One thing interesting to note is that the population of Latinos in San Francisco increased from 2000 to 2010 and from 2010 to 2020. In fact, it has steadily increased since 1970. So while there was displacement from The Mission there was growth in other census tracts. I have not examined where though.
The White population has remained more or less stable since 1990 (there was some White Flight before that) and the Asian population boomed.
The Black population declined precipitously dropped from 1960 to 2010 but seems to have lessened since then, perhaps due to the building of affordable housing.
Something to consider is how that's income stratified. Lots of Latinos and Black people moving into SOMA. Are they middle class residents living in market rate housing? I know a few of them. Are they living in inclusionary homes? Seems likely too. Seems like low income Latinos buying market housing however are vacating San Francisco.
Instead of building more housing, we could instead prevent gentrification and displacement by removing public amenities, making the local schools terrible, ensuring crime is high, and making sure the housing stock is as terrible as possible...! Or at least that seems to be the message from some advocates against gentrification...
Interesting analysis and good case studies of the area—it obviously comports with a lot of the econometrics work (that is agnostic to "Black Flight" and all the other sociological phenomenon, but, in a pretty standard fashion, generally shows that housing is correlated to incomes, and holding down housing stock in areas of rising income will generally create housing inflation).
White/Black/Asian Flight/Following has been a pretty constant thing in the Bay Area (and other places, I'm sure). However, it's odd to me how stratified the Bay Area has always felt. When I was in the Northeast, especially New York, there seemed to be more integration—and, especially, much more of a Black middle-class. Admittedly, I was usually in urban areas out there, but even so (and even comparing to "urban" areas here). Obviously, it's not like there's none here and it's not like the Northeast is a "post-racial utopia" or something, but after coming back to the Bay Area after having lived on the East Coast for about a decade, it's been pretty jarring. I haven't looked deeply in the academic literature on the topic (though it does make some sense in terms of migration patterns and history), and maybe this was all just happenstance, but it is a bit disheartening.
California in general feels far more segregated than the East Coast because the suburban layout. That said, Oakland is very Black middle class. I just think those specific Oakland neighborhoods don't get much cultural analysis. But most Black people who live in East Oakland are middle class. There's a diverse array of Black wealth all along High Street, from very wealthy Black people in Redwood Heights, to Black professionals and white collar workers in Laurel and Maxwell Park, to middle class Black communities between International and MacArthur and historically, lower income Black households south of 880. But thats changed rapidly.
Thank you for your time and efforts in putting this post together, and for the 2010-2020 comparison tool which is very easy to use.
I have to question the point that is central to the first half of the piece as I've seen this article linked numerous times elsewhere around the Internet as proof that market-rate development doesn't cause displacement. I don't think it necessarily does, but I also think the relationship between market-rate development and Black population stability isn’t proven here, and that a strong implication of the effects of filtering is overstated and in fact detrimental to increasing support for affordable housing production.
One issue I take is the lack of a detailed comparison of the Black communities in both neighborhoods and how that might have resulted in the changes (or lack thereof) from 2010 to 2020 and not just a narrow focus on development. I compared Pill Hill/Koreatown and Hoover-Foster/Ghost Town on Social Explorer and pulled from the 2010 and 2020 ACS, for reference.
I think this further analysis is important, because I'm not arguing against development. I am pro-development at all income levels, including market-rate. However, I am against the idea that filtering stabilizes communities. Rather, some deeper analysis seems like it wasn't filtering that stabilized Pill Hill because below-poverty households and households that can afford market-rate units aren’t competing for housing in the same submarkets.
In Pill Hill (Census Tract 4013) and Hoover-Foster (Census Tract 4014) the Black community in each tract has charted pretty different courses. The median income for Black households grew at double the rate in Pill Hill (+95%) than in Hoover-Foster (+44%) from 2010 to 2020. And the Black population with income below poverty significantly decreased in Pill Hill (-68%) and increased in Hoover-Foster (+32%). [1]
Why is it that poverty decreased and income increased within Pill Hill’s Black households but not in Hoover-Foster? Considering that the affordable housing objective in the Broadway-Valdez Plan is a 15% set-aside [2] and zero 100% BMR buildings were PIS in Pill Hill between 2010-2020 [3], the amount of affordable housing is likely somewhere between 0 - 15% of total development. It would seem that either Black households below the poverty line left the community or Black households remained and increased their incomes above the poverty line – but neither scenario is explored much if at all.
My assumption in part is that you downplay the importance of the relationship to the side of the freeway (“mere six-lane freeway”) in the trajectory of these two communities as many QoL outcomes are higher East of 980/24 than West, which could be one reason why the Black community East of 980/24 is generally more stable than Western neighbors irrespective of the type (affordable vs. market-rate) and degree of local development. If this is not the case, and the result is that outflows of below-poverty Black households were replaced with inflows of above-poverty, that is quite literally displacement albeit along income and not racial lines but still a concern vis a vis neighborhood stability of low-income households, because it does not necessarily mean that the number of below-poverty households decreased but instead that they likely moved.
In addition, I took a look at Longfellow. Although its mentioned that Santa Fe has 6.3% more Black displacement, it has 6.3 percentage points more, this is slightly misleading as Longfellow actually lost 20% more Black residents in total volume than Santa Fe, which at the census tract level where population is between 4 – 6,000 is arguably the more relevant statistic [4]. Between 2010 and 2020, Longfellow had some of the largest reductions in share and in total volume of the below-poverty Black population of any Census tract in Oakland. [1] Expanding this scope of contiguous neighborhoods further, just south of Pill Hill is Uptown (4028.01; also East of 980) which lost over 12% of its units - the only tract to lose units along Broadway - and yet the Black population also stabilized (and very marginally increased) [4]. Here are four contiguous census tracts, that based on your conclusions from a comparison of just Pill Hill and Hoover-Foster, present some doubts to the simple causal relationship between housing production and Black population.
What strong conclusions about the stability of the Black population at the census-tract level can be derived from the rate of market-rate development when only looking at total units and total population and not other contextual factors like the above?
This is where I think some of the analysis in this piece loses strength, because of the strong implication that it was development and development alone that stabilized Pill Hill's Black population. I don’t think the connection is to be made solely between the degree of development and the stability of the Black population. I think a more thorough analysis should be the relationship between development and Black population AND, amongst others, Black income / poverty AND neighborhood historical / social factors.
Instead, a wedge against displacement of low-income communities is more likely to be low-income housing that is affordable to low-incomes. I also don't think there was enough data presented about the development types (affordable vs. market rate) in areas that are experiencing an increase or no change in the Black population which I think is necessary to compare to Pill Hill and to establish any sort of pattern between development and the stability of the Black population.
In any event, I appreciate the work nonetheless as I know you do advocate for affordable housing in this piece, but I think when we talk specifically about stability of low-income communities, the filtering concept is overblown and a stronger focus on affordable housing is necessary. I will continue to read it and better understand your position, even if I don't agree. Thanks.
As a transportation advocate, thanks you for this and now several questions: 1) with more people in existing housing, East Oakland has more cars parked on the street than, say, north Berkeley, from observations, which adds a challenge to improve street safety for everyone. What corresponding transit improvements are needed to augment safety improvements, 2) we heard about Black displacement in KONO district in connection with Telegraph streetscape project and how local businesses are affected—does this census data help us better understand that issue? and 3) OakDOT’s next large streetscape safety project is 14th Street Downtown. There are concerns about new homes built on 14th corridor and in nearby downtown Oakland neighborhoods and how these new homes do not benefit Black residents. How does this data help us better understand this issue?
1) East Oakland needs better cross town service espesially since its largely a food desert outside some good Hispanic groceries like. Despite more frequent bus lines like the 1, the 57 or the NL, access to the popular groceries are poor thanks to bad crosstown service.
2 & 3) Frankly, businesses use gentrification all the time to obscure parking complaints in their objections to street improvements. My next article will be on this issue of the aesthetics of gentrification vs the causes. Urban Displacement Project did a great report back on Telegraph bike lanes circa 2014 and concluded most people around Telegraph didn't even think it was bike lanes but rather gentrification coming from Berkeley. https://twitter.com/IDoTheThinking/status/1288698003771936769?s=20
I dont think that means we should be dismissive of these concerns but it feeds into the very false idea that disinvestment combats larger trends in real estate and the economy. If that were true, Longfellow would not have seen 8 times as much Black displacement as the much more invested KONO area.
One thing interesting to note is that the population of Latinos in San Francisco increased from 2000 to 2010 and from 2010 to 2020. In fact, it has steadily increased since 1970. So while there was displacement from The Mission there was growth in other census tracts. I have not examined where though.
The White population has remained more or less stable since 1990 (there was some White Flight before that) and the Asian population boomed.
The Black population declined precipitously dropped from 1960 to 2010 but seems to have lessened since then, perhaps due to the building of affordable housing.
Something to consider is how that's income stratified. Lots of Latinos and Black people moving into SOMA. Are they middle class residents living in market rate housing? I know a few of them. Are they living in inclusionary homes? Seems likely too. Seems like low income Latinos buying market housing however are vacating San Francisco.
Instead of building more housing, we could instead prevent gentrification and displacement by removing public amenities, making the local schools terrible, ensuring crime is high, and making sure the housing stock is as terrible as possible...! Or at least that seems to be the message from some advocates against gentrification...
Interesting analysis and good case studies of the area—it obviously comports with a lot of the econometrics work (that is agnostic to "Black Flight" and all the other sociological phenomenon, but, in a pretty standard fashion, generally shows that housing is correlated to incomes, and holding down housing stock in areas of rising income will generally create housing inflation).
White/Black/Asian Flight/Following has been a pretty constant thing in the Bay Area (and other places, I'm sure). However, it's odd to me how stratified the Bay Area has always felt. When I was in the Northeast, especially New York, there seemed to be more integration—and, especially, much more of a Black middle-class. Admittedly, I was usually in urban areas out there, but even so (and even comparing to "urban" areas here). Obviously, it's not like there's none here and it's not like the Northeast is a "post-racial utopia" or something, but after coming back to the Bay Area after having lived on the East Coast for about a decade, it's been pretty jarring. I haven't looked deeply in the academic literature on the topic (though it does make some sense in terms of migration patterns and history), and maybe this was all just happenstance, but it is a bit disheartening.
California in general feels far more segregated than the East Coast because the suburban layout. That said, Oakland is very Black middle class. I just think those specific Oakland neighborhoods don't get much cultural analysis. But most Black people who live in East Oakland are middle class. There's a diverse array of Black wealth all along High Street, from very wealthy Black people in Redwood Heights, to Black professionals and white collar workers in Laurel and Maxwell Park, to middle class Black communities between International and MacArthur and historically, lower income Black households south of 880. But thats changed rapidly.
Thank you for your time and efforts in putting this post together, and for the 2010-2020 comparison tool which is very easy to use.
I have to question the point that is central to the first half of the piece as I've seen this article linked numerous times elsewhere around the Internet as proof that market-rate development doesn't cause displacement. I don't think it necessarily does, but I also think the relationship between market-rate development and Black population stability isn’t proven here, and that a strong implication of the effects of filtering is overstated and in fact detrimental to increasing support for affordable housing production.
One issue I take is the lack of a detailed comparison of the Black communities in both neighborhoods and how that might have resulted in the changes (or lack thereof) from 2010 to 2020 and not just a narrow focus on development. I compared Pill Hill/Koreatown and Hoover-Foster/Ghost Town on Social Explorer and pulled from the 2010 and 2020 ACS, for reference.
I think this further analysis is important, because I'm not arguing against development. I am pro-development at all income levels, including market-rate. However, I am against the idea that filtering stabilizes communities. Rather, some deeper analysis seems like it wasn't filtering that stabilized Pill Hill because below-poverty households and households that can afford market-rate units aren’t competing for housing in the same submarkets.
In Pill Hill (Census Tract 4013) and Hoover-Foster (Census Tract 4014) the Black community in each tract has charted pretty different courses. The median income for Black households grew at double the rate in Pill Hill (+95%) than in Hoover-Foster (+44%) from 2010 to 2020. And the Black population with income below poverty significantly decreased in Pill Hill (-68%) and increased in Hoover-Foster (+32%). [1]
Why is it that poverty decreased and income increased within Pill Hill’s Black households but not in Hoover-Foster? Considering that the affordable housing objective in the Broadway-Valdez Plan is a 15% set-aside [2] and zero 100% BMR buildings were PIS in Pill Hill between 2010-2020 [3], the amount of affordable housing is likely somewhere between 0 - 15% of total development. It would seem that either Black households below the poverty line left the community or Black households remained and increased their incomes above the poverty line – but neither scenario is explored much if at all.
My assumption in part is that you downplay the importance of the relationship to the side of the freeway (“mere six-lane freeway”) in the trajectory of these two communities as many QoL outcomes are higher East of 980/24 than West, which could be one reason why the Black community East of 980/24 is generally more stable than Western neighbors irrespective of the type (affordable vs. market-rate) and degree of local development. If this is not the case, and the result is that outflows of below-poverty Black households were replaced with inflows of above-poverty, that is quite literally displacement albeit along income and not racial lines but still a concern vis a vis neighborhood stability of low-income households, because it does not necessarily mean that the number of below-poverty households decreased but instead that they likely moved.
In addition, I took a look at Longfellow. Although its mentioned that Santa Fe has 6.3% more Black displacement, it has 6.3 percentage points more, this is slightly misleading as Longfellow actually lost 20% more Black residents in total volume than Santa Fe, which at the census tract level where population is between 4 – 6,000 is arguably the more relevant statistic [4]. Between 2010 and 2020, Longfellow had some of the largest reductions in share and in total volume of the below-poverty Black population of any Census tract in Oakland. [1] Expanding this scope of contiguous neighborhoods further, just south of Pill Hill is Uptown (4028.01; also East of 980) which lost over 12% of its units - the only tract to lose units along Broadway - and yet the Black population also stabilized (and very marginally increased) [4]. Here are four contiguous census tracts, that based on your conclusions from a comparison of just Pill Hill and Hoover-Foster, present some doubts to the simple causal relationship between housing production and Black population.
What strong conclusions about the stability of the Black population at the census-tract level can be derived from the rate of market-rate development when only looking at total units and total population and not other contextual factors like the above?
This is where I think some of the analysis in this piece loses strength, because of the strong implication that it was development and development alone that stabilized Pill Hill's Black population. I don’t think the connection is to be made solely between the degree of development and the stability of the Black population. I think a more thorough analysis should be the relationship between development and Black population AND, amongst others, Black income / poverty AND neighborhood historical / social factors.
Instead, a wedge against displacement of low-income communities is more likely to be low-income housing that is affordable to low-incomes. I also don't think there was enough data presented about the development types (affordable vs. market rate) in areas that are experiencing an increase or no change in the Black population which I think is necessary to compare to Pill Hill and to establish any sort of pattern between development and the stability of the Black population.
In any event, I appreciate the work nonetheless as I know you do advocate for affordable housing in this piece, but I think when we talk specifically about stability of low-income communities, the filtering concept is overblown and a stronger focus on affordable housing is necessary. I will continue to read it and better understand your position, even if I don't agree. Thanks.
[1] Social Explorer, ACS 2010 and ACS 2020
[2] Broadway Valdez District Specific Plan. Page 260. City of Oakland: https://cao-94612.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/oak048577.pdf
[3] “Affordable Housing Map & Benefits Calculator”. CHPC. https://affordablehomes.chpc.net/?view=37.816028,-122.26779,15&rural=1,0&funding=hud,usda,lihtc,hcd,calhfa
[4] "Where Did All the Black People in Oakland Go?"
As a transportation advocate, thanks you for this and now several questions: 1) with more people in existing housing, East Oakland has more cars parked on the street than, say, north Berkeley, from observations, which adds a challenge to improve street safety for everyone. What corresponding transit improvements are needed to augment safety improvements, 2) we heard about Black displacement in KONO district in connection with Telegraph streetscape project and how local businesses are affected—does this census data help us better understand that issue? and 3) OakDOT’s next large streetscape safety project is 14th Street Downtown. There are concerns about new homes built on 14th corridor and in nearby downtown Oakland neighborhoods and how these new homes do not benefit Black residents. How does this data help us better understand this issue?
1) East Oakland needs better cross town service espesially since its largely a food desert outside some good Hispanic groceries like. Despite more frequent bus lines like the 1, the 57 or the NL, access to the popular groceries are poor thanks to bad crosstown service.
2 & 3) Frankly, businesses use gentrification all the time to obscure parking complaints in their objections to street improvements. My next article will be on this issue of the aesthetics of gentrification vs the causes. Urban Displacement Project did a great report back on Telegraph bike lanes circa 2014 and concluded most people around Telegraph didn't even think it was bike lanes but rather gentrification coming from Berkeley. https://twitter.com/IDoTheThinking/status/1288698003771936769?s=20
I dont think that means we should be dismissive of these concerns but it feeds into the very false idea that disinvestment combats larger trends in real estate and the economy. If that were true, Longfellow would not have seen 8 times as much Black displacement as the much more invested KONO area.