Update on Project Activities
Last week, Casey attended the healthy corner store coalition meeting at a community center in the Tenderloin (find an elaboration on this visit below). We also received demographic data in the form of surveys and maps from our community partner, which has been helpful in making progress towards our project deliverables. This week in our group members’ meeting, we solidified some of our next steps in working towards these deliverables. In particular, we are focusing on our literature review, database of potential new developments (including specific recommendations for potential retail), surveys of residents/retailers, an assessment of potential Prop J legacy businesses in the area, and creating a list of criteria for determining whether or not a potential commercial retail would fulfill community needs. We are working on adding to our collective annotated bibliography (and literature review), each reading and analyzing one piece a week each week for the rest of the quarter. This also includes looking at pre-existing projects and retail in other communities that may lend inspiration to new community-serving developments in the Tenderloin. In addition, we developed a game plan for what other data we need to collect surrounding the actual retail spaces available (square footage, for example) for new commercial developments and how we will accomplish this by visiting the Tenderloin again and contacting developers moving forward. What We Observed and Learned At the Tenderloin Healthy Corner Store Coalition (TLHCSC) meeting, the Food Justice Leaders and some members of the general public gathered to discuss the HealthyRetailSF program. First, the merits and faults of each of the existing redesigned corner stores were discussed. According to the Food Justice Leaders, all four redesigned corner stores are doing well. The main criticism was that some of the stores don’t have enough produce or enough variety of produce to encourage people to buy it. It also came up that some of the stores don’t have signs indicating the price of items, which is hard when shoppers have limited funds with which to purchase their groceries. Next, the coalition discussed which of five corner stores in the neighborhood should be the next to be redesigned. The factors that were considered in a numerical score were as follows--proximity to other redesigned stores, whether the store sells alcohol and/or tobacco, proximity to supportive housing, store owner presence in the store, and store owner presence at the coalition meetings in 2014 and 2015. At the meeting, the Food Justice Leaders also considered size, products already in stock, cleanliness, organization, friendliness of clerks, and safety on that particular block. No conclusion was reached at this meeting. While nothing discussed at the meeting directly pertained to our project, we got a better idea about what kinds of things the Food Justice Leaders and other meeting attendees considered valuable in a neighborhood corner store. One especially interesting insight we gained was that community members consider variety very important and gave bonus points to stores that carried electronics in addition to grocery items. The information sent over to us by Ryan centers around food retail initiatives in the Tenderloin. During our meeting with community leaders, we sensed the need for certain food retail initiatives but these surveys and case studies help put the situation into perspective and accelerate our process immensely as the surveys would be difficult to carry out by ourselves. The first source deals with surveys given to Tenderloin residents asking them about their habits with regard to buying produce. The pie chart showed that an overwhelming 57 percent of residents buy fruits and vegetables from outside the Tenderloin in areas such as the Heart of the City Farmer’s Market, Chinatown, Safeway, and Foods Co. Only 31% of residents surveyed actually buy such products in the Tenderloin. Similar trends were seen with regards to buying meat/poultry, bread/rice, and dairy. The most interesting trend, however, is that alcohol is the only substance that is consumed locally inside the Tenderloin rather than outside. From an economic standpoint, approximately 80% of Tenderloin residents would buy locally inside the Tenderloin if corner stores actually sold more appropriate groceries rather than alcohol. The survey conducted asking how much residents spent on groceries each month equated to about roughly $200-300 spent per month. If we extrapolate this to all 17,000 households in the Tenderloin (which is poor statistics) then roughly $11 million every year is spent on groceries outside of the Tenderloin. This external spending is being blamed on the poor quality of groceries in the Tenderloin and the expensive costs. The only clear reason for people shopping in the Tenderloin is that its is more convenience especially since going to outside the Tenderloin for shopping requires long walking or a car for transportation. However, surveys of Tenderloin residents with regards to spending habits is simply not enough information for a food retail initiative given the Tenderloins’ diverse and unique community. The largest population of homeless people are housed in this region, with more than a third of residents living with less than $15,000 annual income. Additionally, a third of residents also live with some type of disability, a number which can be expected to increase as residents age. These demographics offer specific challenges to food security in the Tenderloins. Homeless individuals rely on shelters for food, 15 percent of housing units don’t have full kitchen services, and many residents lack proper nutrition education. As a result, implementation of a plan for food security in the Tenderloin will have to include more than just chain grocery stores but also nutrition and food preparation programs specifically targeting single-room-occupancy and public services for food access. Critical Analysis / Moving Forward We are beginning to put together our database of upcoming retail/commercial opportunities using the list of pending mixed-use developments in the Tenderloin provided to us by the TNDC. We plan to contact the developers of the individual projects to see what kind of information they can give us about the spaces. After this effort, we plan to go to the Tenderloin and visit each of the developments individually in order to get a better idea of the spaces and what kind of retail they would be able to accommodate. Another crucial benefit of visiting these pending developments in person is being able to see them in the context of their immediate surroundings and getting an idea of what services are already being offered nearby. More generally, our team met today to nail down our timeline moving forward and to solidify the execution of deliverables. We have chosen the date for our next trip to the Tenderloin, when we will look at pending developments and hopefully survey a number of employees and merchants of existing retail. In terms of our literature review, we plan to each read and analyze a source per week for the next three weeks. Once the review is complete, we will be better equipped to form our criteria of community-serving retail definitions and options. Update on Project Activities
This past week we had the opportunity to travel to Los Altos for a coffee chat with local merchants and landowners, as well as to talk with leaders from the Chamber of Commerce over the phone. At the coffee chat, we were able to learn first-hand the sorts of wants and needs of small business/landowners in Los Altos. We were very happy to add a human experience to our project. An article had ran recently in the Town Crier about efforts on the behalf of our community partner, Jenn, and had briefly mentioned our involvement. A few of the coffee chat attendees had read this, and so welcomed our inclusion in the chat. The chat went well, as we were able to listen in to their discussions, as well as ask a few questions of our own. It was very interesting for us to listen in to their talk of issues; to this point, we had only thought of large-scale demographical issues. To hear them speak of wanting more light poles for public banner space was engaging. It reminded us that although Los Altos might have much higher than average per capita income and home sales prices, it’s residents still had to deal with everyday issues just like anyone else. A few days later, our group got back together for a phone interview wit, two members of the Los Altos Chamber of Commerce. They are familiar with Jenn’s work, and were kind enough to give us some of their time to answer questions. From them, we were able to glean more about what went on in the political/regulatory side of the economy. At the coffee chat, we learned what the merchants and landowners want. In this interview, we were able to learn how their wants were considered and dealt with by Los Altos leadership. One interesting point that we noticed during the phone interview was that there were a few times where they were expressing that they did not have data for a particular statistic but would be interested in knowing more information. For example, we asked if most employees of various businesses within the community took transit to work and where they were commuting from. They were unsure of the answer, but seemed interested in what the actual statistic for this question was. Perhaps our project can provide the answers to some of these questions. What We Observed and Learned One of the biggest things we learned is that there are often two sides to a statistic, decision, or plan. Before we actually visited Los Altos we wondered how we could help a city, that by simply looking at data, seemed to be in a very good economic condition. However, while this data may be for the city overall, it is clear that it is important to look at each part of the town to get a comprehensive view of the needs and areas for improvement. Similarly, while it may seem like a policy or planning decision is beneficial for all stakeholders, we learned that the details of the project or decision should be considered, as many people’s livelihoods are impacted by these decisions. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward On Friday February 5th, Carolyn and Sungmoon will be taking a tour of downtown Los Altos. We experienced Loyola Corners last week, which had a small town, rustic feel, so it will be interesting to compare the downtown to Loyola Corners. We feel that getting a better sense of the culture and atmosphere of the different parts of Los Altos will help us to get a better understanding of the data we are analyzing and how this fits into the narrative that Jenn is hoping we develop through this project. However, one question we are hoping to answer this upcoming week is how these field experiences can work into the final project. For example, the merchants at Loyola Corners were expressing different concerns they had to maintain their customers and businesses. One idea our group had was meeting with these stakeholders and gather information to help Jennifer and Los Altos officials make decisions that have positive impacts on the local business owners. For example, many of the store owners were saying that the current road construction is making it more dangerous for people to access their stores, due to lack of cross-walk and barriers. This could be causing potential customers to choose stores in a different location. We could help deliver this information, so these concerns could be considered in future policies and decisions. Updates on Project Activities
Our milestone these past two week was completing the Scope of Work for our project. We presented to Deland and our fellow students in class on Wednesday, and received feedback on a few things to consider or change (e.g. thinking about commute times and not just distances, since many service workers don’t work a 9-5 schedule). We will also need to think critically about PATMA’s assumptions, specifically, regarding the potential of their proposed subsidy program (i.e the Clipper-card program) to actually help low-income workers. We had our second meeting with Adina Levin (from Friends of Caltrain) on Friday the 29th, and reviewed the Scope of Work with her. With the completion of our Scope of Work, our group agreed upon a timeline for work going forward, and also clarified what questions we will address with our projects. Some of those questions, particularly the ones guiding the Redwood City portion of the project, are likely to be somewhat fluid. They may change as we continue to feel out the needs and desires of our partners, and balance those with our own abilities as well as constraints imposed by variables beyond our control, e.g. willingness of Clipper to provide PATMA with Clipper Cards, or actual interest in such a subsidy from the low-income sector. What We Observed and Learned This week the class learned about different legislations, strategies and bodies to help curb environmental pollution and plan for the future. Plan Bay Area (PBA), a major topic of class lecture and reading, was approved in 2013 by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) to think out and plan the next 27 years of the Bay Area. The plan helps governing bodies to prepare for the region’s future economic and human growth by forecasting future needs and promoting sustainable development plan for the next three decades. We learned that nearly 87% of the $253 billion in anticipated federal, state and local funds will be used to maintain and operate the transportation network already in place. The scope of our project is much smaller compared to the grander plans of PBA. Nonetheless, the California Assembly Bill 32 requires greenhouse gas emissions to reduce to levels of 1990 by 2020. It won’t be a massive change in our way of life that will help Californians meet this goal but rather a thousand little steps — one of which is the very program we are designing with PATMA. Provided our Clipper-card subsidy program comes to fruition, it will be a small but meaningful step to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. For the future, PATMA could even work with the MTC or other governing bodies to promote the TDM project. Critical Analysis / Moving Forward Our next big step is creating and administering the interviews to businesses we select in Downtown Palo Alto. Adina expects employers to be very receptive to our outreach, which is encouraging. She thought there would be no problem getting six or more interviews, which means that hopefully our sample size will be limited not by the willingness of employees and employers to take our survey, but by our own time constraints. As we select businesses to survey, we will need to be very strategic about whom we reach out to. Ideally, we would get a representative sample of industries and company sizes, and employee commute types, which will require a bit of preliminary research and maybe even interviewing. The size of a business may influence how much employers are willing to pay to subsidize transit passes e.g. Clipper Card for their employees (and perhaps also whether or not the employer will get a discount on the passes). Even if it is a flat fee to participate in the program with the TMA, smaller businesses might have less overhead to spare on such a commitment. The influence of type of business is less obvious, but certain industries likely employ a greater percentage of low-income workers (e.g. restaurants with lots of cooks and waitstaff). This could influence the willingness to participate in a transit pass program if the employer feels they would have to provide a greater subsidy on the passes. On the employee side, shift times, commute types, and commute routes will influence how useful a transit pass program would actually be. For example for an employee whose shift requires them to travel at non-peak hours, public transit might take so long it isn’t an attractive option even with a fully-subsidized pass. We’ll need to ask employers about the diversity of shift times and commutes among their employees before we conduct employee surveys. Our plan for creating and conducting surveys is as follows: First, we must contact businesses to set up times to survey the employers. Wendy Silvani connected us with two businesses already, Philz Coffee and the Garden Court Hotel. Sophie is currently scoping out other businesses that might add value to our dataset. While we select and contact those businesses, we are also working on the surveys themselves. We will need two surveys, one for employers and one for employees. The employer survey will ask questions to investigate their perceptions of employee satisfaction as relates to commuting, their interest in a Clipper Card-TMA partnership pilot, and the level of subsidy they might be willing to provide for such a program. We will also ask the employers when the best times to survey employees are, since we do not want to be a nuisance and hinder their work. The employee survey will investigate commute times, types, and distances, interest in a subsidized Clipper Card, and the amount they are willing to pay if the card is not completely covered by their employer and/or PATMA. When we survey, we will go in pairs or as a group of three, and we will try to arrange employee surveys are a variety of shift times to get a representative sample. |
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