Earlier in the week, Jenn sent us feedback, comments, and critiques on the graphs and charts that we sent to her a couple of weeks ago. This is helpful so we can produce graphs that will best describe the narrative of the current economic condition of Los Altos.
Additionally, this week, each of us had focused on finding several sources that we individually researched for the literary review. Our goal for this was to study similar cities (for example, Menlo Park, Foster City, Los Altos Hills, etc) and analyze their economic development plans, then draw parallels between these communities and Los Altos. Jenn also recommended that we look at Winter Park, Florida because this small town is has a similar feel and culture as Los Altos. Carolyn has visited Winter Park, so she will be doing some research on this sister city to Los Altos. Going into this project, because of the high average income of Los Altos, we had a preconceived notion that the majority of Los Altos city residents were Apple workers or programmers at Google. Though Los Altos does attract many tech workers and business executives, our research has suggested that a high portion of the community is older. We noticed this first hand during our field visits as some residents are in favor of making the city more modern and upscale, while other residents want to maintain the old fashioned feel of the original city. On a broader level, the dichotomy between the community suggests that there may be opportunities to ensure the community culture and city provided services meet the demands and desires of all residents. We have been developing some potential ways to research this further. Meeting with Jenn: Because Jenn was back in town after her vacation, we were able to get together with her to talk about the final steps of putting our project together. Meeting in person again after having worked on some of our own ideas was extremely helpful. She was able to answer specific questions that we had regarding the feedback that we had received on our graphs, as well as make any clarifications on her own comments. One specific question we had for Jenn was on one of her comments on a graph that summarized Los Altos’ average family incomes: while most of the average incomes were six figures, some residents earn significantly less per year. Jenn asked us to omit the $35,000 and below average incomes, because it was under the California average anyways and didn’t add any substantial value to the chart. We argued that this move would contribute to the dehumanization of poorer members of Los Altos. We compromised and chose to omit the <$35,000 incomes from the chart, but decided that it was important to talk about and elaborate on the lower income spectrum of Los Altos in our overall project, providing a textual and research analysis rather than relying on the chart(s). Next week, we plan on reaching out to homeless shelters in surrounding cities such as Menlo Park and Redwood City, where people from Los Altos may seek out support and resources. By speaking with people who work at these homeless shelters, we’ll be able to identify the demographic of Los Altos’ population that often slips through the cracks and whose needs are often overlooked. While the average resident of Los Altos may have a high income and standard of living, there are residents that have been locked into their homes as the residential prices began to rapidly rise. Jenn described this phenomenon as ‘house rich, but money poor.’ This often occurs with older residents that purchased their homes before the community became affluent, and they are depending on little to no earned income to afford the amenities within the community. By helping to gather a better sense of the population in Los Altos that may fall into this category, we can develop ideas to help serve the needs of this demographic. Additionally, she offered to set up meetings between us and city commissioners. Each of the commissions focus on different areas, such as transportation, youth, or human rights; we decided that we will be meeting with the Senior Commissioners, as they represent much of the city’s population. By meeting with them, we hope to be able to gain a better understanding of the needs and interests of the older residents in Los Altos. In order to put together a cohesive and effective report, we need to understand and internalize the story that we want to be telling through this project. At this point, we have a slew of reports, data, graphs, charts, site visits, photographs, and statistics: over the weekend, we will be putting together each of the pieces and see how everything fits in with one another. We think that the meeting with Jenn today gave us a better understanding of the economic condition of the city that we have been noticing in our field visits and data analysis. On the one hand, Los Altos is made up of residents with mansions fit for celebrities like Beyonce to rent for her Super Bowl appearance, on the other hand there are retired residents and families who are struggling to keep up with the increasing affluence of the city. We need to begin describing this narrative through our analysis of our data and personal field experiences. Updates on Project Activities
We have done four surveying outings so far, and have interviewed 24 employees and 3 employers, spread over 10 businesses. In addition, we have contacted the employers for most of the businesses where we were only able to interview employees, and at two additional businesses (Cheesecake Factory and Slider Bar). Our next step is to arrange telephone interviews with the employers we are missing, since that seems to be the most convenient way for them to speak with us. We have been turned down outright by only two businesses. As we’ve conducted surveys, we’ve refined our questions and also incorporated ongoing feedback and requests from Wendy Silvani, our contact at the Palo Alto Transportation Management Association. She has given us much clearer guidelines now about what she wants in our reports, one of which we are to present to the TMA at their March 3rd meeting, and the other of which will be our final deliverable at the end of the quarter. She has also asked us to include questions in our survey about the Residential Preferential Parking permit program, or RPP, which has brought up other issues in that it seems some employees are much more enthusiastic about subsidized parking than subsidized transit. For the Redwood City Project, we have finished a baseline comparison of Palo Alto’s survey and the various Redwood City surveys to see what questions all of them address. The most detailed Redwood City survey, from Commute.org, considers many more variables than any other survey including Palo Alto’s. The next step is to begin visualizing the data from this survey so it can be compared to Palo Alto’s survey. What We Observed and Learned We have already noticed some key themes in our surveys. In general, it is difficult to determine the best level of subsidy is, since the initial costs vary widely from case to case based on what transit agencies different employees take.
It has been challenging to survey employers because the managers/supervisors are rarely in when we visit, and it is very difficult to coordinate return visits when the three of us are available at the same time as the employers. However, we have managed to survey a few. The three employers we surveyed were for Philz Coffee and Aquarius, which are franchises, and Gate Cleaners, a small drycleaner. Philz is not willing to take on any part of the subsidy, and Aquarius would have to talk to its parent company, Landmark Theaters. In our brief conversation with a manager at the Cheesecake Factory, they expressed a similar concern that providing a subsidy was out of their hands. We worry this will be a common issue with chains and franchises. The owner of Gate Cleaners only employs three people and seemed to feel strongly that a parking pass would be of more use to her employees than a subsidized transit pass. We also had one focus group at the Garden Court Hotel. We were not informed of how many employees would be participating, and were expecting 2-4 along with the manager, but when we arrived there were 12 employees and we were told the manager was not in that day. This was an unexpected twist but we did our best to adapt the survey to a much larger group on the fly. It was rocky but we were able to get the information we needed, if not in the most well-facilitated way. Critical Analysis / Moving Forward Here are some questions we have so far:
We will need to do more research on the cases with transfers and multiple transit options, and talk to more employers, especially those that are not franchises. One of our biggest tasks going forward is to begin thinking about marketing. Wendy wants us to present ideas for how to market this program, which will require us to consider a) who we want to market to (i.e. employers, employees, or both), and b) how best to make the program sound attractive to someone who doesn’t already take transit. We also have to keep in mind that our survey has been far from comprehensive and there are likely groups and cases that are underrepresented or unrepresented in our data. For Redwood City’s project, the comparison to Palo Alto’s data may be somewhat hampered by the fact that we do not have access to the original spreadsheet for the Commute.org survey. This means we cannot make any additional cross-tabulations, but can only visualize the data one variable at a time. We can do additional cross-tabulations for one of the less-detailed surveys, but that will be a second priority since the reach of that survey was not as broad, nor did it cover as many questions as the Commute.org survey. Update on Project Activities
Matt and Fidel completed the first round of fieldwork in North Fair Oaks, an unincorporated area in San Mateo County adjacent to Redwood City on Thursday morning. We were able to conduct conversational interviews with six small businesses and gather information about businesses displacement struggles in North Fair Oaks. We also talked to a landlord, which was important for getting another perspective on the issue and understanding the pressure from both sides. Tony just sent us another set of eight surveys that Fidel will digitize on Monday afternoon and upload to our online map soon after. We are meeting with Tony at 9am next Tuesday at Kaffeehaus, prior to which we will send him a first draft of our Literature Review and summary of our experience visiting businesses in North Fair Oaks. What We Observed and Learned Like the B Street Corridor and E 3rd and 4th Avenues of downtown San Mateo, North Fair Oaks is predominantly Hispanic/Latino (>73%) which meant that most small business owners were catered to the Spanish-speaking community. Because this was our first real experience with fieldwork, the first few interactions weren’t quite as rehearsed as we would have liked, but after a few we were able to get the hang of it. As Fidel has spent a good portion of his life in Central America, he was well-suited to conversation with the owners, and a few even opened up and allowed us to record voice memos! We had conversations with the owners of Adrian’s Income Tax, Ana’s Beauty Salon, Tim’s Coin Laundry, Donut Depot, El Jarochito Taquería, and Elsa’s Beauty Salon, all of which provided us with valuable information to input into the online survey. Some of these businesses have served the community for almost 20 years and continue to employ local residents. Nearly all reported rising commercial rent, however not by an amount that wasn’t stipulated in the terms of the lease. The principal issue was loss of local clientele due to rising residential rent. The owner of Elsa’s Beauty noted that many Latino residents of North Fair Oaks and Redwood City were either moving to the East Bay or leaving California entirely. The owner of Adrian’s Income Tax argued that rent is increasing at a higher rate than salaries, which leads to people leaving the area. When people start leaving the community, businesses are affected because they start losing valuable customers. After speaking with Tim, the owner of Coin Laundry and the landlord for the building, we were able to garner a different perspective on increasing rent. He assured us that if small business owners develop a good relationship with their landlord, there is no incentive to turn the space over to different owner. The rents only rise because of business turnover and no one wants to perpetuate that situation, although the increasing rent often gets passed on to the consumer in the form of increasing prices of good and services. He argued that prices will always increase with the increasing CPI and that landlords have to charge a proportionally higher amount to offset the difference. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward Next week we plan to conduct more fieldwork and digitize the data collected in the interviews this week and sent to us by Tony. Our fieldwork this week was very eye-opening. Most of the businesses we interviewed have been in North Fair Oaks for over 15 years and they are all currently suffering a loss of clientele. We are hoping to use the data we gather to really benefit the local community. Next week we hope to better prepare our interview questions since we learned that the more conversational the interviews are the more information we are able to gather. Moreover, we’ll dive more into CartoDB and see how we can use our interactive map to really show the stories of the small businesses. Update on Project Activities
This week we made more headway on our development database, filling in info that we got from the San Francisco Property Information Map on the specific development sites. Now that we have solid, physical details for most of the developments, we are laying the groundwork to create a map. With this map, we hope to show the developments in relation to each other as well as possibilities for various community serving retail within those developments. What We Observed and Learned This week we’ve been more active in collecting literature articles and sources to begin analyzing how other communities around the United States have enacted health retail initiatives and whether or not their successes are appropriate to the Tenderloin area. Hopefully past examples can allow us to build a better plan. One of the literary pieces focused on the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative. It was a statewide program that hoped to bring supermarkets to urban and rural communities that were underserved with respect to food needs. The goals listed for the program align very well with the objectives set out for the Tenderloin project. These goals included reducing diseases related to consumption of unhealthy foods, promoting financial investments in lower-wealth communities, granting even access to healthy foods, and creating local job opportunities. The unique aspect about this program was that it was the United States’ first statewide program which hoped to produce supermarket development. The fact that it was statewide also means that funding for this program was readily available. Therefore, it might be out of scope for the Tenderloin project. However, it’s important to examine how funding (which was mainly from the government and then matching donations from private companies) was used to establish supermarket growth. The grants considered eligible uses as “early costs associated with project feasibility including professional fees, market studies, etc, land assembly and capital for relocation...soft costs..and construction for general conditions”. One example of a successful fresh food market is the Boyer’s family markets. The funds were used to purchase energy-efficient equipment for the markets, support employee training, and improve furniture. Therefore, an important part of this program wasn’t the fact that money was spent to create more stores but support local ones and give access to healthier food options. The corner stores that are existing in the Philadelphia region weren’t originally able to provide fresh product due to limited space and infrastructure. The funds helped over 29 stores expand space and carry fresh produce which might be an interesting goal for the Tenderloin project--targeting local grocery and corner stores. Another source examined the Renaissance Community Co-op. The RCC’s mission statement is to “create a democratically owned and controlled grocery store in Northeast Greensboro that provides all of Greensboro with healthy foods at affordable prices and has a commitment to locally sources foods, community education, and dignified jobs.” The interesting part of this source was that the community members were the one to recognize a problem adn initiate a change. In the summer of 2012, community members and staff from the Fund for Democratic Communities asked for a community-owned grocery store. This group formed into the RCC and began the process such as education themselves about the responsibilities and pathway to creating a grocery store. This is important to examine further because the community now has a cooperative business which is another possible route the Tenderloin area could take instead of having a large supermarket just settle in. This would unite the community and allow for widespread ownership and responsiblity. Critical Analysis / Moving Forward We are excited to make our way back to the Tenderloin next week to delve into a little more on-the-ground field work in the community. We will be figuring out what other information we need about specific new developments in addition to what we have in our information database that we can collect while we are there. Additionally, we’ll stop in to different retail stores in the neighborhood and speak with retailers and residents about ways in which retail is working well in the neighborhood as well as areas they feel could be improved. This week, we focused on one aspect of sustainability as it relates to healthy food access in Bay Area communities. This may seem like a surprising problem in the Bay Area, which is considered one of the wealthiest regions in one of the wealthiest countries in the world— and yet, we continue to face multiple challenges. One in 10 adults in the Bay Area struggle to find three meals a day; more than half of all adults are considered overweight or obese (Healthy Food Within Reach, SPUR, 2015). National Geographic published a story, “The New Face of Hunger” that addresses malnourishment in the United States, citing that one-sixth of Americans do not have enough food to eat. In response, many cities around the United States and in the Bay Area have turned their attention towards providing nutritious and affordable food to all communities through citizen and government-led initiatives. We discussed these pathways in greater detail to understand what they involve, describe how they work, and evaluate their effectiveness and impact on the problem. Our guest speaker this week was Wendy Horton, Executive Director of Collective Roots, a non-profit organization based in East Palo Alto, who gave an informative talk about the organization, their program offerings,, and how Collective Roots is working to tackle these challenges.
|
Archives
November 2020
Categories
All
|