Update on Project Activities:
What We Observed and Learned / Critical Analysis: In the last two weeks, we completed 4 interviews; in total, we completed 5 interviews to integrate into our analysis. Looking at all the interviews together, we had a few key takeaways. Our first major takeaway was that although the 2008 recession had hit these businesses hard, it had merely signified a drop in business compared to normal business. On the other hand, COVID had necessitated closures and strict safety standards that forced businesses to adapt in new and often costly ways. Furthermore, many businesses had to entirely change their mode of service delivery (for example, by selling online instead of in person), and businesses relying on in-person services suffered far more than businesses that could shift online. Our second major takeaway was that the many crises of 2020 often compounded each other. One business owner reported that their business had been negatively impacted not just by COVID but also by the California wildfires, which only compounded their financial struggles. Our third major takeaway is that while the business owners unanimously expressed gratitude for the microenterprise grants, the money was not nearly enough to cover their needs in the long run. In listening to our interviewees sharing their experiences, we made sure to exercise the traits that we spoke about in our oral history lecture: empathy, patience, and listening. We made sure to send thank-you notes that also expressed appreciation for their sharing some difficult experiences with us. Alex Andrade suggested in our thank-you notes that we refer the interviewees to the Milpitas City Council’s public forums, where they could express their difficulties directly to the Council. So we referred our interviewees there as a next step, to keep them from feeling like we left them hanging after the evaluation. On Monday, November 9, we presented our preliminary survey and interview findings to the Economic Development and Trade Commission of Milpitas. We found the opportunity illuminating in terms of helping us learn how local government functions and what sorts of norms are in place for public participation and transparency. The meeting was open to the public by invitation, private citizens were given three minutes to orally state a comment, and one citizen even took the chance to make a suggestion about bringing the newly approved wealth tax in San Francisco over to Milpitas. Although by appearances opportunities for citizen contributions were low on Arnstein’s ladder of political participation, since there was no decision making taking place, it would seem that actually, the EDTC did a commendable job in ensuring public transparency over Commission meetings. Moving Forward: Our next steps are to draft our report, edit our slides for the class presentation, and distribute the report to members of the Milpitas community. Alex Andrade mentioned the following recipients: the Milpitas Office of Economic Development, members of the Economic Development and Trade Commission, and members of the City Council. While we edit our presentation, we will ask each team member to provide thoughts and ideas to include in our presentation. This will help us with our reflection. As we draft the report, we will look to continue our close collaboration with our community partner so that we can ensure that our final deliverable meets all of the goals of our project. Two important elements that Alex requested in the final report were our honest assessment of the program’s success and our recommendations for future actions. As we write these portions of the report, it is important that we look back on our relationship with our community partner. It is perhaps even more important that we represent the voices of the microenterprise community that we have had the privilege of hearing as a result of our surveys and interviews. As we draft our report, we will look to Arnstein (1969) as we try to incorporate the citizens into the planning process as much as possible and in a way that grants them genuine power over the future of their community. We will also look to Mirabal (2009) as we try to preserve and share the voices of the grant recipients in our report. Once we complete the first draft of our report, we will send it to Alex Andrade so that he can verify that all the requested information is contained within and provide feedback as necessary. Update on Project Activities:
As of last Friday:
What We Observed and Learned / Critical Analysis: We had initially planned to share our complete survey results with Alex today, but because we have not gained any more survey responses since sending the survey to the initial 25 and we have not sent the survey to the remaining 13 recipients yet, we will postpone that to our next meeting. The experience of surveying all of these individuals has once again underscored the value of patience, especially when it comes to financial matters that require considerable discretion and compliance with legal regulations. We were excited to finally schedule the interviews and learn firsthand how grant recipients have spent their grants and endured the COVID pandemic. In scheduling the interviews, we had to be flexible in terms of both timing (our interviewees so far both requested early morning interviews) as well as format. One potential interviewee requested that video not be recorded, even though we had specified that we would not be releasing recordings to the public — a reminder to us that respecting interviewees’ privacy and preferences are of the utmost importance. Since many of our hoped-for interviewees did not respond to our request for an interview, we will tailor our list of interviewees accordingly. Fortunately, we had prepared for this scenario in selecting our initial list, lining up a series of backup interviewees in every category of business. Our first interview today went smoothly. We made sure to apply the oral history guidelines suggested by Baylor University’s “Introduction to Oral History”, and we gained a number of valuable insights that will guide our analysis moving forward. First, the business owners emphasized the inherent pride that came from owning their own business and being a part of the local community — elements that are hard to quantify and not always fronted in discussions of economic vitality, but that have wide-ranging ramifications for political and psychological well-being. Second, the business owners described the dilemma of reopening and potentially gaining more customers, and remaining closed to protect their own health. We are sure that they are not alone, especially since microenterprises require significant hands-on contributions from the business owners, and expect to see many other of our interviewees express a similar sentiment. Finally, echoing the complaints of many business owners around the U.S., our interviewees expressed frustration both with the lack of clarity around reopening and masking policies and the fact that the responsibility of enforcing COVID guidelines had fallen to them. Their insight reminds us that fully addressing economic vitality goes much further than financial assistance and extends to high-level public health decision making. Much as efforts to rectify racial and socioeconomic inequities ripple into environmental sustainability (as we saw in Oakland’s ECAP plan), sound public health policy has positive externalities that ripple into business vitality especially during COVID. Moving forward into our upcoming interviews, we expect many businesses to respond with similar sentiments about their pride in being a small business owner, the reopening dilemma, and the frustration around public health guidelines. Nevertheless, we know different business owners may have different opinions about some of these, so we will remember to keep an open mind as we complete the interviews. Moving Forward: As we are reaching the final weeks of this project we will start to pivot into more analytical work and work on the final deliverables. As the remaining 13 businesses have been contacted by the fiscal agent, Enterprise Foundation, and have set up times to pick up the remaining checks by early next week we are planning on sending out the survey a day or two after they receive their checks. This slight delay in the delivery of the survey is to allow the businesses to have a couple of days to utilize or plan to utilize the funds before they answer survey questions related to how they are allocating the funds. We will continue to develop the geospatial analysis and analyze additional facets that have changed from 2008 to 2020. Additionally, we are planning on conducting the remaining interviews as soon as possible so we can transcribe them and incorporate these businesses’ narratives into our presentation to both the Milpitas Economic Development and Trade Commission as well as the class. Update on Project Activities:
Last Tuesday, we administered the survey to the first 25 respondents; we followed up with these initial 25 respondents on Friday. As of Monday, October 19, we have received 18 responses (72% response rate). This past Wednesday, we selected 6 interview subjects, as well as backup interview subjects, and will reach out to them Friday afternoon/evening. For the geospatial analysis, Gabi advised us to use StoryMaps, a GIS feature. We are looking into the possibility of incorporating these into our analysis. We have also made some progress towards producing a map to analyze the areas around the microenterprises that are receiving grants. Alex asked for a comparison between 2008 and 2020 demographics within a half-mile buffer around each of the businesses. So far, we have been able to link census data from the 2008-2012 ACS 5-year estimates and from the 2014-2018 ACS 5-year estimates (which is the most recent census data available) to shapefiles for the census tracts that make up the City of Milpitas. We have focused on demographics related to race, income, employment, poverty status, and country of origin, which is the best proxy for immigrantion data. We have also imported coordinate-locations as point features for each of the first 25 businesses that were approved to receive their checks. What We Observed and Learned / Critical Analysis: The first several weeks of our project were at a standstill due to delays in dispersing grant checks, but when checks were made available to grantees this week, a vast majority were picked up within days. Given this rapid turnaround, we have quickly learned about the significant, continued need for financial assistance ever since applications were sent in. At the same time, 72% of businesses filled out survey responses within days of our e-mail, so we are also rapidly learning more about the demographics and priorities of Milpitas businesses who applied for assistance. Regarding how quickly checks were picked up, one business returned Alex’s email saying that this assistance had come at the “perfect time,” when “outstanding vendor bills, rent and insurance [were] all coming due.” This positive reception was definitely a source of reassurance and helped to further ground the purpose and intention behind this project. As our project picked up pace, we also began to discover more complexities in the process of selecting interviewees, creating interview questions, and intentionally establishing a comfortable space for businesses to share their personal experiences. We recognize that in order to analyze a diversity of perspectives in our report, we need to sample businesses from a range of sectors and demographics. The difficulty in constructing meaningful and adaptable interview protocols harkens back to our understanding of Baylor University’s “Intro to Oral History,” which encourages open-ended questions, the use of silence, and genuine focus on the storytelling of our narrators, local Milpitas businesses. Regarding our survey design and responses, we quickly realized how important it would be to make every relevant field a required response, since we can never assume that someone will provide us pertinent information unless it is required. From here, we quickly made adjustments to our survey so that we could monitor business responses on the backend without prompting business owners to name themselves. As survey responses trickle in, we are also gradually growing our understanding of current business needs in Milpitas and garnering important answers to some of the inquiries that Alex and Nicole voiced. For instance, every single business who answered that their business owner would be retiring in the next 5-10 years also answered that they do not know who will take over the business. Out of the businesses who chose to answer our question on technical assistance, every one of them answered that they were either unaware of technical assistance being available to them or were aware and chose not to utilize the resource. Out of the 18 businesses who responded, ⅓ were immigrant-owned businesses and ½ were minority-owned. Furthermore, most of the people who said that the grant funds would be going towards rent/mortgage costs also indicated that 80-100% of the funds would be used for this purpose. These answers provide us key insights into who’s behind these businesses, the future of Milpitas’ economic landscape, and which parts of the grant program are not as well utilized. These survey responses also provide us an opportunity to discuss subjects we might want to explore within interviews. In the “Racial Equity Impact Assessment & Implementation Guide,” we repeatedly saw mention of rising real estate costs due to growing gentrification in the Bay Area, and given that many respondents will be using grant funds to front real estate costs, this issue will be of central concern as we move through our interviewing process. Moving Forward: Our next steps are to send the survey to the remaining 13 recipients who have not taken it yet and analyze the further responses. Unfortunately, Alex said those remaining 13 recipients will not receive their checks until at least next week, but we may send the survey prior to their collecting the check since we can still collect some information about their experience with COVID and how their needs have changed. Additionally, we will begin scheduling and conducting interviews over the next two weeks. We plan to have two group members in each interview, where one conducts the interview and the other takes notes with their camera off and steps in if the interviewer has technical difficulties. Additionally, we have created a list of questions to ask the interviewer. Finally, we will continue the geospatial analysis, incorporating insights from the interviews if need be. Update on Project Activities:
Over the past two weeks our group has been working on:
What We Observed and Learned / Critical Analysis: As mentioned last week, there have been significant delays in distributing the survey. While the City of Milpitas and the Office of Economic Development are facilitating this grant, they have employed an independent financial agent, Enterprise Foundation to unbiasedly administer the checks. With these multiple parties involved, we have been able to witness first-hand the complexities of communication and coordination across multiple government and non-government organizations. We realize that this may cause extra stress for the business owners and therefore we have adapted our survey to be more sensitive to this issue. Now having distributed these surveys, we are very excited to gain insight into the extent this grant will help these small businesses. When reviewing initial documentation that these businesses sent in to the city, many noted that they were looking for grants that exceeded $50,000. Our survey addresses this critical issue. After discussing the Chinatown Shop Talk and hearing from Mei Lum in class, we realized some of the pertinent issues brought up there coincided with other comments we have heard regarding the City of Milpitas. Specifically, the point was brought up that sales tax wants to be maximized and large businesses (e.g. Apple Stores) drive this revenue. While this obviously could promote economic vitality in the city as a whole, there are larger concerns for smaller businesses, which we are surveying. The pandemic affects these small businesses to a greater extent — if some go out of business, they could provide opportunity for gentrification to take place. In Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and The Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District, Nancy Raquel Mirabal touches on this issue. She says, “In addition to the commonly accepted notion that spaces are defined and driven by capital and economics, these oral histories illustrated how those same spaces are also racialized, gendered, and rendered heteronormative.” While economics on the surface dictate the market of a city, culture and history plays a great role as well, especially for small business owners like the grantee recipients in Milpitas. In our interviews, we hope to gain a better understanding of how small business owners in Milpitas view the risk of gentrification along with the impact COVID has had on their businesses. Moving Forward: Looking forward, we are excited to collaborate with Gabi to form interview questions for a select number of survey respondents (5-6), which we will start doing this Friday. Over the next week as we begin receiving survey responses back, we will create our interview outline. This will enable us to quickly turn around and reach out to the 5-6 survey respondents to not only schedule a time to talk but also interview them in the following week. The survey responses will guide some of our questions as we will be able to gain knowledge on the hardest parts of navigating the pandemic and how Milpitas is — or could have — best serviced their constituents. We also have connected with David Medeiros from the Stanford Geospatial Center to set up a meeting time to discuss the necessary datasets that we will need to use for spatial analysis of grant applicants. As of now, we have identified (with Alex) that we will need datasets centered around sales tax revenue per capita, community spending capabilities, and retail leakage. The spatial analysis will be done through ArcGIS, which will then be visualized and presented through ArcGIS StoryMaps for clarity. Update on Project Activities:
Over the past week we have been working on the following:
We have also been adjusting to a delay in our timeline. Only 25 businesses out of 38 microenterprises selected to receive funds are fully approved (a process which involves the businesses submitting documents and the financial partner verifying eligibility). Originally, Alex had intended for the money to be distributed before we began our study so that we could use surveys and interviews to assess the success of the program. What We Observed and Learned/ Critical Analysis: As we navigated major changes throughout these first weeks, we found that communication is crucial. Our timeline was delayed but we are making the best of our extra time to improve our survey. During a discussion with our project team this week, it was apparent that we are outsiders to this community. From this discussion and Sherry Arnstein’s “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” we realized we must establish credibility and trust before going further. Alex will introduce the study and our group to these businesses. This introduction will make members of the community feel comfortable with their participation. We also analyzed the questions from the perspective of the business owners and edited questions that were too personal or too difficult to answer considering the varied circumstances of the survey respondents. The section in “Introduction to Oral History” titled “Composing Questions” helped us understand the ethical and emotional implications of our questions. We will also use documents such as the Milpitas Economic Development Strategy, to strengthen our community understanding. Additionally, while we hope that the Milpitas microenterprise community will participate in this study, we understand that it is not a priority for them. Therefore, it is our responsibility to make the survey clear and accessible so that it is not another burden. We also talked briefly about language diversity. Though we discovered that many members of our team are fluent or proficient in another language, we cannot cover the full range of languages spoken by microenterprise owners in Milpitas. Principles of participatory or community planning, lead us to recognize the value of a broad variety of knowledge obtained from all stakeholders. Ideally, we would find additional partners in the community that could assist us in interviewing and surveying groups we might miss. In the context of this project, we must acknowledge where our own capabilities fall short and focus on including as many viewpoints as possible. This is especially important as we begin to prepare for interviews and draft our questions. Moving Forward: Our work here has only just begun. While we have been able to develop an initial draft of the survey, we now know that there are certain ethical details and questions of participation that we did not fully consider. Consequently, this coming week we will edit our survey to make its purpose clearer, make it more accessible, and make it more inclusive. We will ensure that the language we use is inviting and encouraging so that the businesses feel supported rather than interrogated. We hope that by the following week we will be able to distribute our survey to the 38 businesses selected to receive the grant. Once the survey has been sent out and our initial contact with the grantees has been established, we are looking to build a base of trust with these enterprises so that we can conduct more productive interviews in the near future. Above all, we hope that these microenterprises have the financial, technical, and personal support they need to overcome these tough times. |
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