Saturday mornings community members picketing outside Mayor’s house; where he sleeps comfortably knowing he’s selling out our City to Google while thousands of our community members are living in the streets. (November, 2018)

By Jocelin Hernandez

My mother has a pupuseria in my uncle’s backyard. Every Saturday, she wakes up to the ring of customers eager to place their order. By early afternoon it’s a beautiful vision; a testament of time and distance as my mom manifests the neighborhoods of El Salvador in my uncle’s modest, East Side backyard. She and her partner Don Ariel have even planted caña de azucar in the garden that surrounds the tables with shade. The tables surround my mami’s comal, her hands center-stage as she palms away and asks folks about their day. She listens to all their pains and complaints. She listens to all their excitements and celebrations. Always amazing and different answers coming from such a simple question.

She knows all of them and they all love her. The Latino families that come in their best attire after church. The old neighborhood viejitos that stay and chat into the evening, recounting old times in Puerto Rico y El Salvador. La muchacha Mexicana I used to play soccer with back in high school and her mom. La señora y su niña de Mexico that struggle with rent (like a lot of her other customers) because she also has to pay her dialysis bills. The children of the Señora that lives down the block. My brother Kevin and my cousin Tony’s friends. The Mexican folk that like their salsa super spicy. The Salvi folk that like it the original, non-spicy way (with extra curtido). Even the newly migrated youth, refugees from Centro America, have found their way to my Mom’s backyard. My mother’s pupusas a warm reminder of home. My mami knows and makes salsas for them all. By early afternoon it is a beautiful vision, folks from all over the world eating together in community, in a space that affirms our basic human desire to laugh and love one another.

That is one of the many community spaces that will be destroyed if we allow Google to come into San Jose. This is why I say No to Google, because Google will not represent progress to the thousands of individuals and families that will be displaced, ‘when it brings in jobs’ for twenty thousand techies. It will not represent progress to the children and families living on the streets and in RV’s right now. It will not represent progress to the single migrant mothers working overtime and multiple jobs to live with bedbugs and strangers. It will not represent progress to the poor Black and Brown youth and communities that the Mayor and SJPD fear and detest. It will not represent progress to my undocumented student who asked me for an extension on his project because he works two full-time jobs to pay for his garage and needed a moment to sleep. It will not represent progress to my 10-year-old brother who holds tight to his dreams of going to college even when he attends one of the most criminally disinvested school districts in our city. For the people that breathe life into San José, the project’s plan is to suffocate us to death.

This following case study explores the equity implications of tech development in Mountain View for the purpose of making the case against Google and envisioning sustainable development and democracy in San Jose. The story in Mountain View uncovers the cumulative vulnerabilities — that are both causes and symptoms of the gentrification — that are only made worse by corrupt and profit driven tech development. The City of Mountain View is used to analyzing the specific issues within and outside the boundaries of the ‘tech hometown’. The current realities of Mountain View disprove arguments that tech/commercial development is the answer to neighborhood revitalization. Without strong democratic decision-making, it will likely decrease equity and catalyze further gentrification. As a result, historically disinvested communities become more vulnerable to displacement and human rights violations, such as police brutality, labor exploitation, and homelessness. The paper concludes with recommended practices in order to avoid city- and democratic-reconfiguration by inequitable development.

Keywords: cumulative vulnerabilities, self-determination, human rights, gentrification, tech hometowns, regionality, labor and wages, unequal housing production, affordable housing, tenant rights and protections, unhoused populations, equitable development, democracy, racism, criminalization.

INTRODUCTION

As cities across the nation undergo robust economic growth with the help of tech development, there is a need to acknowledge that inequity is also increasing in those cities and in cities surrounding the “tech hometowns”. Could it be possible that city ills are being misdiagnosed by city representatives?

Currently, commercial and tech development are sold as the great answers to neighborhood poverty and disinvestment — conditions which have been created and perpetuated by racism and capitalism, or what they call the “free market”. The result is seemingly unstoppable gentrification enabled by unsustainable tech growth and government corruption.

The term ‘cumulative vulnerabilities’ is used in this paper within the context of socioeconomic mobility. I will use it to refer to the inequitable distribution of opportunities and life chances within our present society that have accumulated through a long racist history, leaving patterns of systemic and structural racism and violence that continue to this day. The vulnerabilities come from a rich history of racial segregation through redlining, racial covenants, discriminatory FHA loans, and racist city policies that no U.S. city is exempt from.

Some of the most detrimental cumulative vulnerabilities to displacement and gentrification are: insufficient wages, rising rents and housing costs, unequal housing production and lack of tenant protections. Insufficient wages are wages that cause tenants to become rent burdened, a term used by the FHA to describe when 30% or more of income is spent on rent. Unequal housing production refers to the prioritization of making market rate and luxury housing instead of severely needed affordable housing stock. Lastly, lack of tenant protections refers to cities that do not possess a form of rent control or rent stabilization in their city policies.

Contrary to the myth, equitable development is needed and desired in disinvested, low-income, Black and Brown migrant communities. We are not anti-growth. However, commercial development will continue to fail in addressing accumulated vulnerabilities, and will only exacerbate displacement if an unrelenting vision towards equitable, democratic development is not present throughout the process.

THE HOMETOWNS

“Tech hometowns’, will be a term used to describe cities that are hosts of global tech corporation headquarters like Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Due to concern of the proposed Google project in San Jose, Mountain View will be chosen as it is host to Google’s first headquarters. It portrays a ‘before and after’ of tech hometowns, although the purpose is not to amount correlation to causation.

MOUNTAIN VIEW

As San Jose looks to host Google and it latest expansion, Mountain View provides important insight as the city of Google’s first headquarters. In 2003, Google leased the Googleplex campus in Mountain View from Silicon Graphics, an ailing, old-school tech giant. By 2004, Google moved into its headquarters and by 2006, Google had bought the property under Googleplex for $319 million. The headquarters would grow from its initial area of 2,000,000 square feet, expanding into 3,100,000 square feet of development as of 2015. The following describes the cumulative vulnerabilities that ironically have only been exacerbated by Google’s development and promise to not be evil. It is a wakeup call for any city to solve its own ‘issues’ before becoming codependent on Big Tech.

ACCUMULATED VULNERABILITIES

Although Google moved into its headquarters in 2004, the company had been growing since the late 90’s, moving into its first offices in 1999. From 1999–2010, the median household income in Mountain View grew from $41,994 to $51,914. However, although the median household income increased, the number of individuals in poverty had also increased. When renter-occupied and owner-occupied housing units were distinguished, census data showed a significant gap between median household incomes of tenants and homeowners.

The 2006–2010 American Community Survey Estimate data showed that the median household income for homeowners was $65,167, while for tenants it was only $31,548. Comparatively, the median monthly housing costs (or median gross rent) for owner-occupied housing units was $1,126 and $841 for renter-occupied housing units. Consequently, working residents making minimum wage ($9) in 2010 were already experiencing the burden of insufficient wages. 88% of tenants earning minimum wage in Mountain View were rent burdened by the end of 2010. For owner-occupied housing units earning minimum wage, the percentage was 85%.

From 2010 to 2016, the median household income of homeowners and tenants increased to $70,586 and $35,192 respectively. However, the biggest change in increase was seen in housing costs and asking rents for working tenants. From 2009 to 2016, average asking rents increased by 80% in Mountain View. So even with the newly increased minimum wage in 2016 ($11), working residents continued to be rent burdened because costs were increasing higher than wages.

2016 saw a peak increase in housing costs and rents in Mountain View. Even though Mountain View is one of few cities in California to have some form of rent stabilization and rent control, the protections were passed after 2016 and only after years of community efforts and yet another peak in homelessness. The unequal production of affordable housing and lack of protections only proliferated vulnerabilities to displacement; especially for lower-income, working-class tenants in Mountain View.

From 2007–2017, the City reported that only 19% of housing permits issued were for affordable housing. This makes up no more than 10% of all rental housing in Mountain View, even though almost 50% of households would qualify for BMR or Affordable Housing based on 2016 income data. Without a robust increase in ELI (Extremely Low Income) and LI (Low Income) housing, Mountain View is experiencing an imbalance in housing that is only made worse by Google expansion and their addition of employees who can pay for housing desperately needed by native residents, but too high in cost to access. The manifestation of these cumulative vulnerabilities is sadly reflected in the increase of homelessness that Mountain View is experiencing.

GILDED CITY, RV CITY

In the 14 years since Google moved in, the cumulative vulnerabilities have only worsened due to city prioritization in commercial development instead of investing in vulnerable communities. Neither the wage increases nor protections have been enough to keep up with the increase of housing costs, or to compete in an unregulated rental market.

These cumulative vulnerabilities to displacement have caused an increased number of working tenants to crowd into smaller and smaller units or to be pushed out of their homes and forced to live in their cars or RVs (recreational vehicles). In 2016, the number of people living in RVs has risen to 126 vehicles, often with multiple people per vehicle; a number projected to continue growing. In addition, the unhoused population living on the streets has also increased. From 2015–2017 alone, there was a 51% increase of people experiencing homelessness on the night of the Point-in-Time Count in Mountain View. Yet, instead of addressing cumulative vulnerabilities in Mountain View, the City has continued to use punitive measures to punish RV and unhoused residents — concentrating on the symptoms instead of addressing root causes of cumulative vulnerabilities.

The case of Mountain View demonstrates the realities of tech development that occurs without democratic decision making. It exacerbates increases in rent, housing costs, homelessness, and inequity. The very solution meant to bring economic prosperity to all, has only widened the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots.” This is because tech and commercial development were never designed to answer to neighborhood ‘blight’. The solutions were, and still are to work proactively and address the root causes of vulnerabilities, not just building on top of them.

SAN JOSE AND THE PROPOSED GOOGLE DEVELOPMENT: RE-IMAGINING HOUSING AND LAND USE MODELS

More than a warning, Mountain View’s realities are a call to action in order to present a new model of development that is truly for the benefit of the entire community. Without such a vision, San Jose is highly likely to experience the same upsurge in issues the city is already struggling to address.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that everyone has the right to a “standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of [themselves] and of [their] family, including […] housing”. It goes further and states that mothers and children are entitled to special social protection in order to gain access to housing. The right to housing is also referred to in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 27 and in the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, Article 43. Both Conventions recognize the right to housing as an obligation for the state to uphold. The Convention on the Rights of the Child underline the importance of housing to a “child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development”; additionally, the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families states all people have the right to access housing as well as enshrining the right to the “protection against exploitation” as tenants.

For San Jose, one of the most recent legal languages passed has been the Assembly Bill №932. It was passed as a declaration of the housing crisis in the Bay Area, last year, in 2017. The Bill mentions the County of Santa Clara in specific, authorizing the county to include shelter for unhoused populations in emergency housing.

Yet, back in June 20th 2017, the San Jose community watched as City Council voted to enter into exclusive negotiations with Google over 16 parcels of public land. The proposed Google project has since provided the community of San Jose an opportunity to envision and work towards self-determination, precisely because the project itself threatens to further undermine community stability and the right to housing.

Instead of selling the land to corporate interest, the land must be honored as public and handed back to the community to which it belongs. A community land trust (CLT) model has the ability to provide housing that is permanently affordable, inclusive, stable, healthy and sustainable, and democratically controlled by residents in order to meet the needs of communities. A community land trust is a dual-ownership model that consists of a community controlled nonprofit organization that would acquire, own, and manage the land and housing on behalf and to the benefit of a specific community and/or neighborhood. The governing body itself consists of people living in the CLT or individuals chosen by CLT residents. The CLT would take the land off of the real estate free market thereby removing the speculative cost of land from the cost of housing. This mechanism would allow the CLT to provide below market ground leases and restrictive resale in order to maintain long-term affordability. In fact as evidence of the stability CLTs offer, it was found that delinquency and foreclosure rates (during the ’08 foreclosure crisis) were significantly lower on CLTs than on homes with prime loans. The rates of foreclosure on CLTs were even lower when compared to rates on homes with subprime loans. For example, in 2009, the percentage of seriously delinquent loans was 30.56% for subprime, 7.01% for prime and 1.62% for CLTs. The percentage of foreclosure rates was 15.58% for subprime, 3.31% for prime and .56% for CLTs!

We must challenge notions that low-income, migrant Black and Brown communities don’t know what investment should look like in our city and in our neighborhoods. We must challenge ideas that the “free market” is natural, that it is more important than human lives. Growing up in the East Side, I see housing justice for my city as non-negotiable. The irony is not lost on me when I see the neighborhoods Black and Brown people were historically cast off and confined to; are now being targeted for a systematic land grab. Gentrification, by any other name, is robbing the community and our children of the very fruits we sowed, through public policies that under-protect and over-police (Lipsitz, 2011; Lipsitz, 1998; Lipsitz, 2012; Solnit, 2016; Smith, Rojek, Tillyer, & Lloyd, 2017; Rahman, 2015; Naimark, forthcoming). Malcolm X’s words come to mind when he stated that racism was “like a Cadillac, they come out with a new model each year”, and so it is true to this day. Gentrification is a manifestation of colonization. Gentrification is leading to death and disease in our communities, and so must be stopped by any means necessary (Solnit, 2016; Rahman, 2015). Housing is a Human Right! Housing is a Human Right! Housing is a Human Right! As community, it’s on us to fight for a future where our children’s humanity will be honored. In face of a giant as big as Google, I remind ourselves that all David had was a slingshot.

[1] George Lipsitz, How Racism Takes Place (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011).

[2] George Lipsitz, How Racism Takes Place (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011).

[3] HUD.gov / U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), , accessed Spring 2016, https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/comm_planning/affordablehousing/.

[4] Matt Weinberger, “33 Photos of Google’s Rise from a Stanford Dorm Room to World Domination,” Business Insider, December 21, 2017, , accessed January/February 2017, https://www.businessinsider.com/google-history-in-photos-2016-10#by-this-point-the-google-team-was-outgrowing-its-palo-alto-offices-14.

[5] Elinor Mills, “Google Buying Its Mountain View, Calif., Property,” CNET, June 14, 2006, , accessed December 2017, https://www.cnet.com/news/google-buying-its-mountain-view-calif-property/.

[6] Revolvy, LLC. “”Googleplex” on Revolvy.com.” Accessed December 2017. https://www.revolvy.com/page/Googleplex.

[7] Weinberger, “33 Photos of Google’s Rise from a Stanford Dorm Room to World Domination.”

[8] U.S. Census Bureau; Census 2000, Selected Economic Characteristics, Table DP-3; generated by Jocelin Hernandez; using American FactFinder; <http://factfinder2.census.gov>; (January 2017).

[9] U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2006–2010 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, Table DP03; generated by Jocelin Hernandez; using American FactFinder; <http://factfinder2.census.gov>; (January 2017).

[10] U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2006–2010 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, Table DP03; generated by Jocelin Hernandez; using American FactFinder; <http://factfinder2.census.gov>; (January 2017).

[11] U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2006–2010 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, Table DP03; generated by Jocelin Hernandez; using American FactFinder; <http://factfinder2.census.gov>; (January 2017).

[12] U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2006–2010 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, Table DP03; generated by Jocelin Hernandez; using American FactFinder; <http://factfinder2.census.gov>; (January 2017).

[13] U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2012–2016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, Table DP03; generated by Jocelin Hernandez; using American FactFinder; <http://factfinder2.census.gov>; (January 2017).

[14] “Research and Resources,” Mountain View Tenants Coalition, August 08, 2016, , accessed December 2017, https://mvtenantscoalition.org/research-and-resources/.

[15] “Research and Resources,” Mountain View Tenants Coalition, August 08, 2016, , accessed December 2017, https://mvtenantscoalition.org/research-and-resources/.

[16] “Regional Housing Need Allocation,” Family Emergency Planning and Knowledge, , accessed December 2017, https://abag.ca.gov/planning/housingneeds/.

[17] U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey, 2012–2016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, Table DP03; generated by Jocelin Hernandez; using American FactFinder; <http://factfinder2.census.gov>; (January 2017).

[18] Wendy Lee, “Battle over RVs in Mountain View Is Latest Sign of Housing Crisis,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 11, 2016, , accessed December 2017, https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Battle-over-RVs-in-Mountain-View-is-latest-sign-9961268.php.

[19] Mark Noack, “New Census Shows Mountain View Homeless Population Growing,” Mountain View Online, July 05, 2017, , accessed December 2017, https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2017/06/30/new-census-shows-mountain-view-homeless-population-growing.

[20] Lee, “Battle over RVs in Mountain View Is Latest Sign of Housing Crisis,”

[21] UN General Assembly, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” 217 (III) A (Paris, 1948), http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ (accessed February 20th, 2018).

[22] UN General Assembly, “Convention on the Rights of the Child”, Article 27, 1989, http://www.claiminghumanrights.org/adequate_living_definition.html (accessed February 20th, 2018).

[23] UN General Assembly, “International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families”, Article 43, 1990, http://www.claiminghumanrights.org/adequate_living_definition.html (accessed February 20th, 2018).

[24] Fair Employment and Housing Act, ARTICLE 2. Housing Discrimination [12955–12957], https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=GOV&division=3.&title=2.&part=2.8.&chapter=6.&article=2, (accessed February 20th, 2018).

[25] Assembly Bill №932, CHAPTER 786, October 16th, 2017, https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=GOV&division=3.&title=2.&part=2.8.&chapter=6.&article=2 (accessed February 20th, 2018).

[26] Gianpaolo Baiocchi. “Communities over Commodities”. New York, 2018: Homes For All Campaign of Right To The City Alliance, accessed April 7, 2018, https://homesforall.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Communities-Over-Commodities_Full-Report.pdf

[27] Gianpaolo Baiocchi. “Communities over Commodities”. New York, 2018: Homes For All Campaign of Right To The City Alliance, accessed April 7, 2018, https://homesforall.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Communities-Over-Commodities_Full-Report.pdf