The Internation District Housing Alliance has been granted one of the EPA’s CARE grants for $297,000 to help clean up the neighborhood. The grants, started in 2005, are meant to help empower communities with environmental justice concerns [EPA].

The IDHA (man, this is a lot of acronyms…) plans to use this funding as phase two of their outreach program. The first section involved a lot of neighborhood education, a remarkable undertaking in a neighborhood with around 40 different ethic groups and a whole mess of different languages.

The IDHA projects will include:
Vehicle Anti-Idling - commercial truck drivers will be encouraged to turn off their engines to reduce the amount of particulate pollution in the business district;
reducing waste generation and increase recycling in the community;
improving air quality by planting additional trees and greenery along a main street;
continuing existing efforts to implement an emissions reduction campaign; and
continuing to work with partners to educate and create sustainable designs that promote better transportation options and greener space.

The IDHA has been around for about 30 years, providing everything from low-income housing to tutoring to the Asian and Pacific Islander communities and the International District population at large. (Can we still call it the International District, or is it being rebranded again [P-I]?)