Update on Project Activities We met with Tony in San Mateo at Kaffeehaus last Thursday morning to discuss plans for the week. Our partners are currently under a lot of stress trying to decide whether to put rent control and just cause measures on the 2016 ballot, but they were able to get us a shortened survey and previous surveys. Fidel is in the process of translating the existing survey data into English so it can be submitted to the Google Form created by Maddie. We have identified a few more articles for our literature review, including an extensive look into causes of business decline and strategies for revitalization. Unfortunately, we have had some difficulty finding papers that focus on business displacement, despite there being a wealth of reports on housing displacement. However, we plan to continue our efforts this weekend before going into San Mateo next week to begin surveying businesses. What We Observed and Learned Walking through downtown San Mateo really painted a clear picture of the situation. On the one hand, you have the chic western blocks of 3rd and 4th Avenues, housing upscale restaurants and coffee shops like Kaffeehaus, our place of meeting. However, crossing the train tracks to the northeast exposed quite a different side of the city. We saw fast food chains, convenience stores, gas stations, taquerías, and other services clearly catered to a different demographic. Very similar to the small, ethnic businesses along N B St, these sections stand in stark contrast to the rest of downtown which gave off more of a Palo Alto California Ave vibe. Although we didn’t have the time to actually go into any of the businesses on the blocks, it was nonetheless interesting to see the disparity between the two distinct sections of the city. In our meeting with Tony, he was able to describe in further detail what he expected of us as well as prior issues he’s encountered in his work with Urban Habitat. I think we were all particularly surprised when he explained the difficulties of his line of work, including what it’s like to collaborate with other organizations and how often one is unable to proceed with their work until others complete theirs. Beyond inter-organizational struggles, communication between the owners and surveyors is also a prominent issue and has hindered progress in the past. In general, the timescale for which noticeable improvement is made is much longer than we would have hoped, but we figured that was to be expected when dealing with governmental agencies and nonprofit collaboration. Below are some pictures from the B St Corridor between Baldwin and Tilton Ave. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward
The next time we visit San Mateo, we hope to begin field work. This would involve us talking to the individual business owners about their experience with economic pressures from increasing rent and decreasing customer base. Tony has suggested we take an open approach to interviewing, as people tend to talk about what they want to talk about anyway. In looking at the previous surveys, many of the questions that asked for an elaboration on the state of things were left blank or very brief and often did not give us the information we were hoping to get. Consequently, one main focus of our interview and survey will be trying to decipher the business owners’ intentions to figure out why they aren’t saying more. Hopefully we will be able to figure out whether it is due to a lack of time, trust, understanding, or otherwise. Tony has also outlined a few question for us to consider in preparation of our Literature Review. He wants us to look back and identify some of the bigger historical and structural issues that have shaped the current conditions of San Mateo and that will shape the responses of current owners. What explains the present day-to-day happenings but is grounded in the historical and structural context of the area. Tony also understands that there are, unfortunately, insurmountable barriers to small ethnic business displacement, and hopes we can identify a few. Update on Project Activities
We’ve set up a meeting with Tony for next Thursday morning from 9-10 at Kaffeehaus in San Mateo. We hope to have a Project Scope of Work draft by then to ensure that our project is useful to our community partner and to receive specific feedback of ways the community partner can support our project. This weekend we plan to digitize the survey and turn it to a Google form. Next week, we will copy current survey data onto the google form, including translating Spanish surveys into English. We are hoping to go into San Mateo the first week of February to begin surveying small businesses. By that time, we will have a shortened version of the survey that we can use for businesses that refused to do the old survey. Throughout the process, we will also be conducting a literature study to identify other reports that have investigated small business displacement. We would like to find studies that have tracked small business displacement as part of overall gentrification as well as those that have looked into various solutions to prevent small business displacement. What We Observed and Learned Tony emailed us a 2005 case study on Silver Spring, MD titled Minimizing Small Business Displacement in a Revitalization Zone, conducted by the Urban Studies and Planning Program at the University of Maryland. The study identifies the issues facing small business owners brought on by the County’s redevelopment effort. Many were struggling to adjust to the negative externalities of the revitalization effort, such as the disruption caused by construction activity, losing market share to the new businesses, rapidly increasing rent, and insufficient exchange of information both among local businesses and between the businesses and the county government. Many of these issues are extremely pertinent to the situation currently unfolding in the B Street Corridor in downtown San Mateo. But rather than a county-funded revitalization effort like that of Silver Spring, San Mateo’s business displacement is being driven by the Bay Area’s transformation into an affluent region centered around the tech-industry. Many of the small, ethnic businesses in the B Street Corridor will either choose to relocate due to lack of clientele and lower profit margin, or be forced to leave because of failure to adjust to the new market. Nonetheless, the Silver Spring case study asserts that small ethnic businesses provide affordable goods and services unavailable at larger retailers, as well as aspects of diversity and stability to the local economy, proving that loss of these businesses is more than just a sentimental issue. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward The Silver Spring cast study cited poor exchange of information as a critical issue regarding small business displacement. Many owners didn’t take advantage of county assistance programs either because they were unaware or they believed that the programs were inaccessible to them. Others lamented about the excessive paperwork required by the programs, and claimed the process took too long to justify the work needed to see benefits. It is for this reason we are significantly shortening the length of the survey and converting it into an online Google Form. We also plan to meet face to face with owners to reaffirm the survey’s intent in tracking gentrification to minimize the negative impacts these small ethnic businesses are seeing. Update on Project Activities
Our team is having weekly meetings at 10:00am on Fridays, most usually in TDX. In this week’s meeting we got to know each other and worked on the warm-up exercises included in the scope of work packet. We also took a virtual tour of the B Street Corridor using Google Maps street view in order to help familiarize ourselves with the neighborhood before our first visit. We are still waiting on an email response from Mr. Samaro as to when and where we are meeting in the next two weeks. We would like to meet with him (either on campus or at his office) this upcoming week to discuss the specifics of our project involvement and determine how and when we can be most helpful and effective in collecting surveys. We would then like to be able to start collecting survey data on the week of the 25th, requiring us to go into San Mateo and start doing fieldwork. Both Matt and Fidel speak Spanish, which will be particularly helpful for communicating with business owners for whom English is not their preferred language. Matt has a car and has offered to drive us to San Mateo for the fieldwork, but the Caltrain is also an option if we need to split up. Matt also has some experience working with urban planning as an intern for New Urban Communities, a small real estate development firm based in Delray Beach, FL. Madeleine will be primarily responsible for emailing Mr. Samaro, but all group members will be copied on each email. What We Observed and Learned Mr. Samaro introduced the class to the project and his involvement with Urban Habitat. He discussed the issues with gentrification in the B St Corridor in downtown San Mateo, and some of the strategies he and his colleagues were implementing to try to prevent some of the negative impacts on the area. We learned that four organizations - Urban Habitat, Faith in Action, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, and the San Mateo County Health Department - are collaborating to help the owners of small businesses in the neighborhood, but convincing the local government to amend legislature in favor of these businesses is difficult without hard data. In addition, surveying the owners proved to be a challenge because of either language barriers or lack of spare time. In some cases, they also felt hesitant to give personal economic information to strangers. We learned that small, often minority-run businesses in San Mateo are being pushed out because of the high rent and a diminishing number of patrons, also caused by increasing rent in the nearby residential areas. Moreover, small businesses have a difficult time hiring since many of the qualified candidates cannot afford to live near the downtown area of San Mateo due to the rising market price of housing. We learned that it is illegal to establish any sort of rent control over businesses, which makes business displacement even more difficult to address than housing justice. Critical Analysis/Moving Forward Survey collection in San Mateo can begin as soon as Urban Habitat revises their survey, which is currently too long for many owners to fill out. Thought should also be given to the manner in which these surveys are presented, as in the past both length and content have been hindrances to successful data collection. Business owners are understandably hesitant to take an hour out of their work day to fill out the surveys, as the immediate need to work in order to keep the store afloat can outweigh the perceived benefits (or lack thereof) of the survey, especially if owners don’t believe the data will actually help create real change. We believe it will be important to establish more intimate relationships with local business owners in order to communicate their grievances more effectively to city officials. Mr. Samaro told us that Urban Habitat had more success when reaching out to business owners through their congregations, as religion plays a prominent role in many of these people's’ lives. In addition to helping with survey collection, we will plan to support the businesses directly by having a meal at one of the neighborhood restaurants or shopping at one of the convenience stores. |
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