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2 <br /> <br /> <br />Hard-to-Reach Community Input and Mitigation Actions Ideas <br />for the San Mateo County’s 2021 Multijurisdictional Local Hazard Plan Update <br /> <br />Introduction <br />This report summarizes the input gathered through community engagement with hard-to-reach and <br />socially vulnerable populations throughout San Mateo County for the County of San Mateo’s <br />Multijurisdictional Local Hazard Mitigation Plan Update. <br />The San Mateo County Office of Sustainability (OOS) conducted outreach activities designed to include <br />socially vulnerable groups that are typically under-represented populations in LHMP planning in order to <br />benefit from the experience and expertise of socially vulnerable community members and to support <br />planning staff to incorporate social vulnerability considerations in mitigation actions. <br /> <br />OOS selected eight organizations in a competitive process to support outreach and engagement from <br />March to July 2021. The organizations engaged frontline, traditionally underserved and/or socially <br />vulnerable populations and communities that have not been effectively included in many traditional <br />planning processes in the past. <br />The goal was to better understand what hazards were impacting these communities and how the impact <br />was affected by social vulnerability, and then to gather community mitigation action ideas that would <br />minimize community risk. For a description of the organizations and the communities they serve and an <br />overview of events, see Appendix A. <br /> <br />Populations Reached <br />The community members engaged primarily included low-income communities, people of color <br />including Latinos, African Americans, Pacific Islanders and others, rural and urban communities, <br />monolingual community members, previously redlined communities, undocumented people, people <br />with disabilities and medical needs, older adults, farmworkers and unhoused residents. Additional <br />engagement to these and other hard to reach populations should be conducted in future planning. <br />Several of the events were conducted in Spanish and some of the communications were modified to <br />support access by people with disabilities. <br />Community members were engaged and put at ease because of the leading role of trusted and culturally <br />and linguistically competent community-based organizations and online activities were accessible to <br />transit-dependent urban and rural people. The recommendations made by the communities should be <br />understood in the context of daily experiences of barriers, hardships, and creativity, leadership and <br />resilience to overcome them. More detail about these frequently intersecting and compounding barriers <br />is included in the Social Vulnerability section.