Next month, Bay Area regulators will vote on a proposal to phase out appliances that emit toxic nitrogen oxide pollution, setting the stage for a transition away from gas appliances. Will the new standard pose a cost burden to low-income families already struggling to make it in the Bay Area? We looked at the numbers and found that the true net cost of replacing end-of-life gas appliances with energy-efficient electric heat pumps will add up to a cost savings.

The devastating earthquakes that shook Turkey and Syria last Monday have taken the lives of over 23,000 people. Such a staggering death toll is hard to wrap the mind around and may seem like an impossibility here in California. Yet, the reality is that a similar magnitude earthquake near Los Angeles or San Francisco could lead to thousands of residents injured or killed and many more displaced, temporarily or permanently, from their damaged or destroyed homes.

California needs a lot more housing in its temperate cities. Enough to bring down rents, to house the homeless and to accommodate the climate refugees of the future — people who will have been driven from their homes by wildfire, flooding or intolerable heat. This means neighborhoods have to change, too. Not drastically or overnight, but persistently: more duplexes and fourplex intermixed with single-family homes, more apartments in commercial corridors and larger buildings in high-demand locations near transit.

Historical inequities have left many low-income communities of color and other vulnerable populations without access to the resources they need to adapt in the face of a major earthquake in the Bay Area. In addition, many of the region’s vulnerable residents live in high liquefaction zones and aging apartment buildings that do not meet seismic codes. Building retrofits are only part of the solution, as a look at Oakland’s earthquake resilience challenges reveals. If the Bay Area wants to substantially reduce post-earthquake impacts on the region’s most at-risk residents, policy makers must plan for equity-centered mitigation and recovery efforts. SPUR is on the case.