Dear Atlas users,

The Bay Area has long been entangled in a housing crisis — and all signs point to it continuing to worsen. Our latest analysis and feature story illustrate how rising housing costs and uneven wage growth are straining household budgets and jeopardizing the region’s diversity, growth, and prosperity. With a renewed push to tackle the region's housing crisis underway, data on how it is affecting residents is a key ingredient in securing the policies needed to stabilize families and keep them in their homes. Here are more housing-related updates from the Atlas:

Bay Area Residents Grapple with an Ongoing Housing Crisis and Rising Housing Costs

In the third analysis in our four-part series on the region’s recovery, we examine how Covid-19 has impacted housing affordability. The most current data shows that neighborhoods across the entire nine-county region have become less affordable for renters and homebuyers alike since the pandemic began. An estimated 89,000 Bay Area households were behind on rent at the end of February, with residents of color bearing an outsized share of this regional rent debt. Renters have also accrued significant amounts of “shadow debt” because they’ve been forced to borrow money from people or lending institutions to cover their unpaid rent. Explore the Bay Area Recovery Tracker to delve deeper into the data and our insights.

In Focus: Rent Burden in the Bay Area

At the beginning of the pandemic, Joseph Alvarez moved to an apartment complex in Petaluma with his wife and children. It was the closest and most affordable option near his job in San Rafael. When their lease was up for renewal, the family was hit with a rent increase. Now, Joseph worries that they’ll be priced out of the area if this trend continues because his income is not increasing at the same rate. He is among 24 percent of the renters in Petaluma who are severely rent burdened, those who spend 50 percent or more of their monthly income on rent. In the nine-county region, nearly half (47 percent) of renters are rent burdened, which means that 30 percent of their income goes toward paying rent. Learn more about Joseph’s story — and find data on eliminating rent burden for your community.

Photo: Felix Uribe

Atlas in the News

Over the past month, our data and insights have been featured in several local outlets. Here’s a brief roundup: the San Francisco Chronicle's Soleil Ho included data from our homeownership indicator in an op-ed about the fight over tenant protections in the Bay Area. Mercury News also cited Atlas data on homeownership rates in a piece about the growing gap between Black and white homeownership across the region. The Bay Area News’ Kiley Russell covered our report on the economic challenges still facing the region’s communities of color and low-income communities. For more Atlas-related media coverage, explore our news archive.

Thank you,

Bay Area Equity Atlas team

Dear Bay Area Equity Atlas Users:

January 11, 2021

Dear Bay Area Equity Atlas Users:

Happy New Year from the Bay Area Equity Atlas team! This has been a year of tremendous economic and social turmoil for our region and the nation. The Covid-19 pandemic and the outcry against police brutality and systemic racism following the murder of George Floyd pushed structural racism to the forefront of public consciousness and elevated equity in local policy debates. Throughout 2020, we worked to equip advocates and the public with relevant, deeply disaggregated local data to inform policy and systems changes to advance racial equity.

Covid-19 Dashboard, Frontline Workers Analysis Reveal Pandemic’s Impact on Communities of Color

To track the community-level impact of the pandemic, we launched a daily-updated dashboard in December that provides ZIP code-level data on total Covid cases from the four Bay Area counties that publish such detailed geographic data. The dashboard reveals how neighborhoods with large Latinx and Black populations have been hardest hit and can be used to inform targeted relief and recovery strategies. We also analyzed the Bay Area’s 1.1 million-strong essential workforce and found that Black, Filipinx, women of color, and immigrant workers are disproportionately represented in essential industries and vulnerable to economic and health risks.

 

Partnering with Bay Area Organizers to Assess Eviction Risk, Support Tenant Protections

We produced county-level fact sheets estimating the number of renter households at risk of eviction in the midst of the current economic crisis. Our Contra Costa county factsheet, produced in July in partnership with the Raise the Roof Coalition, found that nearly 22,000 households were at risk of eviction, and helped to secure an extension of the county’s eviction moratorium from July to September. We produced similar resources for San Mateo and Sonoma counties in partnership with the People’s Alliance of San Mateo County and the North Bay Organizing Project, we as well as for the state of California (with the Housing Now! coalition). Find them here.

Tracking Racial Equity in Political Representation, Police Use of Force, and Income

In February, we analyzed the latest data on the race and gender of top local elected officials and found that while the region is making progress on political representation, people of color — especially the Latinx and Asian or Pacific Islander communities — remain underrepresented in elected office. We also reviewed the use of force indicator in the Atlas and found that Black residents are disproportionately the victims of police violence. Of the nearly 200 incidents in 2016 and 2017, one-fifth involved Black people even though they make up just 6 percent of the region’s population. We also analyzed the typical income classifications used to inform housing policy (e.g. 50 and 80 percent of Area Median Income) and found that nearly half of all residents are considered low income. Black and Latino residents are overrepresented in very-low-income households while White residents are overrepresented among high-income households.

Democratizing Equity Data in the Region

We continued to share the Atlas resource with community leaders across the region, albeit virtually, including presenting our data with the Oakland Department of Violence Prevention and the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative, and hosting community trainings with the All-in Alameda County initiative, Boston Private Bank in San Francisco, and the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits.

Atlas in the News

Our data and reports have been covered by media outlets including the San Francisco Chronicle, SFGate, Mercury News, Palo Alto Online, East Bay Times, Patch, San Francisco Business Times, Tableau, and more.

We have big plans for 2021, including new analyses, tools, and partnerships, so stay tuned. Thank you for your continued interest in our work!

The Bay Area Equity Atlas team

Dear Bay Area Equity Atlas Users:

The results of this year’s elections are largely due to a historic groundswell of activism led by people of color and grassroots community organizations across the country, including the Bay Area. As the movement for racial equity continues to build momentum, the Atlas team is proud to partner with local leaders at the forefront of policy change. Our research this month highlights the urgent need to center low-income communities and people of color in both the ongoing Covid-19 recovery and in the long-term vision for a just and fair society. Here are some updates:

Atlas Dashboard Reveals Majority Black and Latinx Neighborhoods Hardest Hit by Covid-19

To track the community-level impact of the pandemic, the Atlas team launched a new automatically-updated dashboard that provides ZIP code-level data on total Covid cases from the four Bay Area counties that publish such detailed geographic data: Alameda, San Francisco, Santa Clara, and Sonoma. By analyzing Covid cases in each ZIP code in relation to the share of Black and Latinx residents, the dashboard highlights how neighborhoods with large populations of color have been hardest hit: The four ZIP codes with the highest case rates are majority-Latinx or majority-Black. Targeted strategies are needed to improve conditions in these hotspots, including community testing, better enforcement of workplace safety standards, rental supports, and continued eviction protections.

New Report Highlights Strategies for Inclusive Recovery and an Equitable Future of Work

In partnership with Burning Glass Technologies and the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, the National Equity Atlas released, Race and the Work of the Future: Advancing Workforce Equity in the United States, a comprehensive analysis of long-standing racial gaps in labor market outcomes, the economic impacts of Covid-19, and the racial equity implications of automation. We found that White workers are 50 percent more likely than workers of color to hold good jobs, and that eliminating racial inequities in income could boost the US economy by $2.3 trillion a year. We’re currently partnering with Rework the Bay to produce a similar report for the Bay Area, which will be published in spring 2021. Watch our webinar presentation and read the full report.

Eviction Risk Analyses Released for California

The Atlas team has been supporting the Our Homes, Our Health housing justice effort by producing eviction risk fact sheets for local campaigns advocating for strong renter protection and eviction moratorium policies across the country. This month, we published a factsheet for California (with Housing NOW! California), which found that 1.6 million renter households are experiencing rent shortfall and potentially facing eviction. We plan to publish a factsheet for the nine-county Bay Area later this year. Find them here.

Thank you!

The Bay Equity Atlas team

Cross-posted from Think Small Blog and written by May Esperanza Losloso, Senior Organizer, Children’s Defense Fund-Minnesota

From April 11-13, 2018, eight members of the Voices and Choices for Children Steering Committee attended the PolicyLink 2018 Equity Summit in Chicago, IL. The theme of the Summit was “Our Power, Our Future, Our Nation”.

The Equity Summit was an opportunity for members to experience the seven elements of racial equity in action, which we discussed in our first blog post. Although the Equity Summit did not focus specifically on early childhood education, all seven policy components were present throughout the summit. These 7 elements of racially equitable public policy are to:

1.   Prioritize the needs of low-income children, children of color and American Indian children
2.   Ensure services and programs are provided in a holistic and high quality manner
3.   Address the full needs of a family
4.   Invest in families and communities over time
5.   Allow for flexibility, portability
6.   Build on family and community assets
7.   Hold cultural relevance and specificity as central to how services are provided

Read the full blog post>>>

Today, racial inequities are once again at the center of the national political conversation — along with bold, visionary proposals for policies to resolve them. Grassroots responses to police violence have given rise to a movement of leaders, coalitions, and organizations seeking not only social justice for Black communities, but economic justice as well.

The Movement for Black Lives, a collective of 50 organizations around the country, is creating a common vision and agenda for Black communities. Last August, the group released a nine-point economic policy platform that calls for progressive restructuring of the tax code to ensure an equitable and sustainable redistribution of wealth, federal and state job programs targeting the most economically marginalized Black people, protection for workers’ rights to organize, tax incentives for cooperative economy networks, and more (read the full platform here). By centering economic equity for Black people and creating and amplifying a shared agenda, the Movement for Black Lives hopes to “move towards a world in which the full humanity and dignity of all people is recognized.”

So far, the collective has been most visible in its event-based organizing. For the past two years, Reclaim MLK Day has been connecting the national holiday to the radical actions of contemporary movements. Launched to coincide with Mother’s Day 2017, “Mama’s Bail Out Day” kicked off a summer of bailing out more than 200 incarcerated people as a step toward ending pre-trial incarceration for those who cannot afford bail. On June 19 (Juneteenth), the collective held a day of action in 40 cities to reclaim abandoned buildings, vacant lots, and other local spaces.

America’s Tomorrow spoke with DeAngelo Bester, contributor to the Movement for Black Lives economic justice platform and co-executive director and senior strategist at the Workers Center for Racial Justice, to discuss the platform’s labor organizing recommendations and talk about what it will take to move the agenda’s policy points forward.

Organizing workers outside of traditional employment models is a priority for the Workers Center for Racial Justice. What are some of the strategies Black workers have begun using to organize in response to the growth of the “on demand” economy?

The Workers Center for Racial Justice and some more progressive unions and worker centers have been trying to organize workers in industries where they are either considered contract or temporary workers. The idea is to organize them as we would in a union, and to change the laws and policies in their localities to give them collective bargaining rights. The National Labor Relations Board ruled last year that you can organize temp workers and people working in temp agencies into collective bargaining units.

Short of guaranteeing collective bargaining agreements, we won’t be able to get on-demand workers the same type of rights as far as fair wages. But there have been some victories in Chicago and other places around increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and getting domestic workers paid sick leave and fair scheduling.

With the politics being the way they are in DC, a national right-to-work policy could be coming down at the federal level. The Supreme Court will also probably be ruling in favor of getting rid of public sector unions. Therefore, we are trying to do our work at the local level in terms of making policy changes to ensure worker protections.

In your local level efforts, where have you seen fair development work in action, in the sense of people creating affordable housing, fighting displacement, and creating good jobs in a single effort?

There hasn’t been a ton of what you are calling fair development. When I did housing work a few years ago, getting the right number of affordable housing units included in development projects was a big issue. As far as jobs going to workers from marginalized communities in community benefits agreements or private labor agreements, it has been really hit-or-miss. It hasn’t been what it needs to be to get Black workers real jobs.

In the construction industry, a lot of cities have minority set-asides. The way it usually works is that two rules are in place: employers have to use union labor, and a certain percentage of the jobs are supposed to go to people from local communities. But there are always ways for folks to get around the stipulation to provide jobs. Sometimes developers only have to pay a $25,000 fine, so they might still choose not to hire people from the community. Or they could say that no new jobs are being created. In the construction industry, a lot of contractors have their own staff in place already and so developers say that they didn’t hire any new people because they just used existing employees. In private labor agreements, that’s been a drawback — and there hasn’t been real enforcement. What we [at the Workers Center for Racial Justice] have been trying to do when we work on private agreements is to say that a certain percentage of jobs and hours worked must go to people from the community; that way we can get around the language of “new jobs created.”

The Movement for Black Lives economic justice platform — like the rest of its policy agenda —  has brought together a diverse range of voices and organizations in a bold and ambitious vision for racial economic justice. What has your experience been working with this group?

The process has been great. The executive team did a great job of bringing people together, keeping people engaged, and answering phones and questions. It’s been as good of an experience as I’ve had as far as getting together and meeting with people and continuing to build relationships.

The only drawback or critique that I have is that there hasn’t been a discussion of building the power needed to get some of the platform implemented. With politics being the way they are in DC right now, none of us really have the power to do that right now. We need to have a discussion about what it would take to build that power, and after we have that power, what we would do to get some of these things implemented.

Speaking of the changing political climate, as the current presidential administration has evolved, which of the Movement for Black Lives platform points do you see as having the most promise in getting implemented?

There could be some potential around tax reform. There was language in the platform around tax breaks for marginalized workers, and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. Republicans have been talking about tax reform, too – cutting taxes for the rich. There could be a chance, if we build up enough support, to move some of the tax reform ideas forward. Other than that, the platform’s points around justice reform and police reform – I don’t think we have a real chance of getting that stuff moving with the person we have in the White House and the person we have heading up the Department of Justice. Even the points around housing and environmental justice and land rights are going to be tough in the current political environment. That’s why it is necessary to build enough power to implement the platform.

The inaugural event of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA last year was not your standard ivory-tower affair. “I could have simply invited an economist to come give a lecture, and we’d be done,” said Ananya Roy, the Institute’s founding director. Instead, she invited anti-displacement activists from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Cape Town, South Africa, to talk about race, inequality, and the urban future. “The intellectuals we wanted to learn from were precisely these activists at the front lines of these struggles in cities,’’ she said.

Roy — author, scholar, activist, and a leading voice on urban transformation in the global South — hopes to build the Institute into a platform for an emerging global movement for more equitable cities. She believes displacement is a central issue for that movement because it goes to the heart of so many equity issues, including race, inequality, economic development, and financial security. Roy’s most recent essay is “Divesting from Whiteness: The University in the Age of Trumpism.” She spoke with America’s Tomorrow.

You recently wrote that the widespread use of the term “inequality” bothers you. That’s surprising coming from someone leading a new institute on inequality. What’s your critique?

I’m somewhat cynical about the extent to which inequality is in the headlines. In academic and policy debates there’s a way in which inequality has come to focus on income inequality. That’s partly because economists have led the debates. This has led to a revolution in economic thought, but what remains out of view — and what Black Lives Matter and other movements have brought into view — is that persistent racial inequality cannot be resolved simply as a result of economic restructuring. It cannot be reduced to economic disadvantage. The Institute is explicitly focused on racial inequality as a way of thinking about enduring structures of discrimination and social inequality.

Why is the issue of displacement central to your thinking about inequality?

The question of displacement has become an entry point to think about broader issues. At the Institute, our research has coalesced around three key areas. One is eviction. Second is financialization — financial insecurity and what we call financial disobedience, and the incredible organizing work happening around debt. Third is mass incarceration and decarceration — for example, what housing rights, employment rights, and other rights might look like for returning citizens. A racialized logic runs through all three of these issues.

How does your expertise as a scholar of global poverty globally influence your work on displacement?

My current research has been with the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign. They occupy foreclosed homes and block evictions, but also they’re in the process of creating a community land trust. The campaign was influenced in many ways by the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, one of South Africa’s most important urban social movements. So when we launched the Institute, we focused on activists not only from the United States but also from South Africa. The South African movement really placed us in a global context of displacement and dispossession; it created a different narrative around land but more importantly, I think it made available to activists here a new set of tactics. To see all of this as globally interconnected is very powerful.

How is the Institute addressing displacement challenges in its hometown, Los Angeles?

Eviction is not just a story of landlords evicting tenants who can’t pay their rent. There is a systematic process by which evictions are unfolding and there’s a systematic vulnerability of certain tenants. We don’t have robust databases that tell us the extent of the situation. My colleagues and I are hoping to start with Southern California and build up such a database. We take our cues here from colleagues in Brazil. The top public universities in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have incredible databases that map and record every eviction, every demolition. The availability of this data has been an extraordinary asset for social movements. It has also made possible a set of important policy shifts and debates around evictions and displacement in those cities. I don’t know if we can pull off anything at that scale but it is quite important for us to consider how the lack of data means that we are not having the sort of policy conversations we need to have about evictions.

How did your experiences as a child in India inform your thinking about inequality in cities?

I grew up in Calcutta, India, and moved to Oakland, California, at the age of 18 to go to school. It took me several years to realize, wow, I’m actually an immigrant. In many ways, that move sparked my interest in cities. The inequality that was so evident in Oakland prompted me to make sense of the city I'd grown up in. And to think about the spatial manifestations of inequality. And to think about the sort of change that can be made.

You’ve engaged Los Angeles activists in shaping the scope and priorities of the Institute. Describe that effort.

I wanted to learn from what they were doing, but most importantly, the question I repeatedly posed to them was, in what ways could this Institute be an ally and be of use to them? They had a very specific response: “Do the research; do the theory.” Now, the relationship between powerful universities and social movements can be fraught. We’ve set out an intention to journey with social movements and to journey with particular forms of activism and organizing. This is part of a broader framework for us. The term we’ve been using is decolonizing the university. It’s sort of turning the university inside out — taking ourselves outside of the bubble and thinking about how those whose voices have often been marginalized in the canons of academic knowledge might have a place.

The Institute on Inequality and Democracy has joined with several other departments, centers, and collectives at UCLA to issue a call for educators, students, and researchers across the country to make January 18 (#J18) a day of action against policies of violence, disenfranchisement, segregation, and isolationism. To learn more or commit to organizing an event, visit teachorganizeresist.net.