San Francisco’s Mission Branch Library is one of several city buildings undergoing renovation to serve as a refuge during extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and power outages.
Over the past year, federal support for stateand locally led hazard mitigation and climate resilience has become unreliable due to the cancellation of FEMA and other federal grant programs and the loss of thousands of federal workers who administered them. Simultaneously, California’s ongoing budget deficit is placing additional pressure on grants and programs that have helped communities prepare for extreme heat, wildfire smoke, flooding, and other climate-related hazards. Despite funding limitations, community organizations and local governments are advancing programs and partnerships to strengthen community preparedness. One promising approach is resilience hubs — community-centered facilities that help neighborhoods prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies while providing valuable services year-round.
A Local Response to Climate-Related Threats
A resilience hub is a trusted community-serving facility — such as a church, community center, or library — that provides resources and services during normal times and functions as a gathering place and support center during and after emergencies. The organizations that collectively provide these services, both daily and in emergencies, are knows as resilience hub networks.
The resilience hub concept has evolved since SPUR published a 2008 report examining the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Community Disaster Response Hubs program proposal. The program was meant to help the city coordinate information sharing and resource distribution after a major earthquake. Worries of climate disasters were only just entering national awareness. In 2008, the United States experienced 10 billion-dollar disasters; in 2025, it recorded 20-plus billion-dollar disasters, including the Los Angeles fires, which, according to Climate Central, cost more than $100 billion.
Today’s resilience hubs address the growing range of climate-related threats facing communities. Communities seek funding to upgrade existing buildings or build new facilities that incorporate features such as solar panels and battery storage systems, allowing hubs to continue operating when the electric grid is down, providing cooling during heat waves, heating during winter storms, and air filtration during wildfire smoke events. Depending on needs and available funding, some hubs incorporate multipurpose spaces that can be converted into overnight shelters, with commercial kitchens, food and supply storage and distribution areas, showers, and a laundry, for residents displaced by disasters.
Beyond their physical infrastructure, resilience hubs serve as trusted communication centers. They can provide emergency information, phone charging stations, internet access, and radio communications when traditional communication systems are disrupted. Ultimately, resilience hubs embody the relationships, partnerships, and networks that make communities stronger before, during, and after disasters.
State Investment in Community Resilience
California’s investment in resilience hubs emerged from the Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) program. Established in 2016, the program invests directly in communities that have been redlined, burdened by pollution, or otherwise disinvested in to support affordable housing, clean transportation, and community-led resilience projects. After hearing from community leaders on funding needs, the state created its first dedicated Community Resilience Centers (CRC) grant program in 2021 (to accompany the TCC program), providing funding for neighborhood-serving facilities that support residents during extreme heat, wildfire smoke, power outages, and other emergencies. In 2024, the CRC program, which is led by the California Strategic Growth Council, provided $98.6 million in funding. The program received 189 applications, with requests totaling more than $700 million. This year, the state’s $10 billion climate bond (voter-approved Proposition 4) is funding the TCC and CRC programs. According to the California State Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review, the CRC program was allocated approximately $55 million in 2026. Questions remain about the future availability of this funding amid California’s ongoing budget constraints. Nevertheless, important planning and implementation work is already underway across the Bay Area.
Three Resilience Hub Efforts in the Bay Area
Oakland: Resilience hubs are part of Oakland’s Equitable Climate Action Plan, adopted in 2020. The City of Oakland has since developed plans for its first municipal resilience hub, a 22,000-square-foot recreation center located at Lincoln Square Park. The existing Lincoln Square Recreation Center was built in the 1970s and has been an important gathering space in Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood. Today, it serves some 1,000 neighbors each day through youth, senior, and family programming, including CalFresh assistance, voter registration, free community college classes, and essential services in multiple languages. The upgraded community center will include solar power with backup energy systems, air filtration, a commercial kitchen, showers, food storage, internet, and flexible gathering spaces for daily programming and emergency response. In partnership with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, the city is preparing to break ground on the renovation project this year.
San José/Santa Clara County: The Santa Clara County Resilience Hub Collaborative — a coalition of public agencies and community organizations, including Greenbelt Alliance, CARAS, Climate Resilient Communities, and Veggielution — is designing resilience hubs and strong partnership and service networks in East San José and Gilroy with funding from the California Strategic Growth Council. The efforts will focus on environmental health, climate literacy, emergency preparedness, immigration services, and other community needs. Greenbelt Alliance is helping facilitate grant applications, develop a strong resilience hub network, and identify potential sites for physical hubs.
San Francisco: San Francisco’s Office of Resilience and Capital Planning, Department of Public Health, and Department of Emergency Management have been working with community organizations and nonprofits to advance emergency preparedness planning for the last 20-plus years. The city’s Heat and Air Quality Resilience Project is one example. It coordinates city partners to help communities prepare for extreme heat and poor air quality events, particularly in disproportionately impacted neighborhoods. At municipal buildings, including the Mission Branch Library and the Chinatown/Him Mark Lai Branch Library, the city is working on resilience-oriented renovation projects. Planned upgrades include all-electric systems, rooftop solar, enhanced HVAC filtration, and expanded community spaces, allowing the buildings to serve as refuges during extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and power outages.
Building Community Resilience One Hub at a Time
SPUR has advanced efforts to make Bay Area housing resilient, sustainable, healthy, and affordable in the face of climate change and earthquakes. But upgrading millions of homes is a long-term effort that will take years — if not decades — to complete, at a high cost to both residents and governments. Resilience hubs can offer an effective way to support residents through this transition by centralizing resources, strengthening social connections, and supporting vulnerable populations before, during, and after disasters. One of the biggest challenges now is securing funding for and developing physical hubs and the hub networks that undertake planning, partnership building, community engagement, and organizational capacity building. Community resilience depends on these networks to provide the distributed services underpinning physical hubs. SPUR’s work at the intersection of sustainability and resilience shows what’s possible and what’s needed: sustained local and state investment in community resilience centers, paired with healthy housing programs, to build a future that works for everyone, regardless of where they live.