Rural Community Development Corporation of California

Supporting Disadvantaged Rural Communities

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Services

 

The goal of the following services is to provide rural California communities with the needed resource and tools to address the server gap in capacity that hampers rural community’s ability to become livable, resilience communities. The goal is to develop local capacity so they become less dependent on outside entities and to have the skill and resources to do the work themselves. The list is not presently complete but simply a starting point.

    • Resilience Planning. The core of this agency will be planning, resilience and community development. A road map get us to where we want to be. But a planning process that succeeds is a planning process that stays off the shelf and is implemented.
    • Opportunity Zone(OZ)/Opportunity Fund(OF). OZ are a new community development program established by Congress in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 to encourage long-term investments in low-income urban and rural communities nationwide. The OZ program provides a tax incentive for investors to re-invest their unrealized capital gains into Opportunity Funds that are dedicated to investing into OZ designated (all California zones have been designated) by the governors. While the OF final rules have not been release yet, communities, especially rural communities need to consider a number of actions they could take to be prepared. RCDCC would be available to support and train communities that have been designation OZ and review potential eligible projects. We are working on all more detail on this web page so stay tuned.
    • Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). As of January 2017 all California jurisdiction were required to adjust their local codes to comply with the State’s new approach to ADUs. RCDCC believes this is an opportunity for local communities to consider ADUs has another housing affordability option. RCDCC will be adding additional information, tools and program designs in the coming months. RCDCC will also provider advice and assistance to local communities in develop a local program that meets their unique housing needs.
    • Subrecipient for Community Develop Projects. RCDCC believes its role is limited to assisting local communities develop their own capacity to complete projects, where that is not possible, or is not fully developed, RCDCC will operate as a Subrecipient for the community.
    • Resource Support. What resource, other than funding, that maybe available to rural communities will be listed and maintained on the agency’s website. This will include news articles, website, journal and book reviews.
    • Citizen Planning. One of the key ways to address rural community capacity issues is to get the residents, citizen involved. To do that, local community members need some basic understanding of local government and how the planning process works.
    • Bi-Annual Rural Community Development Conference. While this will be not take place immediately, them development has begun. The conference held around the state in rural areas, will bring service providers, funders and experts to allow for information sharing and networking opportunities.
    • Board Training on Community Development/Resilience Planning. Weather City Council or County Supervisor, new or old hack, RCDCC will develop training materials on resilience planning process and the value of community development.
    • Online Clearinghouse for Funding Sources. RCDCC will maintain a section of it website dedicated to rural funding source, federal, state and private.
    • Resource Tools. For example, the rural resilience process along with all the tools will be on line for communities to complete their own process, with or without RCDCC assist.
    • Web Administrator. Many small rural cities, even some counties, have little time to develop or maintain their website, leaving the impression they are uninterested in being transparent, that nothing is being done. The capacity of stale is missing but with multiple communities sign up, RCDCC will act as the web administrator. This can also include Facebook and Tweeter.
    • App Administrator. Unlike above, rural communities are unlikely to use smartphone app to help support their governance. The 311 app, for example is used in many urban communities to help residence communicate issues directly through the smartphone app. The capacity to develop and use such a tool would have significant benefits to community officials and would also give the impression that the local government is concern with their issues/concerns.
    • Community Development NGO Mentor Program. This will include all documents needed for a local community to incorporate into a nonprofit community development agency to support the local government’s implementation of the goals and objective, for example, from a complete resilience plan. RCDCC will continue to provide support and mentoring of these nonprofits for if they are needed.
    • Rural Test Project Development. For rural projects to be feasible, from practically, scalable and financially viewpoint, communities must think in terms of multi-use projects. In addition, project will look to sustainability and LEAD for key development goals. RCDCC will develop projects in disadvantaged rural communities to show how multi-use projects can be do and develop tools and resources to help other communities replicate.

Rural Community Development

Community Development   is a process whereby diverse and representative groups of community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions (plans) for common problems; building livable, sustainable communities in the process.

Rural Community Development   is the above, with an understanding that many rural communities lack the resources and capacity to manage this process without assistance, training, resources, and technical assistance.

Why
Aside from the most important reason (it’s needed), if not for our rural communities who would manage our forests? Who would protect our waterways? Who would put the food on our plates? Who would provide those services travelers expect as they drive the many freeways?

California’s rural communities have, as we all know, very limited resources. The more donations we receive the less community funding we will need. Thank you.

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