Update on Project Activities
This week we pulled our resources together to design the initial survey draft. We also took a drive down to Salinas to meet with other stakeholders including: The Mayor Deputy City Manager CHISPA CEO Building Healthy Communities Director GIS experts They provided unique perspectives/insights to the city of Salinas and further enriched our understanding of the socioeconomic and demographic paradigm in the city. With the input we have received so far, we are confident in moving forward with the second version of the survey and the database platform; they gave us a better idea of what to include and how to incorporate it. We are also excited to receive more data from the GIS department showcasing ownership of homes, bedrooms and sizes of houses, which he said he could provide. This information coupled with the data that we collect will provided for an in depth multilayered GIS enabled database that will be critical in the analysis leading to grant applications. We will also be visiting Prof. Carol this coming weekend to further discuss the history of Salinas and continue to stay on the same page through every step of the project’s progression. What We Learned and Observed Today (February 10) we visited the Alisal and city council house to speak with the Mayor of Salinas, Building Healthy Communities, CHISPA housing management, and a GIS data collection expert. Our meeting with the mayor was an overall enjoyable and enriching day trip. Mayor Joe Gunter was lively and candid, clearly bewilderment on and proud to have been elected mayor of the city in November 2012. Given that Salinas is mostly composed of Hispanic residents, the mayor conveyed that he understood the implications of being a white male representative over his jurisdiction. Mayor Gunter cited low voter turnout as the reason behind his seat. With Mayor Gunter and the assistant city manager, we learned more about the hierarchy of city council (the mayor acts like a chairman over the city, while the city manager acts as the CEO) and we learned about the bi-monthly public city council meetings where residents voice their opinions and concerns, and how crucial yet restrictive an agenda is in terms of facilitating the city council meetings that leaves predetermined, strict time slots for each topic. Our meeting the GIS expert instilled confidence in our current trajectories and gave us more data options to work with. We noticed that the Building Healthy Communities representative was reluctant and almost skeptical of our positions there, as outsider Stanford students attempting to make change in a city that wasn't ours. However, she was open to helping us develop a survey that would be simple, useful, and non-abrasive. We originally planned on presenting our survey through Google Forms, with the assumption that most people have access to have smartphones. Though the Building Healthy Communities representative confirmed that most do have access, she illuminated that they may have limited data coverage- an additional cost we did not anticipate. With this information, we collaboratively decided that a print-out version of the survey would be most effective. Finally, we took a tour of the Alisal. We saw major overcrowding-- small houses directly behind small houses right next to small houses, all occupying one block without rest. Front lawns were cluttered in some spaces, and in others front lawns were kept meticulously neat. Sometimes, we would see small trailer park patches on the periphery of house clutters, adding to the crowd. There were playgrounds interspersed for children, and we passed a couple of small parks. Those small lots were, for the most part, the only green places the residents could enjoy. From our tour, we learned that we may need to have a more specific metric for exterior evidence of housing conditions. In mentally “rating” each home, as residents would have to for the survey, it was apparent that the lines between good, fair, poor, and substandard can be very ambiguous. The people we met with also helped us brainstorm that cars, parking spots, and converted garages are strong indicators of overcrowding- a variable we weren’t sure how to quanitify. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward From our meetings with CHISPA and Building Healthy Communities, we realized that resident input is important for our project to be valuable in the long term for the city. They discussed a previous program by the Visiting Nurses Home Association to collect health data from the residents that required six months of public discussion, but in the end, it was incredibly successful because it was community-led and community-based. Especially in our current political climate, in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, many residents may be suspicious of people walking around their neighborhood and conducting a survey. We need to ensure that we have community buy-in for us to be able to accurately gauge the housing conditions of the Alisal. Our next steps are editing our survey to take into the input we got today (including more measures of overcrowding for example) and building a training module for the residents. We will also be sending our survey to Building Healthy Communities and CHISPA to get feedback from them on what we can improve and discussing what features should be in our training module. The GIS team will additionally send us demographic data about the city that they already have so we can figure out what has been recorded previously and does not need to be in our survey. Our next steps include finalizing our survey and drafting a training module that includes how to respond to passerby that may question the purpose of our survey. It is very helpful that we now have a wealth of more contacts to receive advice from; this project is truly becoming a community initiative. Update on project activities:
This Friday, we drove to Salinas and met with Jonathan and Lisa from the City of Salinas at their office. After Jonathan gave us an introduction to layout of the city, we went to the Housing Development Consulting Corporation of Monterey County. The President and CEO Starla Warren took us through the metrics of blight and substandard housing and gave us a structural/site conditions survey form that can guide our own survey methodology. From there, we took a driving tour with Fred, from the housing authority, taking us to a site tour of some demolished and rehabilitated housing units. We were lucky enough to be able to enter a unit that was still under rehabilitation. Lisa then joined us with Joel, the Housing Division Supervisor from the City department, an Alisal native whose home we drove past. He gave us an extensive tour of neighborhoods within the ANSRA. After our tour, we debriefed with Lisa about the project description and final deliverables, ensuring we are all on the same page. What we observed and learned: On this tour of the Alisal, we encountered a wide range of housing: homeless encampments, trailer parks, pre-manufactured homes, manufactured trailers, multifamily dwellings, single-family dwellings. While driving through, we realized that there was a lack of parking space for the quantity of vehicles visible in the streets, indicating overcrowding was occurring in these neighborhoods. This was also obvious in the tight-knit spacing within the trailer parks. Housing could vary drastically from street to street, ranging from solar-paneled homes with large lawns to cramped duplexes with no front lawn. The public housing projects by both the housing authorities and the non-profits were scattered throughout the city, further highlighting the lack of space to build continuous housing. We noticed that the majority of the housing was underneath 3 stories. Most were only one story because of restrictive zoning laws, contributing to the ever-increasing demand for housing. In fact, almost no new private housing development has occurred in the last 10 years – only 34 units and all were at market prices. In the last 3 years, housing prices have increased 20% as there is no rent control. It is important to note that the city and housing authorities did not appear to work in tandem on the projects, which we would not have noticed had we not gotten the perspective on both sides in the field. We then realized the survey inventory our project team will create can help the city identify areas of public housing in need of rehabilitation that would qualify them to receive the HUD Choice Implementation Grant. Critical Analysis and Moving Forward: Our next focus is converting the structural/sites conditions survey form into a simplified, user-friendly housing inventory survey for the City to distribute to its community volunteer force. In our survey, we need to take into account the differences in housing types and congestion. We also acknowledge that not all evaluations can be made from solely an external viewpoint. For example, Joel pointed out that pre-manufactured homes have a characteristic of unsteady flooring, though they appear sound from the outside. We next want to connect with code enforcement to identify more inconspicuous factors like overcrowding. We are arranging a phone meeting with both the Building Healthy Communities Office and the Salinas GIS experts to ensure that the survey methodology is viable for the community and potentially add to their pre-existing database. We will also have to form a training module as our survey may not be as easy to understand as expected. We are satisfied with where our project is headed and feel that we have clarified a lot of ambiguities and expectations for the continuation of our project. As a side note, we are grateful for the great friendships that we formed today over guac at Mama Lupitas. Update on Project Activities
By meeting city planners from the city of Salinas and engaging in a detailed intro of the task at hand, our team has taken a confident first step towards constructing a housing inventory methodology for the re-vibrancy of the Alisal neighborhood in Salinas. We now understand with more specificity the composition of the Alisal, both internally in terms of the socioeconomic, spacial, environmental, and developmental status of regions in the neighborhood and externally in comparison to the other neighborhoods in Salinas. We discussed the tools we will use (GIS, HUDD) and the various approaches to a walk audit we can take. We solidified the following action steps: 1) Fully complete all readings, both on Piazza and what was sent to us by planner Jonathan Moore on various walk-audit methodologies and previous housing analysis in Salina. 2) Visit the Housing Authority development arm in Salinas next week. Using whatever time permits, we will meet other relevant organizations/departments and we will explore key areas of the Alisal. Getting a feel for the city and discussing those feelings will be important for both group dynamic and personal reflection. 2) Discuss and finalize overarching goals of developing a walk-audit methodology for the Alisal. The real enthusiasm and passion of the planners for The Vibrancy plan was certainly contagious. Through observation of the current housing structures and understanding their implications, we hope to help build a better standard for recognizing human dignity. What We Observed and Learned Our community partners, Jonathan, Lisa, and Carol, brought to life the importance of tackling issues of inequality in Alisal- issues we had only just read about before speaking to them. The huge discrepancy in wealth and services between Alisal and the rest of Salinas is very deep-rooted and institutionalized- as Lisa articulated, “It did not happen on accident”, which largely explains why it is such a complex problem to fix. The idea of “fixing” a problem is an interesting concept to explore because we are not going to go into Alisal and conjure up a plan to upheave poverty. We need to understand the marginalization in order to understand how to change policy and we need to engage residents in order to follow through with what they believe should happen in their neighborhood. Jonathan provided us with data illustrating how Flint took inventory on 2013 Housing and 2013 Commercial Property Conditions, using rankings such as, “good”, “fair”, “poor”, “structurally deficient”, “multi-family residential”, “commercial”, and “institutional.” We are going to use this scheme as a basis for our housing inventory of Alisal. Lisa emphasized that the “Alisal Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy Area 2015” is an important document to become familiar with, especially before spending time in the field. As we closed up our class session with discussion of future dates to meet, we also learned the logistic difficulty of managing so many different schedules. We need to remain flexible, open-minded, and empathetic, centered on the focus of supporting our community partners as a cohesive team force. This unity is extremely attainable; everyone shared their passion in engaging with a community outside of our respective bubbles and working to combat institutionalized inequality. Though there will be difficulties, a positive and energetic mindset will optimize everyone’s experience. Critical Analysis/ Moving Forward Tying our project to the class discussions and reading, our community partners have informed us of the ways in which the Alisal neighborhood of Salinas has been neglected and currently struggles in markers of social equity, sustainability, and economic vitality. Alisal is one of the poorest areas of Salinas as a product of historic and systemic segregation; this level of inequity has led to poor housing conditions the city is trying to tackle right now. Not only is the housing old and now low-quality, the unaffordable prices have forced overcrowding as residents’ only means of affording it. Alisal is also inadequately sustained, “almost a food desert” according to Lisa. Moving forward we want to not only further understand the situation from the Housing Authority and partners trying to alleviate the situation, but also from the residents who are bearing the brunt of the housing conditions themselves. It will be crucial for us to take their perspective especially when developing the housing inventory methodology. We have to anticipate the many barriers that may impede civilian participation in this survey method. Some barriers could include: language (97% of residents in Alisal are Hispanic/Latinx), access to the survey (paper printed vs. technology assisted), physical transportation (do they have the means/access to move about areas of the community?). We’re looking forward to visiting Salinas next week and learning more about how we can help the city develop this housing survey in the most effective ways. |
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