Amidst rapid gentrification, East Palo Alto locals give back

I’ve worked in the East Palo Alto (EPA) nonprofit community for the last three years.  I’m honored to be among the ranks of people who grew up in this community and have decided to give back to the place we call home.  My family has been in EPA for five generations and my maternal grandparents went to Ravenswood High School.  While I’ve been writing about the (often heated) topic of gentrification for the past three years as well, I want to acknowledge the locals that have chosen to come back and give back to EPA.  Here are six insights that I’d like to share: 

1. Know that gentrification isn’t inevitable – it isn’t a force of nature, but a process brought about by human actions. This helped me not to feel immobilized when navigating how to address the issue, meaning there was still a way to combat gentrification (and subsequent displacement of long-time EPA residents) as a person who grew up in this community.

2. Pick your battles – find the issue you want to invest time solving.  I didn't have a particular issue in mind when I moved back, but it became giving visibility to the Bay Area’s tech inequality with a focus on policy solutions in EPA, and urging tech companies (like Facebook) to be “good neighbors” in EPA and beyond (read my Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg here: https://writetoliveblog.blogspot.com/2016/10/an-open-letter-to-mark-zuckerberg.html). There are many issues to fight for, always meetings going on, and people will likely want you to be a part of it all, but to be effective, you will have to pick a focus area and put your shovel to the ground.

3. Decide your negotiables and non-negotiables – it helps if these are tangible.  Negotiables and non-negotiables vary depending on who you talk to.  For example, a transplant to the city may have a different view than do locals, or younger locals may have differing opinions on what is best for EPA than those who grew up in the community pre-redevelopment era.  There will always be difference of opinion. But figure out what works and doesn't work for you and be clear about that – it will inform how you go about your work.  Let's use the Amazon decision as an example (see Figure 1), since it happened about a year ago (March 2017).

One of my non-negotiables was that my local government not be complicit in perpetuating tech inequality in the Bay Area (by not negotiating jobs in tech for residents).  To my first point, the above chart conveys how human actions can spur gentrification. The Amazon outcome helped me identify my own stance in what I believed to be best for my community. The intent here isn’t to blame EPA city council for the whole sum of the Bay Area’s tech inequality, or debate whether or not this was a “difficult” decision, but point to the tangible factors which influenced our complicity in the current state of affairs.

At the same time, our city council is currently discussing whether or not to put a parcel tax on the November 2018 ballot (https://vimeo.com/278531156).  The proposed parcel tax would tax incoming tech companies and commercial developments (of a certain size), requiring them to pay a per square foot fee for the space that they occupy in EPA.  This would be an annual tax and the accrued funds could go towards creating an actual pipeline to tech jobs for EPA residents and to net new affordable multi-family housing units, for example.  It is a well known fact that the rapid expansion of the tech industry has exacerbated the region’s housing crisis and placed undue burden of solving it on low-income communities like East Palo Alto.  For example, people often flock to rent in cities where the rent is cheaper (typically a low-income community), thus creating a high demand on top of the already limited supply of existing housing. Units are then “sold to the highest bidder” and this process pushes out those residents who don’t have access to the capital in the tech sector.  Not only this, the proposed tax mandates an accountability report every year to see that the program has met its objectives, so that residents don’t remain forever at the margins of the wealth of Silicon Valley.  The council will deliberate on this item on Tuesday, July 31, 2018, at City Hall at 7:30pm. I invite the community to come and participate in this discussion.

While I do not speak for city council members, part of me feels that this current conversation on the possible parcel tax (also referred to as “the Tech tax”) may be an attempt not to repeat the Amazon deal, and to leverage this moment to create tangible and accountable pathways for economic opportunity (especially from the tech companies!) for our community.  While I can’t predict the future, I’m hopeful and I believe that what we decide in this moment is a critical step towards reversing the tech inequality equation.     

4. Define your win – for me, here are some policy pieces that may address the tech inequality equation: (a) update/enforce our First Source Hiring policy, which will provide a steady bank of available/comparable jobs for residents (in and outside of tech), (b) have incoming tech companies create/enforce corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies that create pathways to jobs in tech and hold them accountable to these equity-based programs (while some companies, such as Facebook, have hired community liaisons – and while those are needed, this position isn’t a hardwired CSR policy – this element should fall on an entire department, not one person), and (c) have tech companies and universities contribute significant amounts of housing to the region and simultaneously limit their expansion policies/initiatives, so as to ultimately create a jobs-housing balance. These pieces require humans to enact them, they won’t happen on their own.  I don’t feel we have fully reached these wins, but they are ideas to work towards when people say they “don't know how to address the tech issue.”  Also, as for people who say, “No one is EPA is qualified to work in tech” (which by the way, isn’t true) – I don’t know any tech company that’s strictly run by engineers.  For example, they hire people in departments beyond engineering: human resources, management, marketing, operations, project management, and legal, just to name a few.

Recently, I read about a civil rights attorney, Ari Theresa, who is suing Washington, DC for gentrification (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jennawang/2018/06/28/residents-sue-washington-d-c-over-1-billion-for-racist-gentrification-practices/#6d80cb0c3e8f). What is interesting, is that Anacostia, located in Southeast DC (the lawyer’s neighborhood), bears a striking resemblance to EPA – a once predominantly low-income African-American community.  The suit is based upon “the city’s discriminatory housing and urban-renewal policies that favor white millennial renters [of certain professions] over long-standing black residents,” and residents are asking for answers from their local government officials.  I will certainly keep my eyes on this case!  In addition, it should be stated that fighting for one’s community (specifically, anti-gentrification work) is important, even when people try to minimize its importance.  I’m glad to see that people are giving back to and fighting for their communities, and not just here in EPA.  And while some people will cheer you on in this work, be mindful that as we define our wins, it is not on one, two or even three individual activists to hold the ‘hood together. The work belongs to all of us.  Either we have a collective strategy for maintaining our community or we don’t.  Either way, where we stand on these issues, will come out in the wash.  Our young people are watching us, as they will inherit the problems we address or don’t address.

5. Expect pushback – People will disagree with you about what is best for EPA, this is normal and happens in community work, but keep going.  Pushback may come in the following forms: people discrediting your work as a community organizer as “not a real job,” people calling your allies (on an issue) “anarchists,” people touting that you are simply “anti-development” when you’ve made it clear that development can happen – but not at the cost of displacing long-time residents, it may look like transplant EPA historian-researchers hesitant to meet/speak with you, people calling you “naïve” when you begin to question the status quo, or being excluded from meetings specific to the issue you’re working on for fear that your critical analysis/stance on issues (as a local!) will "jeopardize" an organization’s relationships with incoming entities such as Facebook or Amazon (in other words, corporate interests may take precedence over community interests) – keep going!

6. Realize you’re planting seeds that you may/may not see in your lifetime.  Let the spirit of God and change-makers that came before you (especially those who incorporated the city!) guide you as you agitate/advocate for your community. I’m grateful for long-time EPA locals, who amidst gentrification and ALL of the politics… STILL give back!

PS. If you're reading this post, I hope to see you on July 31st! 😊

#Gentrification #TechTakeover #StopTheTechTakeover #techequity #socialjustice #jobs #affordablehousing #Facebook #Amazon #EastPaloAlto #SiliconValley #WashingtonDC #StoopLaw