Happy Holidays from Policy in Motion!

~ Wishing you a joyous holiday season 
with peace & cheer in the New Year ~

 

It's been a busy year at Policy in Motion! One of the many things to be grateful for this year is the launch of Our Community CarShare in Sacramento! Comstock Magazine recently highlighted one of our fantastic residents, Susan Brown, from Edgewater senior apartments who has helped make the program a success - it’s been a pleasure getting to know the residents and rewarding to see that the electric cars are making a difference in their lives! 

“Susan Brown, 66, lives on about $1,000 a month at the Sacramento Housing Authority’s Edge Water complex across the street from the county jail on I Street. For six months Brown didn’t have a car and relied on a bus that transported residents to Walmart once a month for her groceries.

She felt stuck. She gained weight eating junk food from the corner market and says she became depressed. “These are huge issues that unless you’ve been through it, it’s so hard to grasp the importance of helping seniors to have their freedom, because we’re forgotten,” Brown says.

That all changed for Brown earlier this year when, with the help of a $1.3 million grant from CARB. Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District launched an electric vehicle car-sharing pilot program at her housing complex. She was one of the first to sign up for Our Community CarShare Sacramento, which provides residents of three Sacramento housing projects with free access to eight electric Kia Souls. Six vehicles are stationed at public housing complexes (Mutual Housing at Lemon Hill, Alder Grove Housing Complex, and Edge Water Housing Complex), and two vehicles are available to registered users at the Sacramento Valley Station. It’s this program that Electrify America intends to expand upon.

Regaining her mobility through the car-share program has been life-changing, says Brown, who is an ambassador for the program and regularly drives other senior citizens on their errands.

“I know how trapped we are without [access to transportation],” she says. “I don’t know whose idea it was to start this here, but God bless them.”

New sites will soon be added, says AQMD Division Manager Tim Taylor. In another expansion of transit services aimed at the underserved is a car-hailing service that would distribute cards, essentially vouchers, to low-income communities with credit for Lyft or Uber rideshare services. “What we’re talking about doing hasn’t been done,” Taylor says.”

The full Comstock Magazine article can be read here. Check out other recent updates from the Policy in Motion Blog below:  

• Sacramento Launches Electric Vehicle CarShare Program in Three Affordable Housing Communities
• Governor Signs Plan to Spend $1.5B in Cap-and-Trade Dollars