East Palo Alto received $20M for affordable housing, now what?

Four months ago, I went public with my letter to Mark Zuckerberg (http://writetoliveblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/an-open-letter-to-mark-zuckerberg.html).  Since that time, I am excited to say that Facebook, in the way of a community benefits agreement has donated $20 million dollars to East Palo Alto (EPA) to build an affordable housing apartment complex. The corporation’s goal was to offset its adverse impacts on the local housing market, given its plans for a second-leg of expansion into Menlo Park.  While this story has received much media coverage, I am not as excited to highlight a few points which the media has overlooked:    

1. Facebook is often described as the initiator of the $20 million deal and not the responder to the EPA community’s collective pressure 

For example, TechCrunch headlines: Facebook (emphasis mine) invests $20M to catalyze affordable housing development in Menlo Park.  And USA Today headlines: Facebook to invest $20M in local housing as Silicon Valley faces crisis.  My point here is that in much of the media's coverage of this narrative, Facebook is portrayed as the dynamic protagonist while EPA community members are portrayed as static supporting characters at best, OR are barely mentioned, at worst.  

And it’s not only media outlets which place Facebook at the center of the EPA community’s narrative, representatives of Facebook are doing the same.  And this presents a cause for concern.  At an “Investment Without Displacement” workshop (www.urbandisplacement.org/IWD2017) in January 2017, put on by UC Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project, panelist and employee of Facebook Lewis Knight, was asked, “How did Facebook decide (emphasis mine) to act”?  To which he replied, “We [Facebook] did the math. We had EPA sitting [at] our front door.”  But there was no mention of a pending lawsuit with EPA as the plaintiff and Facebook as the defendant.  This is the context which forced Facebook to act.  Later in the conversation, Knight conveys the corporation had “the ability to be the convener of partnerships” to make such a ground-breaking affiliation (between community and corporation) possible.  But Facebook did not convene.  EPA community members did the convening and applied pressure by organizing town hall meetings, coming up with a collective list of demands, attending city council meetings in EPA and Menlo Park and seeking legal counsel in order to get the corporation to act justly, given the far-reaching (intended and unintended) social and environmental impacts of Facebook’s proposed campus expansion.

Panelists went so far as to state this $20 million deal as “Facebook's model of community partnerships.”  But the model did not originate with Facebook. Yet, I have attended meetings where representatives of Facebook say they want to enter into a “sincere partnership” with the community of EPA.  But there is just one problem:  in a relationship where one party holds majority power over the narrative (whether in print or on panel), therein lies a one-sided partnership. Which is not a partnership, at all.  I have yet to read media coverage of this story where the community's self-advocacy takes center stage.  But perhaps telling this tale with an embedded Savior complex makes for a sexier story.  And who doesn’t want to be sexy? 

2.  Menlo Park’s City Council has been relatively silent on the housing issue yet they are lauded as partners in this deal 

The last time the city of Menlo Park built an affordable housing complex was nearly 50 years ago.  In fact, in an October 2016 Almanac there was an article entitled, Renters' displacement not city's top priority (www.almanacnews.com/news/2016/10/26/menlo-park-renters-displacement-not-citys-top-priority). What a headline!  Given that the Menlo Park City Council unanimously voted to approve Facebook’s expansion into their city, I had hoped that they would bear the brunt of the burden of this decision by withholding development projects until there is a jobs-housing balance OR prioritizing the building of affordable housing to offset the costs new Facebook employees might incur to the city’s economy by relocating en masse to Menlo Park in order to be closer to work.  But my hopes were too high. Unfortunately, the burden was left to the neighboring primarily low-income city of East Palo Alto (EPA) to absorb the housing deficit and deal with skyrocketing rents, as a result.   

Photo: I spoke before Menlo Park City Council regarding the negative impacts Facebook's expansion and the rising cost of housing has on low-income families (July 2016)

The media places Facebook at the center of this story.  Facebook as a corporation does the same.  And further still, Menlo Park is being celebrated as a partner in this $20 million deal as if they have been at the table implementing solutions to the housing crisis the entire time, when printed publications indicate otherwise.  And yet, the community of EPA is subtly being left out of the story.  I am seeing some privilege at play here, and I am calling it out.

In a December 2016 Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg writes, "For all the opportunity and jobs the technology industry has created, it has also made the Bay Area a less affordable place to live.  We recognize our growth contributes to these challenges, and we're committed to helping solve them” [.] I want to publicly thank Mr. Zuckerberg for reading my open letter AND acknowledging that the tech sector has indeed exacerbated the Bay Area’s housing crisis.  However, on the one hand he is acknowledging his role in the problem, but on the other hand, his employees are patting themselves on the back after being forced via community pressure to take tangible steps to alleviate such problem.  And this brings me to my final point:

3. In much of the media coverage, the EPA community is the missing link and it is time for our community to place ourselves at the center of our own narrative 

It seems that by waiting on media outlets or Facebook to include the community in the story, we may be waiting a very long time.  Ava DuVernay, writer and director of 13th,  a documentary on mass incarceration and the systemic connections between race, class, policing, and prison sentences writes, "I'm interested in having people of color at the center of their own lives.  We don't need to be saved by anyone.  We do not need to have anyone sweeping in on a white horse or someone saving the day or assisting us in our own narrative."  

It is in this same spirit which DuVernay describes, that I would like to introduce EPA artist JT Faraji, who I believe embodies the reason I am writing this piece AND what I would like to see happen when it comes to these kinds of deals at present and in the future.  We are not the first community to be gentrified or viewed as a prime location for development by a large corporation.  And I am sure we will not be the last.  

Photo: JT Faraji

This digital art piece, which Faraji created in June 2016, is called “The Gentrification of East Palo Alto and the Oath of Sekhmet.”  Firstly, in this work he emphasizes the impact the technology industry, (namely, Facebook) has (i.e. power, wealth and influence) on local politics.   Secondly, he underscores the connection between the gentrification of low-income communities and more intense neighborhood policing.  And thirdly, he uplifts the role of women in the community of East Palo Alto, having historically been advocates for and protectors of the city.  In my view, where some might see a modern-day turf war between community and corporation, I see a historically disenfranchised city determined to forge a space in which it’s very livelihood does not cease to exist. I see a city that is more than a piece of land.  I see a city which has been a safe haven for refugees of racism and for immigrants looking to create better lives for themselves and their families.   For some, EPA represents identity, family, community, history, culture and most of all, in a society which is quick to write oppressed people out of it’s memory – place.

To that end, I appreciate that the central figures in this piece of art are women who not only represent community (they are standing together) and cultural identity (clothed in traditional African attire), but they are playing an active and not passive role in this story.  Unlike the media’s coverage of EPA’s narrative, these women are not in the background or absent altogether – they are at the forefront of the story itself!    

 Here is an excerpt from Faraji’s website which describes his composition:

“In the image background on the right side our battle begins with an Oath. This composition is symbolic, it's referencing Jacques-Louis David's painting in 1784, "The Oath of the Horatii"-- in which three brothers pledge an oath to their father to defend Rome against neighboring city Alba Longa.  In the same way, through the policy and policing, neighboring cities of Menlo Park and Palo Alto seem to have taken an oath aimed at the destruction of the community in East Palo Alto since well before the inception of the city.  Big tech corporations, have offered their employees incentives to move into communities where the digital divide is greatest and property value is lowest. Developers see the market as a growing market and buy up land and homes.  They then raise the rents so high, a large part of the city is forced out.  Once this gentrification takes hold, the new renters and home owners control the vote, new city council members are elected and the city is lost.  The warrior goddess in the foreground on the left fights in Zulu warrior attire, symbolizing the epic resistance this city has put forth reminiscent of the Zulu tribe’s epic fight over British colonialism.” 

Source: (www.justice4tyranny.com/Ondisplay/i-32kgZMm/A) – Please click link to read artist’s full synopsis 

After I have said all of this, one might delineate that reporters for national newspapers are unaware of local politics and should therefore be forgiven for any oversight in covering this story.  My response is this – even if that is the case, the media itself is a powerful tool capable of exhibiting bias.  And it has already done so by focusing largely on the corporation’s actions in this story, with very little detail given to the community’s role in being the catalyst for such actions.  The media is a critical player here, whose influence cannot be overlooked.  Both the media and Facebook’s coverage of this story is proof that the EPA community must author its own narrative, by placing itself at the center -- and not wait for someone else to do it.  Therein lies the power. 

Photo: Local high school students lead an anti-gentrification/affordable housing march in East Palo Alto (October 2015)

What are some solutions to this kind of problem? It is imperative that the media talk to the community, and not follow suit of corporations who undeservedly paint themselves as the heroine in the narrative.  The impact when community voices are left out of the story, is that their voice (and their very existence) has the potential to be muted and/or deleted from history.  The saying goes, "If we do not know our history, we are doomed to repeat it."  But it is also true that if we do not know our history, we are doomed to be written out of it, entirely.  I urge Facebook and the media to find themselves on the right side of history.  And even moreso, I urge the people of the EPA community to find ourselves in the thick of the fight, collectively taking political action,  calling out oppression in all of its forms, daily embracing culture and identity, preserving yet creating history, and continuing the legacy of defending the city.  We must invest in telling the true histories -- the un-sanitized stories of our communities.  We need no one's permission to do so. 

What can you do, you ask? You who are brave enough, can put this version of history in your newsfeeds and share it!

#HousingCrisis #SiliconValley #EastPaloAlto #Gentrification #TechTakeover