Meeting_Body
EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
MAY 19, 2022
Subject
SUBJECT: 2022 EQUITY FOCUS COMMUNITIES UPDATE
Action
ACTION: RECEIVE AND FILE
Heading
RECOMMENDATION
Title
RECEIVE AND FILE status report on 2022 Equity Focus Communities Update.
Issue
ISSUE
In the July 2021 Executive Committee Meeting, Chair Hilda L. Solis requested that Metro revisit the agency's Equity Focus Communities (EFC) definition and map to consider redlining and impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the EFC criteria.
Background
BACKGROUND
In February 2018, the Metro Board adopted the Equity Platform, a policy framework for addressing disparities in access to opportunity resulting from historical disinvestment in low-income communities and communities of color. The Equity Platform includes four key pillars to guide the agency's work. The first of these pillars, Define & Measure, is foundational for all equity work at Metro and led to the development of the EFC definition and map used to identify communities most in need of improved access to opportunity from a mobility standpoint.
Before the Office of Equity and Race (OER) was formed, Metro Long Range Planning (LRP) staff worked with the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE, now the USC Equity Research Institute), Cambridge Systematics, and the Metro Policy Advisory Council (PAC) to develop the EFC definition. A working definition was presented to the Metro Board as part of the 2020 Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) development in June 2019. This definition identified two demographic factors that have historically been determinants of disinvestment and disenfranchisement: household income and race/ethnicity. A third factor, households with low vehicle ownership, presented an opportunity to target new mobility investments in neighborhoods with a higher propensity to take full advantage of them.
In June 2019 the Metro Board approved Motion 18.1 adopting the EFCs, which included Directive ...
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