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POLICY ADVOCACY

We ensure that our communities have decision making power in all policy spaces that impact our neighborhood 

LANGUAGE JUSTICE ADVOCACY

EC3 advocates for language access in all City programs and services to ensure East Colfax services are equitable to the immigrant and refugee population of East Colfax.

CITY POLICY

  • The East Area Plan (EAP): In the year we have existed, the EC3 has flipped the power dynamic of community engagement on its head through this model of intentional community driven engagement. Due to EC3’s EAP advocacy, the Community Planning and Development department for the 1st time convened an inter-departmental working group consisting of leaders from NEST, HOST, CPD, City Council, DEDO, and OFE to address EC3 concerns and this resulted in a total of 65 EC3 anti-displacement recommendations being directly incorporated into the Final Draft of the EAP. Significant improvements include the recommendation that Tax Increment Financing (TIF) projects through the Urban Renewal Area (URA) must be vetted with a Community Advisory Committee, the consideration of a “No Net Loss” policy, a recommendation to fund a local ECN legal clinic to help with eviction issues.
  • Housing Access Campaign: The EC3 launched the Housing Access Campaign after meeting with refugee leadership of the EC3 at the onset of COVID and hearing that their number one issue was the need for help accessing TRUA due to the lack of language access. We trained a group of 20 volunteers and raised seed money to employ EC3 leaders and pay for translation. EC3 then recruited ECN Residents who speak French, Swahili, Karen, Amharic, Spanish, and Rohingya to directly assist applications and do interpretation and paired the 20 volunteers with paid interpreters to assist in Oromo, Tigrinya, Dinka, Arabic, Burmese, and other languages. We then used the data we collected and partnered with GES Coalition and Enterprise Community Partners to advocate for improvements with the City and won a specific allocation from the City to fund Community Navigation and a significant re-write of the TRUA application to improve access. This program continues to grow and expand with two FTE’s currently running our Housing Assistance Campaign.