Our Blog
It’s Time to Lean In
“Finally someone turns to look at us, we’re not invisible.”
-Latina Community Member
As a Concord resident, it’s not hard to see signs of poverty because there are so many people visibly unhoused. What we don’t see is the hidden poverty: families living in their cars or with other families or being displaced due to high rents.
In 2023, the Bay Area Equity Atlas reported that nearly half of all Bay Area residents have low or very low incomes. In a region with so much wealth, it’s painful to see how many hard working people are food and housing insecure.
I think for those of us who are older and grew up in the area, we didn’t see many people facing housing insecurity. Concord was known as a mostly white, working-class community surrounded by wealthier cities. At the time, working-class families could afford to be homeowners in Concord. While I didn’t grow up in Concord, I had my first job at Sunvalley Mall. I was 16 and worked for Swiss Colony, a store that sold sausages, cheese and other food gifts. I had to stand outside the store in my Swiss dress, hawking beef stick samples. When I got tired of selling processed meat, I took a different job in the mall selling men’s shoes. I had that job through my sophomore year in college when I abandoned Concord for a store in Albany (easier commute from college) where I also sold men’s shoes. My brief, but illustrious retail career served white shoppers. Central Contra Costa was pretty homogenous.
The racism that I experienced when I was growing up was palpable. I remember the horror of the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses on families’ lawns because they were hosting Black high school students from Oakland. My mother was irate and made sure her children understood that racism in any form was unacceptable. As a Catholic of Hispanic heritage, she firmly believed that all people are equally God’s children. I moved to San Francisco (and later New York) where I could be part of a more diverse community.
With a history of using theater as a tool for organizing and a lifelong interest in the intersection between culture and building community power, the last 20 years of my career focused on advocacy and organizing centered on worker and immigrant rights and housing. The housing crisis has progressively gotten worse in the last few decades, so when I finally returned to Contra Costa in 2015, I dug into local politics with a vengeance. First up was the Concord Naval Weapons Reuse Project. It caught my interest because of the City’s commitment to building affordable housing on this former naval base, but it was also my initial introduction to the behind-the-scenes local politics of choosing the first master developer. This was followed by my years as Executive Director at Monument Impact, advocating for housing and immigrant rights.
Fast forward to today. Now that I’m semi-retired I can step back and consider the years of attending Concord City Council and Board of Supervisors meetings where subtle and not so subtle racism rears its ugly head. This has been especially true during our seven-year struggle for tenant protections. At a recent Concord City Council meeting, a long-time resident bemoaned why Concord can’t be like it used to be. In another meeting, a landlord asked why we need poor people in Concord. These are codes for how Latinos and other people of color have changed the landscape of Concord and the county.
The City of Concord’s Homeless Strategic Plan opens with this statement: “The City of Concord envisions a community where every person has a safe, affirming, and stable place to live.”
The harsh reality is that too many residents do not have a safe, affirming or stable place to live, nor do they have affordable housing. In fact, families in Concord have been displaced for years. But this has been invisible to most residents and the needs of hard-working families have for too long fallen on deaf ears.
Consider this example: The median income of the single parents participating in Monument Impact’s guaranteed income pilot, ELEVATE Concord, is only $21,444 a year. Imagine raising one or more children on that income level and having enough for rent, food and other basic necessities. Yet Concord’s average rent is $2,281/month. That’s why 46% of ELEVATE participants rent a room in someone’s home.
Stable, affordable housing is the foundation for success and economic mobility. This is undeniable, so why is it so hard for some people who have this stability to care about others who don’t? It makes the false divide between landlords and tenants so vexing considering that rental property owners need tenants.
I recently heard Blair LM Kelley, author of “Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class,” on KQED’s Forum. She said something that really stuck with me about the national myth that working class in America is specifically white. I’m paraphrasing here, but she talked about this myth as an “erasure of the presence of others.”
At Council meetings, it feels like some landlords are truly trying to erase the presence of working class tenants living in their properties as if tenants are colluding with the City to take away their rights. In essence, this argument erases the rights of tenants who pay rent, sometimes in less than habitable properties. To build policy around this false narrative is tragic, especially since the majority of landlords in Concord are corporations and the point of tenant protections is to protect tenants—we can’t have it both ways.
Most Concord residents just don’t see the displacement and poverty. This isn’t a judgment—people are living their lives and trying to make it through these post-COVID, inflationary times. At the same time, we can’t turn away from our neighbors. We need to make an effort to see what’s going on in our own community if we want to change it for the better.
You can help by leaning in, not turning away.
Get out and vote for more affordable housing and for the Regional Housing Bond that will be on the 2024 ballot. Advocate for tenant protections in Concord or other cities. In Concord, Monument Impact and its allies have been fighting for a fair rent stabilization and just cause for eviction law— it’s not too late to join them! This movement for greater tenant protections is spreading to other cities in Contra Costa and the region—bring it to your city council!
Advocacy is critical to make change. But if that’s not your thing, consider volunteering at one of the many organizations that serve our most vulnerable neighbors, including Monument Impact, Loaves and Fishes, the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano Counties, White Pony Express or Monument Crisis Center, to name a few. This is one way to get to know the community.
When our neighbors are no longer invisible, we can work side by side to make our cities work for everyone, regardless of background or income. Make 2024 the year you lean in.