-use development. The team will prepare all the architectural documents needed to move this project from design to construction.
The Issue
Innovative solutions and approaches are needed in the new construction sector to meet California's ambitious goals for tackling climate change and affordable housing. Specifically, designing zero carbon buildings that can provide affordable housing options is a critical challenge. While the cost for advanced clean energy technology is decreasing, significant cost barriers and knowledge gaps have prevented the widespread adoption of zero-carbon building design strategies and affordable housing developments. Specifically, creating a grid-interactive efficient building is possible, but creating a business case and operational model for providing grid services and tenant services simultaneously cannot be solved by any one team member alone. As we create sustainable solutions, the challenge is also to extend this knowledge to additional team members, primarily minority owned businesses as we create equitable opportunities for all stakeholders in design, construction, and occupancy of buildings.
Project Innovation
The Environmental Justice Innovation Zone project will be the design of a mixed-use development in the Santa Ana, California region. The design phase will utilize cutting-edge technologies, tools, and construction practices that offers affordable housing and zero carbon energy solutions. This will include economic analysis, conceptual drawings, performance modeling, and construction feasibility analysis. The goal of this project is to create decarbonization benefits in disadvantaged communities while providing affordable, reliable energy in a way that benefits both the public and the electricity grid.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
The vision for the Environmental Justice Innovation Zone project is to create decarbonization benefits in disadvantaged communities while providing affordable, reliable energy in a way that benefits both the public and the electricity grid. The project's goal is to demonstrate and quantify the benefits of aggregated assets in a flagship mixed-use multifamily development. This project will lead to a scalable, decarbonization approach to solving environmental justice issues in the design, construction, and occupancy phases. Barriers include offering opportunities and a meaningful experience to black, indigenous, and people of color practitioners in the design phase and the need to continue to address operational obstacles such as limited access to clean energy and inequity surrounding energy resiliency in the multifamily building stock. The proposed project will be designed for disadvantaged low-income communities, referred to as environmental justice communities, so that they can decarbonize without high rental costs and high utility bills, as well as receive tangible benefits of living in the next generation of multi-family affordable housing.

Affordability
Replicable models for planning, constructing and financing zero-carbon mixed use developments will help reduce costs for future developments.

Equity
The project provides all-electric, energy efficient, and grid-reliability innovations to tenants to income-qualified tenants.

Reliability
The project will help increase greater electricity reliability by providing reductions in daily peak demand through on-site renewable energy coupled with energy storage. Additionally, microgrid control technologies will provide power for Tier 1 critical loads during power shutoff events.
Key Project Members

Miguel Garcia
Subrecipients

The Energy Coalition

Community Electricity

ForStrategy Consulting, Inc.

Studio OneEleven

Arup US, Inc.

Winston Engineering

Match Partners

Studio OneEleven
