NEW : AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ANALYSIS OF

SACRAMENTO’S ERASURE OF BLACKNESS THROUGH

A Thesis

Presented to the faculty of the Department of History

California State University, Sacramento

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

in

Public History

by

Ari Annise Green

FALL 2020

© 2020

Ari Annise Green

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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NEW GENTRIFICATION: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ANALYSIS OF

SACRAMENTO’S ERASURE OF BLACKNESS THROUGH PUBLIC POLICY

A Thesis

by

Ari Annise Green

Approved by:

______, Committee Chair Lee Simpson, Ph.D.

______, Second Reader Paula C. Austin, Ph.D.

______Date

iii

Student: Ari Annise Green

I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and this thesis is suitable for electronic submission to the library and credit is to be awarded for the thesis.

______, Graduate Coordinator ______Anne Lindsay, Ph.D. Date

Department of History

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Abstract

of

NEW GENTRIFICATION: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ANAYLSIS OF

SACRAMENTO’S ERASURE OF BLACKNESS THROUGH PUBLIC POLICY

by

Ari Annise Green

Statement of Problem

After the housing market crash, the of Sacramento and its leaders began to plan how to revive and rebuild the city. This process included building a sports arena and that arena would be the center of Sacramento’s economic plan. The problem with this plan is that it called for a restructuring of the city. A reconstruction that was beneficial for certain residents of

Sacramento and detrimental for other residents. The problem with the restructuring of

Sacramento is that the city gentrified areas important to the Black community, made those areas more expensive, and displaced Black families in the process. The problem is that Black communities are at risk of complete erasure as a result of public policy and the effects of gentrification. This paper attempts to trace that displacement.

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Sources of Data

This project examines U.S. Census Decennial and 5 Year American Community Survey data to determine how the City of Sacramento has displaced minority communities through public policies.

Conclusions Reached

Before and during the housing market crash, the City of Sacramento experienced displacement due to high vacancy (units being available) but rent being too high. After the crash, Sacramento experienced a housing shortage heightened by the construction of the Golden 1 Center due to high rental prices and a lack of . I found that where vacancy rates were the highest, rent was also high, but annual income was poverty-level low especially in predominantly

Black communities.

______, Committee Chair Lee Simpson, Ph.D.

______Date

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The birth of this project began at the 2019 National Council on Public History Annual

Conference in Hartford, Connecticut. It started with the simple question, “What is Black Public

History?” and this question has consumed me and my academic career ever since. What began as a potential topic for a panel for next year’s conference turned into a thesis topic on displacement, gentrification, and public policy. So many hurdles on how to historicize an incident so recent and too many doubts about not being able to complete the project in a timely manner were some of the biggest obstacles throughout this writing process. Determining project scope and being okay with leaving some aspects out became difficult too. But without the people listed below, I would not have prevailed through these writing woes.

I would like to thank Sacramento native and dear friend, Angela Tate. Our simple conversation about “what is life like back home now?” transitioned into this thesis project. In writing, I told this story to the best of my ability, as if I were explaining it to you. I would like to thank my reading committee, Dr. Simpson and Dr. Austin, for their consistent enthusiasm and commitment to me and my project. For making sure I stayed on track with my goals and their devotion to reading my drafts over breaks. I would like to thank Jeanie Hong for helping decipher which data best creates the story I intended to tell; for assisting in data analysis; and her advice on how to structure my map. And a huge thank you to the Sacramento Area Council of Governments for agreeing to host my digital map.

I also would like to thank James Scott of the Sacramento Room for providing guidance and lending me books that aided in my research involving Sacramento’s preservation history. I

vii would like to thank Crystal Lima and Darvin McCauley for lending me their ears and providing me with the emotional support I needed as I discussed the highs and woes of this daunting project. Although far removed from this project, they consistently asked how the thesis process was going for me. And while my project may have been difficult for them to understand, they gave me the non-academic space to talk about it and explain it. Most importantly, they did not invalidate my constant need to step away from the writing process from time to time. I would like to thank Tamela and Lynn Reed, my beloved parents. For their unconditional love and unwavering support throughout this process. And last but not least, to Karen Wilhelmi for your graciousness these last two years.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

Acknowledgements...... vii

List of Figures………………………………………………………………………………….x

INTRODUCTION………..…………..……………………………………………………1

Chapter

1. HOW GAVE BIRTH TO GENTRIFICATION ...... 12

2. HISTORY OF ...... 38

3. AN ANALYSIS OF DISPLACEMENT ...... 69

CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………… .85

Bibliography ...... 93

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1A Map Sacramento 2005-2010……………………………………………………91

Figure 1B Map Sacramento 2010-2015……………………………………………………92

x 1 Introduction

Prior to graduate school, I did not know urban history and had their own terminology for how change. I just knew how to spot the change. I understood that houses left unrented or bought lowered the value of the neighborhood; I understood that my local corner store meant that they did not receive enough foot traffic to survive, and more importantly, I saw how more expensive things got and how the city changed. On October 1, 2018, I tweeted about how I could write a full dissertation on

Sacramento’s most recent rebranding, the alleged economic redevelopment, and how it affected the residents of Sacramento. Rebranding? I was referring to the erasure that I had witnessed, the abrupt changes to the city, and the inability to find affordable housing for just myself. Little did I know that I would write my master’s thesis on gentrification, displacement, and public policy. It was these changes that inspired this body of work.

In early January 2014, the City of Sacramento quietly filed an case with the court to seize the Macy’s at 600 K Street. The property primarily belonged to CalPERS and with the judge ruling in favor of the seizure, the city issued a five million dollar payment to CalPERS.1 At this same time, the Sacramento Kings

Franchise fought an uphill battle for relocation. The organization came close to relocating to another city since the Maloof Family had driven the franchise to the ground.

1 Ryan Lillis, “Sacramento Kings will pay $12 million for former Macy’s property under court settlement,” The Sacramento Bee, February 10, 2015, https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/news-columns- blogs/city-beat/article9711272.html.

2 Consecutive losing seasons, season ticket prices skyrocketing, and fan turnout diminishing were all reasons pushing the sale and relocation. There was absolutely no reason – or profit – for the Kings franchise to stay in Sacramento. However, Sacramento residents were relentless. They pleaded, they protested, and they showed up to Tuesday night city council meetings. After all, the Kings were the only big sports team the city had and without it, the city would have no sports team to root for.2

It was now May 2014 and one last attempt to save the Kings presented itself – a vote. The night in question would become historic as a large, long-lasting issue was on the docket for the Sacramento City Council’s approval. That night, the Council voted 7-2 on a four hundred and forty-seven million dollar deal that would fund the building of the a new Sacramento Kings Arena. The financing of it included the city’s contribution of two hundred and fifty-five million and two hundred and twenty-two million from the

Kings organization. “This is the end of one era and the dawn of a new one,” stated

Sacramento native and former mayor, Kevin Johnson. What Sacramento residents did not know was how this plea to keep the franchise in Sacramento would ultimately alter the city in a major way. The arena was paraded as a City of Sacramento plan that would bring four thousand jobs to the city with the vision of building a hotel, restaurants, office space, and apartments, all adjacent to the arena. Like any other controversial vote though, the arena approval was met with opposition.

2 Greg Botelho, “Kings officially staying in Sacramento as NBA approves local sale,” Cable News Network, May 28, 2013, https://www.cnn.com/2013/05/28/us/nba-sacramento-kings/index.html.

3 Councilman Darrell Fong insisted that the arena was, “too much risk for the city,” while others maintained that the city should not be in the sports arena business. 3

Since then, Sacramento has changed drastically. New restaurants have appeared, and several high-rise loft complexes fill downtown. Construction on J Street is ongoing and downtown parking is now scarce as well as expensive. So too, small mom and pop shops have closed, low-income housing projects have been demolished, and rent has sky- rocketed displacing thousands. Sacramento residents did not know how the plea to keep the Sacramento Kings franchise in Sacramento would lead to . This story serves as a sequel to a larger phenomenon. For the City Council to have filed an eminent domain case to seize property to build a new arena meant that a plan and policy had already been written to carry out the funding and primary function of the now Golden 1

Center. This kind of public policy has led to rapid gentrification which in turn, leads to the displacement of Black residents in Sacramento.

Locally and internationally, cities face decades of disinvestment and neglect. A city’s ability to be revived and reemerge in the form of new houses, businesses, and the influx of middle to upper class individuals is known as gentrification. The phenomenon originally appeared in cities after World War II when small aspects of reinvestment surfaced in deteriorating urban neighborhoods. It occurs in periodic waves: federally funded renewal efforts in the 50s and 60s; the “back-to-the-city” movement of the late

3 Ryan Lillis, “Festive Crowd lines up for Sac City Council vote on new Kings arena,” The Sacramento Bee, May 24, 2014, https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/city-arena/article2599330.html.

4 70s and early 80s; and today’s current wave known as “state-sponsored gentrification,” which started in the late 90s. Sacramento as a whole has also undergone the devalorization cycle, which produces the objective economic conditions that make capital revaluation – or gentrification – a rational market response.4 Devalorization happens in five separate stages. New construction is the first stage and first cycle of use; the transition to control is the second stage, the third stage is blockbusting – which is the process of persuading owners to sell property cheaply in fear of other racialized communities moving into the neighborhood; the fourth is redlining, and the fifth stage is abandonment. Throughout downtown Sacramento, new construction is on every corner whether it is new lofts being built, new restaurants, coffeeshops, or new parking structures, all examples of this historical process.

Gentrification has been and continues to be heavily debated in large metropolitan cities such as Washington D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and now

Sacramento. The term “gentrification” is both fallible and politically charged. In academic literature and popular discourse, gentrification has had several contrasting definitions. Some academic fields place gentrification within the decades-long process of disinvestment and re-investment in specific neighborhoods, insinuating that public policies and the owners of capital conspire, and enable people with a higher income to

4 Palen and London. Gentrification, Displacement and Neighborhood Revitalization. (Albany: State University of New York Press), 49.

5 reap substantial profits from gentrification.5 Others use the term interchangeably with urban revitalization, to illustrate any commercial or residential improvements in urban neighborhoods. Some refer to gentrification as the physical upgrade of low-income neighborhoods, while others have focused primarily on the economic actions of newcomers, specifically the renovation and upgrading of the housing stock. Although most definitions are property-focused visions of gentrification, others describe gentrification as class and race tensions and dislocation – socioeconomic or “people- based” effects – that often accompany the arrival of new residents into a neighborhood.

For the purpose of this project, gentrification is the process of neighborhood change that results in the replacement of lower income residents with higher income residents.6 This definition demonstrates how intrusive gentrification is. Often, but not always, gentrification has a very clear racial component, as higher income white households eventually replace lower income minority households.

With a clear definition, it is worth identifying three notable features. First, gentrification requires the displacement of lower income residents from their neighborhoods. This project is most concerned with involuntary displacement, in other words, the displacement of “original” residents who prefer to remain in their neighborhoods but unjust , increases in rent or property taxes prevent them from

5 Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. 6 Maureen Kennedy and Paul Leonard, Dealing with Neighborhood Change: A Primer on Gentrification and Policy Choices (District of Columbia: The Brookings Institution), 1.

6 being able to do so. Furthermore, families are displaced as a result of changes in their neighborhood. Researchers have identified a form of exclusionary displacement where changes in neighborhood characteristics prevent future lower income residents from moving into the neighborhood.7 Second, gentrification has a physical as well as socioeconomic aspect that results in the upgrading of housing stock in the neighborhood; for example, the process of demolishing housing projects and replacing them with the construction of lofts. Lastly, gentrification changes the character of the neighborhood.

These three features are subjective in comparison to the definition, but they are essential.

Gentrification not only attracts higher income households who replace low income households in the neighborhood, it attracts such a significant number that it alters the social aspect of the neighborhood as well.

Gentrification is happening in a number of American cities and in a limited number of neighborhoods within those cities. It should be noted that good data is hard to find; however, this paper relies heavily on data from federal surveys. Still, the fact remains that gentrification can have negative and positive effects on neighborhoods and households, and this is why it is imperative that city officials understand the negative effects and design equitable policy to prevent those effects. Cities now play a new role in economies, as hubs of information services, arts and entertainment districts, versus industrial centers. And a new class of mayors have made attracting middle- and upper-

7 Peter Marcuse, “Gentrification, Abandonment, and Displacement: Connections, Causes, and Policy Responses,” Journal of Urban and Contemporary Law, Vol. 28, pp. 206-207.

7 income residents back to their cities a priority. The City of Sacramento is currently undergoing the process of mass gentrification. While gentrification is not new to the city, it is happening at an alarming rate.

The literature on gentrification includes a long running debate about whether gentrification is caused by social/cultural factors such as a change in family structure or by economic factors such as job/housing imbalances. Some of the research attempts to combine these two competing arguments. One of the attempts is supported by empirical evidence that embraces both supply-side and demand-side theories.8 Most of the causes of gentrification below are also factors that are necessary for urban success. Not too many would complain about the rapid job growth or the market’s increased appreciation of a city’s cultural amenities. Still, policy change can reduce the impact of gentrification.

Among the factors contributing to gentrification today are:

1. Rapid Job Growth

During the gentrification wave of the late 70s and the early 80s, researchers contended that center city job growth was a key ingredient for gentrification. Rapid job growth is a pivotal marker, but it no longer has to be concentrated in the epicenter of cities in order for it to trigger gentrification.9

2. Tight Housing Markets

The housing market’s dynamic appears to play a significant role in causing gentrification. In many regions with gentrifying neighborhoods, housing prices have skyrocketed, and housing is in short supply in comparison to job growth. The Brian Berry identified was a more complex force that

8 London, Bruce, Barrett Lee and S. Gregory Lipton, “The Determinants of Gentrification in the United States, A City Level Analysis,” Urban Affairs Quarterly, 1986, Vol. 21, No. 3. 9 Kennedy and Leonard, 10.

8 he recognized to be critical for gentrification. Urban areas saw large increases in new construction, which then exceeded household growth in those same areas. As a result, residents moved to those urban areas, housing in the city deteriorates, and then are removed from the housing stock. This presents the opportunity for ‘rehabilitation’ by incoming residents.10 In turn, tight housing markets create four pressures: constrained supply, relative affordability, lucrative investment potential in high risk neighborhoods, and large rent gaps.11 This paper largely focuses on this aspect and how it has led to displacement.

3. Preference for City Amenities

Some demographic groups prefer to live in urban neighborhoods with easy access to amenities, including vibrant culture and street life, ethnic and racial diversity, distinctive historic architectural styles, and close proximity to downtown entertainment venues. The presence of these amenities helps classify which city neighborhoods are most likely to be gentrified.12

4. Increased Traffic Congestion and Lengthening Commutes

Increased traffic congestion and long commuting times is a factor of gentrification. As populations continue to soar and infrastructures age, commutes become longer, congestion increases, and the overall quality of life declines as a result of riding in the car several hours a day. Some new residents seek the opportunity to walk or take a bike to work, while some support smart policies that include transit-accessible housing.13 And finally,

5. Targeted Public Sector Policies

Some economic forces stimulate the process of gentrification, but government policies from the past or the present can facilitate or impede gentrification. Cities often use a range of policy levers to revitalize neighborhoods or accomplish city goals that include direct investments, tax expenditures, and regulations. In some instances, these investments and the effects can yield gentrification. Many cities strive for revitalization policies with the intention of providing incentives middle- and high-income class residents to

10 Brian J.L. Berry, “Islands of Renewal in Seas of Decay,” in The New Urban Reality, Paul E. Peterson, ed. Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1985, p. 89-91. 11 Kennedy and Leonard, 10-11. 12 Berry, 75. 13 Kennedy and Leonard, 12.

9 move into less desirable communities, such as tax incentives and public housing rebuilding.14

The development patterns that give way to gentrification are derived from a variety of different private and public actions at the local, regional, state, and federal level. Patterns of growth and decline, investment and disinvestment occurring throughout

Sacramento reflect more than economic opportunity and changing values. They mirror the many failed attempts to come to terms with issues of race and societal inequity.

Addressing, or avoiding in this case, the ramifications of gentrification of people ultimately requires policy solutions at all levels that promote sound vision of regional fairness and inclusion that benefits all residents in Sacramento.

Cities and metropolitan areas such as the City of Sacramento must understand where they fit into this context. Still, the issue of gentrification materializes for three basic reasons. First, the nation’s economy creates a great demand for labor and housing at the regional level, and so in some cases this makes the housing market in central cities more attractive to high income earners. Second, the federal government along with states, cities, and non-profit organizations have a new-found motivation and the resources to leverage specific policies and revitalization efforts. Third, as a direct response to concentrations of poverty in the urban core of cities, local authorities aim to reduce the levels of poverty by providing enticing opportunities for higher income families to move

14 Ibid, 12-13.

10 into these poverty-stricken areas.15 This project then, considers gentrification to be the result of cities seeking investment partners from the sports industry. That is, cities long for sports organizations to build their arenas and bring their teams as it generates large revenue and attracts tourists.

Neighborhood revitalization efforts by local governments destabilize Black communities that have strong cultural significance in order for cities to appear as worthy candidates for the sports industry. Black residents living in areas where rent is affordable hope that revived interest in their neighborhoods promise an improvement in the quality of their lives. Instead, they are met with increased property values and rent prices that they can no longer afford to bear. As a result, there is a strong demand for reliable facts and effective policies that will prepare community residents to embrace revitalization and retain their residency.

Debates surrounding Black population displacement in the context of gentrification remain complex but are restricted by a lack of empirical evidence that documents the extent of the displacement. The goal of this project is to become a resource to the City of Sacramento to better understand the historical trends in displacement and better assist in minimizing displacement in future development projects. Furthermore, this research examines the effects of redevelopment as public policy on communities, specifically the construction of the Golden 1 Center in the City of

15 Kennedy and Leonard, 2.

11 Sacramento and how this has led to the displacement of Black people. The following research questions guide this research: What was the impact of the Golden 1 Center?

How have the demographics of Sacramento changed? And what are the social and economic changes for the city? Why, after consecutive decades of redevelopment and erasure of communities, does the City of Sacramento continue to implement policies and development projects that lead to displacement? By exploring these questions, I argue that Black residents are being displaced at an accelerated rate as a result of state- sponsored policies and the desire for the sports industry and developers to invest in the city as a means of profit for city officials. If gentrification and displacement are a concern, local leaders need to implement policies that are fair and balanced. I believe the data explored and presented in this paper is a promising framework for the development of these policies, which will have major implications on city planning, local tax policies, and reform.

12 Chapter 1

How Urban Renewal Gave Birth to Gentrification

Before gentrification became a household term, it was referred to as urban renewal. In 1949, President Harry Truman signed the Housing Act, which granted federal, state, and local governments unprecedented power to shape residential life. One of the Housing Act’s main initiatives – urban renewal – destroyed around 2,000 communities throughout the 1950s and 1960s and forced over 300,000 families from their homes. Half of urban renewal’s victims were Black Americans, a reality that birthed

James Baldwin’s moniker, “urban renewal is Negro removal.” For the next sixty years, eminent domain abuse by governments became the driving force behind new urban renewal projects.16

Soon urban renewal became synonymous with the dilution of cultural vitality and community. The early urban renewal period was fueled by the Housing Acts of 1949 and

1954. But the second wave of urban renewal commenced with the evolution of the federal Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere or the HOPE VI program in the early 1990s. Urban Renewal became known as the word most associated with the destruction of Black communities and further developed into gentrification. Several academic fields have engaged in the study of gentrification. Those writing on

16Ilya Somin, “The American Experience with Eminent Domain – and Its Possible Lesson For Others,” The Washington Post, May 26, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh- conspiracy/wp/2017/05/26/the-american-experience-with-eminent-domain-and-its-possible-lessons-for- others/.

13 gentrification have yet to agree on a single definition of the term which include: sociology, anthropology, political science, urban studies, planning, African American studies, history, and geography.17 Despite the fact that a concrete definition has yet to be determined, leading scholar and sociologist, Japonica Brown-Saracino, states that gentrification can be identified by a distinct set of traits. The traits include an influx of capital; social, economic, and physical transformation; and displacement.18

Outside of academia, journalists have been diligently documenting the causes and effects of gentrification. They have extensively documented and followed the stories of socio-cultural and environmental changes in cities.19 The term gentrification, the process of neighborhood change that results in the replacement of lower income residents with higher income residents, was first coined by British sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964.

While submitting a written report to the London Committee on Housing, Glass characterized gentrification as,

One by one, many of the working-class quarters of London have been invaded by the middle class – upper and lower. Shabby, modest mews and cottages – two rooms up and down – have been taken over, when their have expired, and have become elegant, expensive residents… Once this process of ‘gentrification’ starts in a district, it goes rapidly until all of most of the original working-class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed.20

17 Japonica Brown-Saracino, The Gentrification Debates (New York, Routledge, 2013), 9. 18 Ibid, 13. 19 June Gin and Dorceta Taylor, “Movements, Neighborhood Change, and the Media: Newspaper Coverage of Anti-Gentrification Activity in the San Francisco Bay Area: 1995-2005,” Research in Social Problems and Public Policy 18 (Winter 2010): 1-26. 20 Ruth Glass, “Introduction,” in The Gentrification Debates, ed. Japonica Brown-Saracino (Routledge, 2013), 22-23.

14 Glass’s work inspired a decade worth of empirical-based research that concentrated on documenting where the process of gentrification was occurring and who was affected. A few years earlier, wrote The Death and Life of Great

American Cities, a work that stressed the destructive process government officials used to rebuild cities. Jacobs argued that planning officials disregarded the lives of human beings in favor of rational planning principles.21 The Death and Life of Great American Cities became a beginning framework for assessing the health and vitality of urban communities by abandoning government redevelopment projects. Death and Life of Great American

Cities remains one of the most influential books in American City Planning. The book coined terms such as “social capital,” and “eyes on the street”, which were embraced professionally in the field of . However, Jacobs’ book was later criticized for her dismissal of race and her open endorsement of gentrification. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs referred to gentrification as the process of

“unslumming.”22 When Glass discovered the small but compelling enclave of returning middle-class residents, it concerned many scholars and journalists who then began the pursuit for signs in urban revitalization. Shortly after, the media declared a welcome shift in housing preferences. The “back-to-the-cities” movement was birthed, and the

21 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 4-5. 22 Ibid, 279-281.

15 geographer Peter Muller stated that the mass media believed that this movement would create positive social consequences.

The 1970s saw a rise in scholars who published the first theoretical explanations for the sudden reversal of decades long decline in cities based on groundbreaking fieldwork. Much of the literature focused on analyzing the ideologies of the incoming gentrifiers. The idea of a new urban homebuyer was a stark contrast from the familiar post-World War II suburban homebuyer who sought a single-family home in a nice area.

Scholars were determined to figure out the identity of the new type of buyers and why the unexpected change in preference.23

At the same time, scholars pointed out that the scope of gentrification began to include new construction and large-scale commercial developments designed to attract tourists and businesses. As the effects of gentrification on urban spaces became more detrimental, two theories of gentrification emerged that dominated academic discourse.

One theory, led by geographer David Ley was later dubbed “emancipatory city” and the other, by geographer Neil Smith, was later termed the “revanchist city.”24 The impact of these two theories on the study of gentrification should not be downplayed. And it is

23Maureen. Kennedy et al., Dealing with Neighborhood Change: A Primer on Gentrification and Policy Choices (Washington, DC.: Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, 2001), 9-10, 16. 24 Lorettas Lees, “A reappraisal of Gentrification: Towards a ‘geography of Gentrification,’” in The Gentrification Reader, ed. Loretta Lees, Tom Slater, and Elvin K Wyly (London: Routledge, 2010), 384-389.

16 impossible to write a historiography of gentrification without these two opposing viewpoints.25

In 1978, the renowned geographer David Ley claimed that the consumer demand for an alternative to the caused the redevelopment of urban spaces. Ley wrote,

“the neighborhoods themselves include a measure of lifestyle, ethnic, and architectural diversity, valued attributes of middle-class movers to the central city… the culture of consumption should not be underestimated in interpreting the revitalization of the inner city.”26 Ley’s theory became the “demand-side” theory because the gentry or consumers actively sought spaces free of a hegemonic culture of conformity.

Ley’s research primarily focused on the cultural politics of gentrification, which led to a variety of different theories that aimed to determine why families and individuals moved back to the city. Scholars blamed post-industrial white-collar jobs, the rejection of suburban ideals, a growing interest in historically preserved homes and neighborhoods, the rising cost of commuting to work, and finally a rising appreciation of human diversity and authentic urban living. In the emancipatory city theory, Ley further argued that the gentrifying class was less politically and religiously conservative than the old middle class. Scholarship that corresponded to Ley’s theory focused on gender, sexuality, and class as identifying characteristics for the gentrifying class. By 1994, Ley had argued that

25 Wyly, E.K. and Hammel, D.J. (2001), "Gentrification, housing policy, and the new context of urban redevelopment", Fox Gotham, K. (Ed.) Critical Perspectives on Urban Redevelopment (Research in Urban Sociology, Vol. 6), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 211-276. 26 David Ley, “Inner City Revitalization in Canada: A Vancouver Case Study,” Canadian Geographers, 25 (1981): 128.

17 the rise of a new middle-class with left liberal politics were the driving force behind gentrification. He became a proponent of the argument that gentrification is a cultural movement shaped by people’s preference for the inner-city. However, geographer Loretta

Lees contended that Ley’s theory ignored the inequalities of fortune and economic circumstance produced through the process of gentrification.27 His contribution to field of geography was that he was committed to being theoretically informed and grounded his research in ethnography. He believed that quantitative statistics and ethnographic descriptions were necessary, and this was demonstrated through his work.

In the following year, Neil Smith’s capital-driven theory argued that most homebuyers were developers, government agencies, real estate agents and builders driven by the need to earn profit.28 Smith’s theory was controversial as it built on Marxist ideas of political economy and explained that gentrification was an extension of state- sponsored structural inequality. This model emphasized economics over culture and structure over agency. In contrast with Ley’s theory, Smith’s revanchist city was considered to be the “production-side” theory as his analysis created a strong debate over the positive and negative effects of gentrification with displacement being the most discussed. Smith’s political-economic analysis of gentrification further argued that gentrification is an inherent component of capitalist development. He introduced the Rent

27 Lees, 385. 28 Neil Smith, “Toward a Theory of Gentrification A Back to the City Movement by Capital, Not People,” Journal of the American Planning Association 45, No. 4 (1979): 540.

18 Gap Theory which described the disparity between the current rental income of a property and the potential achievable rental income.29 According to this theory, investors are more likely to purchase land when this disparity is present because they would not invest in land if there is no profit. Like other theories, the rent gap theory was met with several criticisms. The main critique contended that the primary issue with rent gap theory was the confusion between potential rent and actual rent, the rent gap theory does not take into account zoning policies. Because these two concepts were misunderstood, it made the rent gap theory difficult to prove.30

The 1980s saw a rise in the impact of post-modernism on the social sciences as scholars began to accept a wide range of explanations for gentrification that did not fit the standard supply and demand debate. Scholars started acknowledging the different ways in which gentrification manifested and progressed over time. Every city was different, between the geography, the groups of people, and the political and economic forces, all of these aspects effected gentrification.

As the thinking on gentrification expanded, in 1984, geographer Damaris Rose published Rethinking Gentrification arguing that gentrification was a “chaotic concept.”

She noted that gentrification needed to be disaggregated and not treated as a single object for manipulation in statistical analyses. Instead, Rose suggested that scholars widen the

29 Neil Smith, "Gentrification and the Rent Gap," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 77, no. 3 (1987): 462-65. 30 Steven C. Bourassa, "The Rent Gap Debunked," Urban Studies 30, no. 10 (1993): 731-744, www.jstor.org/stable/43195902.

19 analytic lens by examining a variety of sources that spoke to the historical context and the socio-economic conditions of the people involved.31 Rose’s study of gentrification was multifaceted as it included race, class, gender, and sexuality. She challenged Smith’s political-economic analysis as the only explanation for gentrification. Rose further argued that restructured labor markets and changing lifestyles produce different kinds of households, altering who chooses to live in gentrified areas.32 Still, scholars ridiculed

Rose’s complete rejection of form, but fully embraced her call for the multidimensional study of gentrification. To that end, other scholars began to examine and publish studies of gentrification that included economic analyses and social analyses as explanations for gentrification.

In the same year, John Palen and Bruce London published Gentrification,

Displacement, and Neighborhood Revitalization in an effort to give an overview of issues and different perspectives on neighborhood revitalization. Both sociologists, Palen and

London introduced an empirical and objective approach to gentrification that is often the source of emotional and misinformed controversy. Gentrification, Displacement, and

Neighborhood Revitalization provided an introduction to major issues in urban revitalization and presented a comprehensive analysis of new research across all fields including sociologists, planners, geographers, and urban studies scholars. The book is

31 Damaris Rose, “Rethinking Gentrification: Beyond the Uneven Development of Marxist Urban Theory.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2, no. 1 (March 1984): 49. 32 Rose, 55.

20 framed in two sections: part one presents a “back to the city” concept that explores the socio-cultural roots of gentrification. The second half is a Marxist class analysis of gentrification that further proves that the phenomena is the process of political economic development. The compilation of literature argues that we are in a period where the market mechanism for allocating housing is not satisfactory for demand. Baby boomer household formation is the result of this underlying issue as one speculative incentives of non-productive real estate investment in a time of wage and salary freeze, and changes in expectations for private space. In the concluding essay of the book, Palen and London present an overall current state of knowledge about gentrification and examined the implications, suggesting future developments in the field and trends.33

Urban historians have been at the forefront of gentrification debates too. In 1985, urban historian Kenneth Jackson published Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. In Crabgrass Frontier, Jackson sums up the American suburban experience by identifying four important aspects that make the experience “unique”: population density, homeownership, residential status, and journey-to-work. He argues that the spatial arrangement of cities depended on economics, industrial development, technological achievement, and racial integration over ideology and national idiosyncrasies. Jackson further suggests that rising real costs of energy, land, and interest, technological stagnation in housing, change in family structures, and government policies

33 J. John Palen and Bruce London, Gentrification, Displacement and Neighborhood Revitalization. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984) 91.

21 stressing physical and fiscal conservation would bring stability and spatial equilibrium to cities.34 Moreover, Jackson examines the New Deal’s contributions to homeownership and suggests that, “the result, if not the intent, of the public housing program of the

United States was to segregate the races, to concentrate the disadvantaged in inner cities, and to reinforce the image of suburbia as a place of refuge for the problems of race, crime, and poverty.”35 By chronicling the development of the American suburbs and comparing American residential patterns over time, Jackson presents an analysis that allows the reader to see how society’s views on metropolises have changed with time.

While Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier provides a synthesis of interdisciplinary scholarship, it does not break new ground methodologically.

In 1988, historian Erik Monkonnen published America Becomes Urban: The

Development of U.S. Cities & Towns, 1780-1980. In America Becomes Urban,

Monkonnen presents an analysis of how local governments are the driving force behind urban development. He states that cities transitioned from regulatory cities to service cities. Being a regulatory city meant that cities determined who could practice trade and set price limits in local markets but took no responsibility for urban services. However, by the mid nineteenth century, cities created police and fire departments, public schools, and library systems. In a service city, public funds subsidize the city’s future growth.36

34 Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 14-16. 35Ibid, 219. 36 Erik H. Monkkonen, America Becomes Urban: The Development of U.S. Cities & Towns, 1780- 1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 5-7.

22 Monkonnen questions why fundamental aspects of such as population growth are not analyzed more. And he further suggests that growth and services are one and the same; that an emerging city invests more to grow more and that this provides resources to serve populations better.37 However, Monkonnen neglects addressing how the property business operated over time and how growth benefits were unequally distributed across class and race.

By the 1990s, scholars began incorporating the consequential changes taking place as gentrification evolved and expanded in cities across the globe. Major urban cities transitioned into the “,” which was a concept that stressed the fluidity of information and capital.38 The process of globalization caused a new class of elite of highly educated, professionals who created a shift towards the kind of public policy that utilized gentrification as a solution to city decline. However, Neil Smith contended that literature only expanded because,

The contest over gentrification symbolized a struggle not just for new and old urban spaces but for the political power to determine the urban future. The debate was as intense in newspapers as it was in the streets. For every defense of gentrification such as the one by the Real Estate Board of New York, there was an attack on gentrification because of the displacement it caused, the increase in rent prices, and the alterations to neighborhoods.39

37Ibid, 8. 38 John Friedman and Goetz Wolff. “World City Formation: An Agenda for Research and Action.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 6, no. 3 (September 1982): 309. 39 Neil Smith, “A Short History of Gentrification,” in the The Gentrification Debates, ed. Japonica Brown-Saracino (Routledge, 2013), 35-36.

23 In 1996, Smith published The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the

Revanchist

City where he intertwined the concepts of class, race, and space. He argued that the inner- city would be gentrified as a result of poor and minority populations who were blamed for the decline of the city. In referencing Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis,

Smith characterized the inner city as the wilderness of the twentieth century and the returning white middle-class as the “savior pioneers” fulfilling their destiny as democratic Americans.40

In the same year, Thomas Sugrue published The Origins of the Urban Crisis:

Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Sugrue’s analysis of Detroit emphasized structure and agency and highlighted deindustrialization and discrimination. He focused primarily on urban neighborhoods in Detroit where white working-class homeowners mobilized to prevent integration as Blacks tried to move out of the inner city. Sugrue argued that the intersection of deindustrialization, suburbanization and government policies (local, state, and federal) restructured jobs and housing. And as a result, eliminated opportunities for Black people to live where they pleased. He challenged the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of social programs and racial holes of the 1960s. Instead, he merged the history of workplaces, unions, political organizations, real estate agencies, and civil rights groups and found that today’s urban

40 Neil Smith, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 21-30.

24 poverty is the result of racial violence and discrimination. Sugrue’s analysis was groundbreaking to the field of urban studies, planning, and labor history because it combined qualitative and quantitative forms. His analysis gave importance to social structures and social and political institutions to further explain social dynamics and change.41

Kenneth Goings and Raymond Mohl published The New African American Urban

History in 1996 as well. The New African American Urban History was an edited volume about the Black urban experience. Goings and Mohl indicated that a “new” African

American urban experience had emerged. In this new experience, agency became the defining characteristic. Early research on urban renewal, Goings and Mohl argued, portrayed African Americans as passive and powerless victims of white racism or slum clearances. They examined earlier race-relation perspectives such as the ghetto synthesis model which focused on physical and institutional structures of Black communities and the degree to which whites regulated and controlled Black life. Goings and Mohl also explored the opposing agency model which explored to what extent slavery and freedom shaped the lives of African Americans and controlled their destinies.42 But in the “new”

African American urban history, Black people are depicted as actively working towards shaping their own future and taking control over their lives. Goings and Mohl selected

41 Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, Origins of the Urban Crisis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1996), 4-5. 42 Kenneth W. Goings and Raymond A. Mohl, The New African American Urban History. (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996), 2.

25 essays for this volume that ultimately illustrate the new avenues scholars should explore in African American urban history. By abandoning African American urban history’s emphasis on prominent African Americans and reexamining earlier conceptualization and periodization, the new African American urban history illustrates a more diverse community with defined divisions of class and culture.43 The chapters in Toward a New

African American Urban History highlight the new directions scholars have explored in

African American urban history. For example, chapter three “Mapping the terrain of

Black Richmond,” presents a new cultural history of the city’s Black community. By combining historical texts that demonstrate historic memory, gender, power, class, and festival behavior, historians Elsa Brown and Gregg Kimball reconstruct the lives of

African Americans and what shaped their conceptions of self and community.44

As the new millennium turned, urban planners, geographers, and sociologists of the 2000s all moved beyond supply and demand theory debates. Gentrification, still on the rise, began to materialize differently in different places. It no longer changed the popular big cities, but now moved into second and third tier cities such as small towns and rural towns. So too, it became common for cities that underwent gentrification in the

1970s, to experience regentrification in the late 1990s.

43 Ibid, 2-3. 44 Elsa Barkley Brown and Gregg D, Kimball, “Mapping the Terrain of Black Richmond,” in The New African American Urban History, edited by Kenneth W. Goings and Raymond A. Mohl, 66-67. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1996.

26 By the 2000s, the literature on gentrification searched for a synthesis that summed up the past twenty years of scholarship. The field of study felt that it had lost momentum.

Loretta Lees further confirmed that the study of gentrification had declined, and this worried her because the field could not develop past this theoretical plateau. Lees feared that the study of gentrification would not get to extend to other pressing matters. She stated, “now is not the time to let gentrification research disintegrate under the burden of its consensus.”45 Lees called attention to several key areas of research that include race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality, as well as the aspects of time and place.46 She argued that the competing economic and cultural explanations for gentrification both play a role in the effects of gentrification and synthesized the literature to prove it.

At this time, gentrification literature came under fire for its lack of concern for social justice in regard to minority urban populations. In 2001, Paul Leonard and

Maureen Kennedy published Dealing With Neighborhood Change: A Primer on

Gentrification and Policy Changes for the The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. The publication was part of the discussion paper series in which writers all published bodies of work that focus on the effects of gentrification in big urban cities such as Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. Leonard and Kennedy presented a body of work that reviewed the complex issues of gentrification such as the causes,

45 Loretta Lees, "A Reappraisal of Gentrification: Towards a ‘geography of Gentrification’," Progress in Human Geography 24, no. 3 (2016): 383. 46 Ibid, 385-388.

27 consequences, and political dynamics of gentrification. They examine findings and frameworks developed during the gentrification wave of the 70s and 80s. Patterns of growth and decline, investment and disinvestment occurring throughout metropolitan regions reflect more than simple economic opportunity and changing values, they argued.

They maintain that development patterns that led to gentrification mirrored failures to come to terms with issues of race and societal inequity.47 The paper is known for suggesting policies and strategies that aimed to advance equitable development and equitable policies by emphasizing the benefits of neighborhood change while minimizing the downside of those changes.48 Although the paper emphasized gentrification’s effect on social and cultural issues, Leonard and Kennedy did not address these social and cultural issues. Instead, they provided a clear definition of gentrification and attempted to clarify the perspectives of various stakeholders within gentrification and offer strategies to address gentrification.

In The of Critical Perspectives from Gentrification Research released in

2006, Tom Slater claimed that the word gentrification has “been appropriated by those intent on finding and recommending quick-fix solutions to complex urban problems.”49

He argued that the word gentrification had become “gentrified” itself. He further claimed

47 Maureen. Kennedy et al., Dealing with Neighborhood Change: A Primer on Gentrification and Policy Choices (Washington, DC.: Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, 2001), viii. 48 Ibid, v. 49 Tom Slater, The Eviction of Critical Perspectives from Gentrification Research.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30, no. 4 (2006): 752.

28 that scholars were no longer interested in documenting the inequitable effects of gentrification. Alternatively, scholars became much more interested in studying the interests and motivators of gentrifiers at the expense of those who suffer.50 In contrast, urban theorist Richard Florida published The Rise of the Creative Class in 2002. In this work, Florida replaced the word gentrification with “revitalization”, and argued that young, creative workers were the new engines of economic growth and cities needed to cater to them if they wanted to thrive.51 This led to city government leaders and lobbyists hoping to rewrite city policies on a rebranding of gentrification. Strikingly, the Rise of the

Creative Class does not list David Ley nor Neil Smith in the book’s index. This indicates a complete abandonment of the supply and demand theories and their essential analysis components as well as a disregard for race and class.

Historian Carl Abbott published How Cities Won the West in 2008. In this book,

Abbott focused on settlement and development of cities to the west of the Mississippi

River. He highlighted three themes: the centralizing impact of western cities; the rebalancing of people, place and productivity across time; and the transformation of powers that changed western cities from imitators to innovators.52 Cities rather than individual pioneers, Abbott states, are the driving force behind settlement and economic development. Western urban centers, served as starting points for conquering and

50 Ibid, 743-744. 51 Richard L. Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 10. 52Carl Abbott, How Cities Won The West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 2008), 8-10.

29 habitation for the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. As these frontier cities transitioned into metropolitan centers, they no longer mimicked eastern culture. Abbott details how the evolution of western cities from stations for exploration to entry points for migration are how cities won the west. He argues that the urban west symbolizes a new global center where patterns of behavior and change in customs will reshape North

America.53

In 2009, sociologist Japonica Brown-Saracino published A Neighborhood That

Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for Authenticity as an influential body of work that emphasized the perspective of the “power holders” or gentry. Brown-Saracino examined two neighborhoods in Chicago and two small towns in

New England, then presents an in-depth analysis and a comparative study of neighborhoods that had two different trajectories as well as two different histories caused by gentrification. In publishing A Neighborhood That Never Changes, she aimed to fill a gap within the literature on gentrification that detailed the lived experiences of the gentrifiers. She argued that most literature depicted the gentrifier as an urban pioneer, one who only moved by self-interest and she aimed to identify the other types of gentrifiers: the type of gentrifiers whose residential choices and daily practices are based upon political economy and culture.54 She further goes on to admit that not all gentrifiers are

53 Ibid, 11. 54 Japonica Brown-Saracino, A Neighborhood That Never Changes: Gentrification, Social Preservation, and the Search for Authenticity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 4.

30 bad and identifies three types of gentry: urban pioneer, social preservationists, and homesteaders. Social preservationists, she states, do not seek to achieve financial gain and do not intentionally support gentrification, and aim to prevent old-timers’ displacement.55 Homesteaders then, ideologically fall in between in the urban pioneers and the social preservationists. Brown-Saracino claims that homesteaders prioritize the natural environment over longtime residents, that they engage in the preservation of homes. While Brown-Saracino provides a micro-level analysis of neighborhoods and introduces a new way to examine gentrification, she fails to address the effects of displacement as a primary research concern. By focusing only on the ideologies of the gentrifiers, she makes the negative aspects of gentrification seem miniscule.

Furthermore, sociologist Jesus Hernandez of University of California, Davis published The Residual Impact of History: Connecting Residential Segregation,

Mortgage Redlining, and The Housing Crisis the same year. Hernandez focused on the county of Sacramento in California and examined how restrictive covenants, mortgage redlining, and urban redevelopment acted as economic and legal agents that promoted social closure. The Residual Impact of History analyzes federal housing policies along with multi-scaled private actions that carved segregated space and created a subprime market vulnerability in Sacramento’s non-white neighborhoods.56 He argued that the

55 Ibid, 254-255. 56 Jesus Hernandez, The Residual Impact of History: Connecting Residential Segregation, Mortgage Redlining, and The Housing Crisis. (Columbus: The Kirwan Institute, 2009), 6.

31 areas in Sacramento that experienced a high concentration of subprime loans were in areas historically known for creating mortgage redlining and as a result led to the thousands of home during the 2008 housing crisis. It is the major shift in risk, Hernandez states, that guided the opening of credit markets to traditionally underserved segregated spaces that aimed to capitalize on the financial and social vulnerabilities ingrained in urban development.57 While Hernandez addresses

Sacramento’s history of urban development, redlining, and racial covenants that ultimately played a huge role in housing foreclosures throughout Sacramento he does not address the larger issue of displacement in Sacramento.

Of all of the literature on gentrification and urban renewal, several theories and different perspectives have made the study of gentrification broad and well-versed: from theories of political-economic analyses; shifts in culture movement; restructured labor markets; being a chaotic concept; the introduction of agency; micro-level analyses that study individual neighborhoods; to interests in identifying motivators of gentrifiers; these competing images of gentrification ask different questions, employ distinct methods, and produce specific answers. Albeit, these processes do not address public policy and displacement with regards to gentrification.

This project then focuses on public policy, displacement, and gentrification.

Urban planning deals with public policy, sociology deals with people, and geography

57 Ibid, 15-16.

32 deals with space, making the study of gentrification an intersection of these disciplines.

Still, another underlying characteristic of gentrification – change over time – remains underexplored by policy makers who I argue are responsible for this unprecedented change. In fact, policy makers do not engage in the history of communities or study the displacement in these communities at all. For this reason, I have chosen to examine displacement. Debates surrounding Black population displacement in the context of gentrification remain complex but cannot be fully examined due to the lack of empirical evidence that documents the extent of the displacement. By looking closely at displacement, this research project incorporates the characteristic change over time because it shows how people have been forced out of cities by the legislation of local political institutions. I draw on Smith’s political-economic analysis that gentrification is capital-driven and that the government, developers, as well as real estate agents stand to profit from development projects. However, I suggest that the sports industry should now be added to this equation as they have a visible influence on the process of gentrification.58 Powerful interest groups follow a policy of neglect of the inner city once they become aware that policy changes could yield tremendous profits.59 It is through this lens that I intend to analyze the collected data and further the argument that communities have been displaced as a result of the building of the Golden 1 Center. So too, this

58 Robert A Baade and Richard F Dye, “Sports Stadiums and Area Development: A Critical Review,” Economic Development Quarterly 2, no. 3 (1988): 265–75. 59 Palen and London, 18-19.

33 research examines the effects of redevelopment as public policy communities with regards to the Golden 1 Center. The following research questions guide this research:

What was the impact of the Golden 1 Center? How have the demographics of Sacramento changed? And what are the social and economic changes for the city? Why, after consecutive decades of redevelopment and erasure of communities, does the city of

Sacramento continue to implement policies and development projects that lead to displacement?

By exploring these questions, I argue that Black people are being displaced at an accelerated rate as a result of state-sponsored policies and the desire for the sports industry and real estate developers to invest in the city as a means of profit for city officials. State sanctioned displacement on Black communities takes place in many forms. Sometimes it is disguised as urban renewal, other times it looks like residential segregation, and more recently building sports stadiums as an economic development plan. This project does not provide a complete solution to the side effects of gentrification. Instead it aims to present an analysis to city officials, developers, policymakers, and residents to illustrate the direct effects of policies that have caused gentrification and led to displacement. The goal of this project is to become a resource to the city of Sacramento to better understand the historical trends in gentrification and better assist in minimizing displacement in future development projects. If gentrification and displacement are a concern, local leaders need to implement policies that are fair and balanced. It is my hope that this analysis will be used in future ventures to help create

34 equitable development. By equitable development, I mean the creation and maintenance of economically and socially diverse communities that are stable over the long term, through means that generate minimum transitional costs that fall unfairly on low-income residents.60 I believe that the data explored and presented in this paper is a promising framework for the development of these policies, which will have major implications on city planning, local tax policies, and land use reform.

The methodology for this project is multifaceted. My work is grounded in Census and American Community Survey data. I examine years 2000 and 2010 in Census data and years 2005 through 2018 in American Community Survey Data. From these surveys,

I collected neighborhood characteristics and used them as variables to input on an

ArcGIS map that will be utilized to illustrate displacement over time. From the Census, I compared neighborhood characteristics such as population, population growth/decline, non-white population, low income households, and change in low-income households.

This comparison allows me to show the displacement and who is being displaced. The

American Community Survey focuses on attributes such as occupancy rate, household rate, the number of renter households, median household income, change in rent, and new market rate units that allow me to demonstrate how the housing supply has converted to smaller units from family size units. The ACS data comparison of housing characteristics

60 Kennedy and Leonard, 4.

35 allows the map to reflect how much the housing market has changed as a direct effect of gentrification in Sacramento.

The use of geographic information systems (GIS) mapping to interpret and process the data I collected gives urban planners and policymakers a bird’s eye view of gentrification, making historical comparisons and predictions more concise. GIS mapping takes into account a city’s transportation network and development projects that are underway, but it is primarily used to develop more sustainable housing policies. For

American cities, GIS mapping divides communities by zip codes; therefore, the lines used to separate cities are not reflected on GIS maps, which then allows viewers to pinpoint how and when gentrification is taking place.

To further understand the data I collected and how to describe how it appears on the map, I developed a typology chart to identify the varying degrees of gentrification and displacement. I created five different typologies on a scale of very high, high, medium, medium-low, and low and used these typologies to score the different areas of

Sacramento for gentrification and displacement. I then generated criteria for each typology that would allow me to file and rank the areas of Sacramento based on their typology. First, I defined very high as ongoing gentrification and the displacement of low-income residents. The criteria for “very high” lists low-income neighborhood, vulnerability to gentrification, a loss of low-income households and a decline in low- income migration rate. Any neighborhood in the “high” category is defined as a neighborhood at risk of gentrification; therefore, its residents are also at risk of

36 displacement. To identify characteristics of neighborhoods in the high category, the area has to meet two of the four criteria. There has to be a fixed light rail station, historic housing, it is a hub for booming employment and/or there is a hot housing market.

“Medium” typology is defined as not losing any low-income households. This means that the data for the area is a moderate to high income tract. Neighborhoods with a “medium- low” typology are at risk of exclusion. At risk of exclusion means the neighborhood is almost ripe for gentrification but not quite. Similar to the “high” typology, to identify a medium-low area it will have a fixed light rail station, a hot housing market and is becoming an employment center. Finally, there is the “low” typology. A low typology is an area that consists of all moderate to high income residents. In some cases, this could mean that the area has already been gentrified and continues to exclude low income residents.

Typology (tract income level) Typology Criteria Very High • Low income tract (ongoing gentrification and • Vulnerability to gentrification displacement of low income • Loss of low income households residents) • Decline in low income migration rate High • Low income tract (at risk of gentrification and • Fixed light rail stations displacement) • Historic housing stock • Employment center • Hot housing market Medium (not losing low income • Not classified as at risk, ongoing or households) advanced Medium Low (at risk of exclusion) • Moderate to High Income tract • Fixed light rail stations • Historic housing stock • Employment center • Hot housing market

37 Low (ongoing exclusion) • Moderate to High income tract • Low and declining proportion of low- income households

38 Chapter 2

A History of Redevelopments

The history of land use controls in the United States has primarily been one of delegation of the power to plan local governments along with the power to implement the plans at that level of government.61 All three levels of government – federal, state, and local – must be considered to fully understand the land use system of the United States.

Local governments are the main actors that adopt and implement laws and the tools for regulating land use, while the federal government’s role in land use is limited. When the

U.S Constitution was drafted and signed in 1787, the founding fathers carefully balanced power between the newly created federal government and the state governments. The outcome of this balanced power is that states enjoy all powers that are not entrusted by the Constitution to the federal government.

Since land use regulation is not among the powers delegated to the federal government, it cannot intervene in any state’s land use matters unless they are related to interstate commerce or international treaties.62 Additionally, legal scholars believe that states possess the police power to protect and promote public welfare objectives including , safety, and morals. Therefore, a state government may enact or adopt the necessary laws and regulations to control land use. However, most states have

61 Robert R. Wright, Morton and Gitelman, Cases and Materials on Land Use. 5th ed. American Casebook Series. (St. Paul: West Pub, 1997), 12. 62 U.S. Constitution, Article I §8 & Article VI

39 implemented laws that transfer the authority to regulate land use to local governments. In many states, especially California, local governments’ authority has been enhanced through the delegation of “home rule” legislation, that allows cities to adopt their own charters and laws within the bounds of their state government.

Cities and their planning have the power to control and alter the lives of their residents, making cities one of the greatest inventions. When we say cities, Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution, reminds us that we really mean “metropolitan areas.” They are essential for social and economic organizing, bringing people together, and creating jobs of all which are required for economic growth for the wealthy and prominent. They improve living standards, provide interactions and networks, and generate wealth, but not for everyone. More often than not, cities disproportionately effect minorities. Whether it be in equal access to transportation, excessive local rent, not having access to chain grocery stores where food is affordable, or even being near a local hospital, cities primarily cater to upper middle class and upper-class residents.

Jane Jacobs argued that cities are engines of innovation and that the people in them promote and accelerate economic growth.63 If cities are the most powerful engines of growth, they are also greener and more environmentally efficient. Population density discourages car use and further promotes mass transit and walking. However, this is not the reality for most cities. Often, the economic growth and innovation that local

63 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Vintage Books ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 7.

40 governments promote further inner-city bills such as poverty, crime, poor health, rigid roads, and environmental hazards, which all present serious problems to residents. Cities face these challenges repeatedly – especially as populations increase. The 2008 economic crisis exacerbated these challenges and left cities with high rates of housing foreclosures and unemployment.64 The economic role of cities, their amenities, and growing attractiveness have made them centers ripe for gentrification but also primed for displacement.

The city of Sacramento is a prime example of this phenomena. Bounded by two rivers, Sacramento is the fastest growing major city in California and serves as the capital of California. Sacramento operates as a political epicenter and lobbying base for the state’s top politicians. It owes its financial status to being an educational hub for UC

Davis and Sacramento State University, and home to healthcare industry giants such as

Kaiser, UC Davis Medical, and Sutter Health. Sacramento is also a city of redevelopments and reinventions. Over the decades, it has collected many different monikers such as: Gateway to the Gold Rush, Indomitable City, City of Trees, and more recently America’s Farm-to-Fork capital. In the process, the city has changed from being once plagued by fires, floods and epidemics to a city of homelessness, soaring rents, high mortgages, unprecedented gentrification, and displacement.

64 Jesus Hernandez, The Residual Impact of History: Connecting Residential Segregation, Mortgage Redlining, and The Housing Crisis. (Columbus: The Kirwan Institute, 2009), 2.

41 Still, the City of Sacramento has evolved into a “western” city. In his book, How

Cities Won the West, Carl Abbott outlines three themes that characterize western cities.

First, western cities view themselves as central or centralized points in a global economy; they mature into modern metroplexes that sell themselves as centers of commerce of innovation. Secondly, western cities pass from pioneer stage to a settled condition. And finally, western cities have ceased to be imitators of eastern culture and capital, instead they have come forward as innovators.65 Sacramento has exhibited all three of these themes.

To write a full analysis of the history of Sacramento would present a vibrant narrative, but it is well beyond the scope of this project. Instead, I present a history of

Sacramento but limit it to the instances where redevelopment and displacement were the result of local policy implementation. The historical development of Sacramento spanning from 1850 to the present must be examined within the context of the historical development of the Sacramento region as a whole. It must also be examined in the context of the historical development of the nation. Taken together, these two contexts offer a view of Sacramento’s history of public policy and how these public policies have created a constant redevelopment cycle that ultimately leads to displacement. The following pages highlight five occurrences where the city of Sacramento sought economic growth over people and as a result displaced many of its residents.

65 Carl Abbott, How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America (Albuquerque: Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 4-13.

42 Sacramento contains a unique heritage. It first served as home to native peoples like the Miwok. They built their villages alongside the Sacramento River. Miwok villages served as the center of Miwok life as they varied in size, from housing a dozen members to hundreds of members. Within the villages, specific territories designated to groups or families. Their diet, primarily made up of acorns, deer, and sometimes fish, provided nutrition. Deer were a main staple in their diets and served as an important resource. With deer, the meat was used as food, while the skin, bones, and hooves were recycled to make clothes and tools. The Miwok had their own tribal culture and it differed from other native cultures because some tribal leaders attended Spanish missions for the purpose of learning their religion and culture. Still, the Miwok were resistant and refused to convert to any Spanish influence.66

By the eighteenth century, European contact with California had increased. The first to arrive were the Spanish. They surveyed much of the California land with the ultimate goal of expanding their influence, including their religion and culture. The

Spanish were not here very long before they decided that the land did not render much success. Still they sectioned California into Mexican land grants for permanent settlement. The Spanish left behind their use of pueblos and their architectural styles such as mission styled homes and churches. Soon thereafter, Anglo travelers came to explore

California land for development. The arrival of Anglo travelers and their need to conquer

66 “The Miwok People,” California Department of Parks and Recreation, accessed April 4, 2020, https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=22538

43 land clashed with the lives of the native peoples. In the same breath, John Sutter arrived with big ambitions of settling Sacramento. He understood that although the Spanish did not deem Sacramento worthy of missions and settlement, the Indians had made a life here for years. Sutter knew that Indian labor was essential to him and that he would have to learn how to make use of the available resources before stealing the land from the

Indians.67

Before urban renewal and gentrification became common concepts throughout developing and redeveloping cities, there was the California Gold Rush. And although

California was not the only place to experience a “gold rush,” the total number of people who participated in the mass migration makes the California Gold Rush unique.

Sacramento became a popular destination after. On January 24, 1848, when James

Marshall panned the first piece of gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California. The result of this discovery would go on to create a gold mining boom throughout California, a boom that created a hub for cultural, social, and commercial exchange.68 The story of newfound gold spread like a wildfire and over 300,000 people between the years 1848 and 1854 flocked to California from all over. The sudden influx of gold and its ability to be used as currency revived the American economy and catalyzed the development of the

67 Christopher J Castaneda and Lee M. A Simpson, River City and Valley Life: An Environmental History of the Sacramento Region (Pittsburgh PA: Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013), 13. 68 Steven M. Avella, Sacramento: Indomitable City. (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 29.

44 state. Sacramento’s sudden population increase helped create the Compromise of 1850; which admitted California as a free state.

Marshall’s discovery of gold also became the prelude to the formation of

Sacramento. Eager developers, such as Samuel Brannan, saw advantages to dividing and carving Sacramento land into plots for profit. Initially arriving in Sacramento to establish

Mormon enclaves, Brannan created a profitable market by building homes, shops, and food processing facilities. His original store location at Sutter’s Fort turned out to be too small once Sacramento’s population began to boom. Brannan relocated to the Sacramento

River near K Street where he set up shop. It was this area that established the location of the city of Sacramento, or the “embarcadero.” New communities would develop, and the creation of Sacramento began despite Sacramento’s constant flooding. One of the first communities to establish themselves was the Black community creating is what historian

Shirley Moore identifies as the “California Lifestyle.” The California Lifestyle promised social freedom as well as economic advancement contrary to what many had known in the south.69 Black involvement in the social fabric of California began well before the

Gold Rush; however, the Gold Rush further created a sense of “community identity” between Blacks after a sizable number of them began to settle in the mining camps.70

Like the Native peoples, Black inhabitants formed community along the south side of the

69 Shirley Ann Wilson Moore, To Place Our : The African American Community in Richmond, California, 1910-1963 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 3. 70 Clarence Caesar, The Historical Demographics of Sacramento’s Black Community, 1848-1900. California History, Vol. 75, No. 3 (Fall 1996), 199.

45 American River. Since there were few of them, they formed clusters and moved together as a unit as they established norms and a way of life. Every place they went to was labeled Nigger Bar, Nigger Hill, Nigger Slide or Nigger Flats.71

In 1848, an army engineer by the name of Captain William H. Warner surveyed and platted the new city. Sacramento’s infamous grid system was implemented; east-west streets named after letters of the alphabet and north-south streets numbered. As more businesses opened along the embarcadero, more buildings were added to the skyline, and more land was being sold but property rights became a large issue in Sacramento by

1850.72 Land developers became upset with the landless over the value of property.

Already, in Sacramento’s first official year, the city’s real estate came under the control of the elite.73 The elite comprised white men from Europe who came to California with the intentions of taking land for the sake of ownership and profit. They fled their own countries to further colonize another with hopes of accumulating more wealth. In the early stages of city planning of Sacramento, white men had already marginalized and deemed the Indian and Black populations as unworthy of owning land. Still,

Sacramento’s population fluctuated and synchronized with the mining seasons, inhabitants ditched the city during the dry seasons and returned during the wet seasons.

71 Ibid, 206. 72 Avella, 31. 73 Ibid, 36.

46 At the same time, the city grappled with the need for a stable government to protect current and future investments as well as address the ongoing property rights issues.

The California State Legislature was established in 1850, the same year California was admitted to the Union as a free state. By April 1850, the state legislature passed “An

Act concerning forcible entry and Unlawful Detainer,” addressing the city’s ongoing issue with squatters. Next, the city of Sacramento passed an ordinance that forbade the building of tents, shanties, or houses on vacant lots that belonged to private persons.74

The creation of Sacramento and the process of its city building from to local government establishment is an important one because it set a precedent for how the city would go on to address social issues such as housing, homelessness, redevelopment, and displacement. Even in Sacramento’s infancy laws created by Sacramento’s elite were implemented and resulted in the displacement of the marginalized. The first example of dislocation was the removal of Native peoples. The arrival of John A. Sutter, the fur trade and the Gold Rush, decimated the population of

Indigenous people. Sutter, a resourceful but conniving man, understood that the Miwok

Indians were his only chance of advancing the fur trade. He exploited their labor by refusing to pay them once he realized that their skills increased their value as workers.75

Once Sutter had full control of what products came in and out of Sacramento, he introduced cannons to the Indians. Ultimately this introduction to war materials became

74 Ibid, 38. 75 Castaneda and Simpson, 17-21.

47 the demise of the Miwok and Nisenan tribes like Sutter planned. He began to pit the

Miwok and the Nisenan against one another and the attack and retreat tactics permanently destroyed villages. This destruction of villages played right into the hand of the John

Sutter’s plan of using the Indians to gain control and then pushing them out.76 Although brutal, this process of displacement continues throughout Sacramento history.

Similar to the Gold Rush, the transcontinental railroad ushered a wave of people into California. The need for a railroad system that tied the east coast to the west coast came at a time when Sacramento was still constantly changing and rapidly developing.

The Central Pacific Railroad’s launch in 1863 demanded an abundance of cheap, unskilled labor. The call for unskilled labor altered the demographics of Sacramento dramatically as immigrants settled in the city. This wave of people largely included the

Chinese. While some had arrived earlier in search for gold, Chinese immigrants mostly sought money by building the railroad.77

As this large influx of Chinese immigrants grew, a close-knit enclave developed along I Street called the “China Slough.” Aside from railroad workers, Chinese immigrants became laundrymen, merchants, and restauranteurs. As more Chinese immigrants flooded Sacramento’s labor market, white working-class men grew angry at the abundance of cheap labor provided by Chinese as these laborers were able to keep

76 Ibid, 21. 77 Gordon H Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin, The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad (Redwood City: Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2019), 236-237.

48 steady employment. By the late 1870s, anti-Chinese sentiments grew and the Chinese were banned from local employment. White laborers, under the guise of the

Workingman’s Party, pushed a “white labor only” initiative that emphasized hiring white workers only.78 The Workingman’s Party launched as a result of the American Civil War.

The war had brought a degree of prosperity and that prosperity bred speculation and corruption in businesses and banks. This corruption gave way to the creation of several labor unions in an effort to fight for and protect employees. But these labor unions did not protect all employees – just white employees. In California, the declining value of mining stocks, the failure of the Bank of California, and the fact that land was in the hands of the few, created a situation that white laborers resented. They grew angry because they could not move when and where they pleased. The Central Pacific Railroad also made white laborers discontent because it adhered to organized labor and the railroad company hired Chinese laborers for a wage below what white laborers would work for, thus, creating a competition for them. The resentment escalated to white laborers rioting, burning down Chinese businesses, and destroying wash houses.79 Five years later, The federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 cemented America’s hatred towards the Chinese. It was the first significant piece of legislation that restricted

78 Ralph Kauer, "The Workingmen's Party of California," Pacific Historical Review 13, no. 3 (1944): 278-91. 79 Ibid, 277-279.

49 immigration into the United States. This specific act placed a ten-year moratorium on

Chinese labor immigration.

This systemic racism became even more visible in Sacramento, well into the

1900s. Land had been platted and sold for development, but who could buy that land depended on the buyer’s race. One of the earliest signs of legalized race restrictions on residency in Sacramento appeared through the use of property restrictions on non- white occupancy – also known as racially restrictive covenants. Like other U.S. cities, the use of restrictive covenants in Sacramento started with real estate developers that were affiliated with the local real estate board, which became a part of the National

Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) in 1918. Formed in 1908, NAREB was a coalition of local and state real estate associations throughout the United States. They sought an agenda that only considered the needs of the community developers. The developers were also the people in power. They were white men with accumulated wealth and the power to control. And to build “successful” communities, they required strict long-term building race restrictions on all lots.80

J.C. Carly – a prominent, local developer and former president of NAREB – began using race covenants in new residential subdivisions throughout Sacramento. At the start of 1913, NAREB advised all members not to participate in creating communities that mixed Black and Chinese residents with white residents through the sale of property.

80 Hernandez, 7.

50 Each state had its own provisions to the law. In California specifically, realtors incorporated racially restrictive covenants in property deeds and in actual purchase agreements. In the California Real Estate Law, the clause read, “No part of said premises shall be sold, leased, or rented, or suffered to be occupied by as tenants for hire or gratuitously, any persons not of the white or Caucasian race.”81 This sole clause along with racial covenants added to purchase agreements completely barred certain races from living in specific areas. It further emphasized that racially segregated neighborhoods were beneficial based on the premise that allowing Black people into neighborhoods lowered the property value. This law led to a long history of redlining, that is still prevalent today and has had severe ramifications on Black communities.

J.C. Carly and Company as well as Wright and Kimbrough developed and built most of the homes in Curtis Park and East Sacramento. As these developers built homes, racial covenants were written into deed restrictions that prevented non-white residents from moving into the homes they built. As a result of the racial covenants, Black and

Japanese residents migrated to the West End shaping a majority of Sacramento’s neighborhoods today. Visitors to East Sacramento, Curtis Park, and the Fab 40s see a white, wealthier class with many resources available to them. Meanwhile, Del Paso

Heights, Oak Park, and South Sacramento are neighborhoods where renters are predominantly low-income and of color with the burden of having to travel long

81 Hernandez, 7-8.

51 distances to access their resources and services and living in deteriorated conditions.82 As well as show signs of deterioration or already deteriorated and they are experiencing the devalorization cycle.

Twentieth century Sacramento saw an increase in Japanese immigration. The

Japanese sustained their own enclave in the West End, opening more than 200 businesses and creating Japantown stretching east from Second to Fifth Street and south from L to O

Street. Today this area is known as Capitol Mall. Japanese owned pool halls, hospitals, banks, barbershops and several churches. At the same time Sacramento continued to grow as a city, and it reformed its government time and time again. Once in 1911, the city charter was written by fifteen residents who did not represent Sacramento as a whole.

Instead, this committee reflected a small percentage of Sacramento’s population – a white and wealthy population. The charter called for five non-partisan, elected commissioners to serve the city. The commission failed two years later, and the city had to revise the charter in 1921. This time, the revision created a nine-member city council – the current model of Sacramento City’s government. It was during this revision of the charter that the city manager position was established. The city manager’s position oversaw budgets and issued licenses to new businesses. As a consequence, the Japanese community suffered. The city manager, Clyde Seavey had the power to prevent new Japanese

82 Ibid, 6.

52 businesses from opening denying Japanese businesses new licenses for their poolrooms and saloons.83

Once World War II started, anti-Japanese sentiment increased, especially after the attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor. In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive

Order 9066 which made it legal to gather Japanese residents and throw them into internment camps. In Sacramento, the internment of Japanese residents left Japantown empty. Several businesses were closed and lost. The internment camps lasted four years and Japanese citizens were free to assimilate back into society. As they returned to their homes in Sacramento, Japanese residents would soon fall victim to urban development.84

It began with the creation of Sacramento’s Chamber of Commerce in 1942. The

Chamber of Commerce capitalized on the economic prosperity pumping into

Sacramento’s economy by the military installations of McClellan, Mather, and the Army

Signal Depot. The Chamber of Commerce along with city officials aimed to establish

Sacramento as a commercial and population center for Northern California. The development of the West End was an early example of this goal. This time during redevelopment though, urban cores were carved up for new schools, new infrastructure, water projects and the introduction of the health care industry.85 Three years later, The

83 Avella, 81-82. 84 Emily Zentner, “What Happened To The Property of Sacramento’s Japanese American Community Interned During World War III?” Capital Public Radio, June 14, 2019, https://www.capradio.org/articles/2019/06/04/what-happened-to-the-property-of-sacramentos-japanese- american-community-interned-during-world-war-ii/. 85 Avella, 120-122.

53 California Community Redevelopment Act was created in 1945. The law gave local governments the tools to address urban problems such as decay, degraded buildings and a lack of affordable housing. Then in 1949, the Federal Housing Act passed, and it promised government subsidies for slum clearance as well as funding for the construction of affordable housing for the displaced.

A year later, the Sacramento Redevelopment Agency launched in 1950. It became the driving force behind the massive effort to reshape the city in the decades to come.

Invented with the purpose to create a large-scale program for slum removal, the

Sacramento Redevelopment Agency pioneered a redevelopment blueprint that became the working model for the nation. The primary goal was to design high rise public housing complexes mixed with new commercial buildings in the redevelopment zones.

April 14, 1954, marked the very first public hearing held by the Sacramento

Redevelopment Agency. At this hearing they announced the first urban renewal project,

“The Capitol Mall Project,” which laid out the plan to demolish a 15-square block area of

Sacramento’s West End and replace it with a “gateway” into the city. The West End of

Sacramento included the area between the State Capitol and the Sacramento River or all of current day Capitol Mall. This project, widely endorsed by fourteen organizations, would go on to define Sacramento’s redevelopment master plan for the remainder of the decade.86

86 Chris Lango, “Replacing the Past: Sacramento’s Redevelopment History,” KVIE, April 20, 2016, video, 26:46, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEUNt6_oYtI.

54 Since the Gold Rush, the West End served as the city’s first community and one of the first business districts. It became the most populated, integrated, diverse neighborhood. To politicians, newcomers, and developers, the West End was a slum; but to others, the West End provided affordable housing to thousands, mostly Black people, other minorities, and men over the age of 55. Still the neighborhood was referred to as

“skid row.” The tax base was low and the value of the property in the area continued to diminish. Crime plagued the area and public health became a hazard. Moving forward with the Capitol Mall Project required the removal of residents, but opposition came from businessmen because it meant that the city would have to accommodate the relocation of residents. Developers and the city evaded this problem by adding a precondition in order to qualify for relocation: you had to be a family. For three years the project sat on the shelf because it could not draw the appropriate support.

Two months after the announcement of the Capitol Mall Project, prominent

Sacramento-born Japanese-American attorney Henry Taketa addressed the Sacramento

City Council pleading the importance of not moving forward with the proposed project.

One of the neighborhoods in the West End was Japantown, when dated back to the

1880s. And it had only been nine years since the residents of Japantown returned from the internment camps during World War II. The Capitol Mall Project would initiate the second forced displacement.

When the November 1954 election rolled around, all West End residents were relieved to hear that the 1.5 million dollar bond measure that asked the public to pay for

55 the project did not receive enough votes. What the Sacramento Redevelopment Agency did next laid the foundation and blueprint for other cities to bypass local elections and secure the necessary funding needed for their redevelopment projects as well as future projects. Two years prior, the California Legislature passed a law called Tax Increment

Financing also known as TIF. Tax Increment Financing refers to the process of paying for redevelopment activity with anticipated increased property tax revenues from the redevelopment project itself. The Sacramento Redevelopment Agency was the first city to take advantage of this method.87

The original cost of the Capitol Mall Project had a price tag of six million dollars which included the demolition and clearance of the land. Through implementation of Tax

Increment Financing, the agency was ready to revisit the project and explain how funding did not need to come from the public in order for the project to move forward. Then- executive director Jerome Lipp, as a PR stunt, announced on live television how Tax

Increment Financing worked to the public. Lipp stated that two-thirds of the funding would come from the federal government through the Federal Housing Act. The remaining two million dollars, the Sacramento Redevelopment Agency would pay for itself by issuing its own bond; and that bond would be secured by the increase in tax revenue that would flow from the project.88

87 Paul F Byrne, “Determinants of Property Value Growth for Tax Increment Financing Districts,” Economic Development Quarterly 20, no. 4 (2016): 317–29. 88 Avella, 129.

56 To make matters worse, postwar highway development exacerbated the issue of displacement. President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. The act authorized cities and states to build 41,000 miles worth of interstate roads stretching from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco. Eisenhower believed that the construction of highways would eliminate unsafe roads, reduce traffic jams, and significantly improve cities’ residential areas. It can also be argued that the reason for the new highway system was a precautionary measure for a nuclear attack on the nation’s biggest cities during the peak of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. However, highway construction destroyed

Black and other minority communities. In Sacramento, Interstate-5’s pavement and the downtown areas adjacent were once the home to a flourishing ethnic enclave of working- class families of color.

By January 1957, the demolition of Japantown and the West End had begun. For the next two years, 15 square blocks were cleared, and thousands of residents were displaced. Historian William Burg characterizes the demolition as “a very thorough destruction of Japantown, the most thorough on the west coast.” The change was substantial considering that Sacramento was, by population percentage in the 1920s, primarily Japanese. Other minority groups in the West End were moved out as well.

Almost two thousand Black residents were displaced. Historic churches such as St.

Andrew’s and Shiloh and community institutions were decimated. The search for affordable housing became difficult as a result of the racial restrictive covenants that were designed during the 1920s by developer J.C. Carly. Oak Park, Meadowview, and

57 Freeport Manor of south Sacramento became primary relocation points for the Black community. Sacramento’s first Black attorney – Nathaniel Colley – represented many of these residents throughout this period of redevelopment.89

On July 27, 1959, Governor Pat Brown led the grand opening of Capitol Mall’s first construction project: the new federal building located at 6th Street and Capitol. The city of Sacramento paraded the completion of the Capitol Mall Project as a success as it generated seventy percent of the tax revenue. The conversion of Capitol Avenue to

Capitol Mall earned Sacramento the highest praise across the country. It won the Ward

Melville Gold Medal, which is a prestigious community development award presented to cities who have the best urban renewal project. Soon after, Wells Fargo, Bank of

America, and other buildings joined the federal building on Capitol Mall. As more businesses opened, the population surrounding Capitol Mall decreased.

In 1950, before redevelopment, 4,467 people lived in the census tract that incorporated all of Japantown and the West End. After redevelopment, in 1970, the number of people decreased to 377 – a population loss of ninety-two percent. So too, 350 businesses were displaced as well. Sixty years later, the community identity that welcomed people of all walks of life to the West End no longer exists. The aggressive urban redevelopment program displaced thousands without relocating them and high-rise

89 Chris Lango, “Sacramento: A City of Redevelopments,” The Metropole, April 12, 2018, https://themetropole.blog/category/metropolis-of-the-month/sacramento/.

58 buildings were built where gas stations and laundromats once stood. Still, this makeover came at a great price. The liveliness that downtown once had ceased to exist.90

At the turn of the decade, redevelopment slowed in Sacramento as a result of a lack of financial support. In 1960, Mayor Miller, drew plans for another substantial urban renewal project. Miller had been hellbent on building a pedestrian mall for K Street, a convention center, and intended to create a new historic park named “Old Sacramento.”

With Mayor Burnett Miller eager to start to a new redevelopment project, the city adopted a new general plan in 1963. The new plan incorporated new freeway routes and included an area to be developed as a “Historical Center.”91 Still, the project did not gain much support until 1967 when a group of developers formed the Downtown Plaza

Properties Group.

A year prior, the federal government passed the National Historic Preservation

Act of 1966. The act was passed to recognize the importance of protecting the nation’s heritage from rapid development. The plan to designate Old Sacramento as a National

Historic District emphasized “preservation, restoration and reconstruction of ” of the period from 1849 to 1870.92 So too, President Johnson assembled the Kerner

Commission chaired by and named after the Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. The purpose of this commission was to identify the main cause for growing violence in cities. When

90 Chris Lango, “Replacing the Past: Sacramento’s Redevelopment History,” KVIE, April 20, 2016, video, 26:46, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEUNt6_oYtI. 91Castaneda and Simpson, 296-297. 92 Ibid, 299.

59 the Kerner Commission report was released in March 1968, it found that growing racial inequality caused by residential segregation was the main cause behind the riots in

Detroit, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The lack of economic opportunity, racism, and failed social service programs, all contributed to these uprisings in big cities. In response,

President Johnson passed the Fair Housing Act, which was developed to combat discrimination in housing sales. Between the destruction of neighborhoods due to highway construction, redlining, and urban renewal, the 50s well into the 60s saw a housing shortage that primarily effected minorities.93

Sacramento’s history remains troubled and murky. While it is one of the most diverse cities, it is still segregated. This is evident when historic Sanborn maps and

the demographics of Sacramento are surveyed. Where a majority of the upper middle class white families live, there are racial restrictive covenants on old Home

Owners’ Loan Corporation redlining maps that barred Black and Japanese residents from living there decades prior. And where low-income minorities live, the areas are run down and are on track to becoming gentrifiable tracts, which begins the process of displacement. For over one hundred years, Sacramento has displaced its residents in search of creating a city more grand, a city more profitable. Sometimes that profit was for self and in the case of John Sutter, it was for self-gain. Other times it was for the benefit

93 Alexander von Hoffman, “The Lost History of Urban Renewal,” Journal of : International Research on and Urban Sustainability 1, no. 3 (November 1, 2008): 281–301.

60 of one race as a whole or a particular agency: Preventing Chinese laborers from receiving jobs, redeveloping the whole west end, and now gentrifying in the name of economic prosperity. As a thank you, residents were uprooted from their homes and their apartments were demolished with no attempt to relocate them or compensation. And in each instance, the displacer was always white and wealthy while the displaced was always a disadvantaged person of color.

Today Sacramento suffers from an aggressive stage of gentrification and displacement. It is happening so quickly that it is unnoticeable until the damage is already done. The process initially began with Sacramento’s “All-Star Weekend” campaign in

1985 with developers Greg Lukenbill and Joseph and Richard Benvenuti. In the 1980s,

9,000-acres of land in North Natomas went untouched. Sacramento’s general plan, at the time, planned for Natomas to remain agricultural, but developers saw it as an opportunity to create revenue for the city. The problem with this plan was that the developers needed the city to rezone the area before the proposed building plan could take place. Eventually

Lukenbill and the Benvenuti brothers forced the city’s hand by hinting at building a sports stadium and then purchasing the Sacramento Kings organization. The city had to rezone the area and this why Arco Arena on Truxel Boulevard exists today.94

The idea of Sacramento hosting an All-Star weekend was tabled until the year

2008. That year saw California legalize same-sex marriage, Beijing host the Summer

94 Mike McCarthy, “Lukenbill proposes rezoning 500,” Sacramento Business Journal, November 29, 1998, https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/1998/11/30/story3.html.

61 Olympics despite the outcry over air pollution, the Dow Jones dropping 680 points, and the economy feeling the effects of the recession. Barack Obama secured the Democratic

Party nomination and won the general election that year too. After running his campaign on the concept of “Hope,” he inspired a whole generation to believe in his campaign slogan: “change we can believe in.” In Sacramento, the housing market left the city with high vacancy rates and high purchasing price for homeownership. So too, rental properties remained empty – the aftermath of the recession forever changed the housing market and structure in Sacramento. Sacramento would go on to receive a whole rebranding.

Former NBA player and Sacramento native Kevin Johnson launched his first mayoral campaign. Similar to Obama, he campaigned on the platform of change. He stressed that, “Sacramento, as the capitol, should not be described as little more than the halfway point between Yosemite and San Francisco.” Johnson believed that Sacramento should not be in the shadow of the Capitol. He knew Sacramento had presence within the state and he set out to elevate Sacramento’s status on a national level.95 During his first term as mayor, he passed and launched nine initiatives. From 2009 to 2011, all nine initiatives aimed to improve volunteerism, education, support of local art, reduce homelessness, and cut down gang violence.

95 Carolyn Marshall, “Ex-N.B.A. Star Adds Glitz to Sacramento’s Mayoral Race,” The New York Times, June 9, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/us/09sacramento.html.

62 In 2012 Mayor Johnson sought reelection for a second term in office. This second term would bring more turmoil than the first. From sexual misconduct cases resurfacing, pieing citizens in the face, and the continued fight for a new arena downtown, Johnson was adamant about fighting for, what he believed to be, the best for the city – even if it meant ruffling a few feathers. For Mayor Johnson, the best for the city meant laying the foundation and paving the way for building a new sports arena in downtown Sacramento.

He dedicated his entire second term to fighting, promoting, advocating for legislation, and calling in every connection he had to secure the building of this new sports arena.

This crusade began January 8, 2013, the second City Council meeting of the year. The city voted on a 2013 Economic Development Strategy that emphasized the implementation of a five-year strategy aimed at building on the city’s strengths, addressing its weaknesses, and capitalizing on the opportunities to create jobs and a strong economy. This legislation included the redevelopment of the J-K-L corridor along with 700-800 K Street, and blight removal at 1000 J Street. At the same time, a Seattle- based group bid on the Kings with the purpose of relocating the team to Seattle. The

National Basketball Association announced that a Board of Governors would be established to review the formal application for relocation for the Kings. The committee was scheduled to meet and vote on the matter in April.

The following month, on February 26, 2013, the City Council authorized the City

Manager – John Shirey – to pursue negotiations with new prospective buyers of the Kings with the intent to keep the Kings in Sacramento. At that time, Shirey adopted the

63 following principles to spearhead the negotiations: protect the taxpayer; retire the existing city loan to the Kings; new entertainment and sports center downtown; develop a long- term commitment to keep the Kings in Sacramento; consider investing in the city’s net value of its parking and land; develop a public-private partnership; and prepare for the economic reuse of the Natomas arena site.96 It is important to highlight and outline these principles because they gives insight into how the Sacramento City Council conducts business. By noting these principles, we are able to see what the City of Sacramento prioritized.

By March 2013, the City Council approved a Title 17 planning and development code which comprised a comprehensive update to the city’s zoning codes. This was a priority measure of the 2030 General Plan. The passing of this measure is critical because rezoning downtown Sacramento gave way to the policies put in place to build the arena.

So too, it demonstrates how the city strategically planned for the arena years before it was built.

Mayor Kevin Johnson paraded the development of the Entertainment and Sports

Center (now called Golden 1 Center) as the venue that would transform Sacramento into a thriving center of entertainment and activity. Completion of the center would comply with several essential policy objectives. The plan further reiterated that it would retain

96 City of Sacramento. City Council. Entertainment and Sports Center (ESC) 2013-266. Sacramento: City of Sacramento’s City Clerk’s Office, 2013. Accessed June 5, 2020. https://sacramento.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=22&clip_id=3233&meta_id=396799

64 800 existing jobs and create between 2,300 to 6,500 new jobs. The belief was that if the arena was built, it would further spark additional investment along K Street and in Old

Sacramento.97 The City Council sealed the deal by reiterating that the building of the arena was a key part of the City’s General Plan vision of turning Sacramento into the

“most livable city.”

In further pursuit of the arena, the city made efforts to assemble the site and retain the necessary land. One of the necessary properties for the project was the former Macy’s building located at 600 K Street. The building was owned by CalPERS and U.S. Bank – located a block away on Capitol Mall – held the ground . The City of Sacramento attempted to broker a deal that would allow them to purchase the property from CalPERS and U.S. Bank, but they fell short. As a result, on January 7, 2014, the City Council voted and gave the City Attorney permission to file a motion and pursue an eminent domain case to secure the land needed for the arena.98

Later that year, Mayor Johnson pushed a $300 million subsidy through for the new arena. On May 20, 2014 crowds of Sacramento residents flooded City Hall as they gathered to hear the voting results on item 14 on the docket. Item 14, titled Entertainment and Sports Center EIR and Planning Entitlements, was the public hearing for the approval of the new arena. After four hours of testimony and deliberation, the City

97 Ibid, 3. 98 City of Sacramento. City Council. 600 K Street Resolution of Necessity and Order of Prejudgment Possession 2014-00037. Sacramento: City of Sacramento’s City Clerk’s Office, 2014. Accessed June 5, 2020. https://sacramento.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=22&clip_id=3381&meta_id=409666.

65 Council voted 7-2 to approve construction of a new downtown arena. The vote ended years of trying and efforts from multiple mayoral administrations. Shortly after the vote, the Downtown Plaza Mall was scheduled for demolition in July and construction would commence in November with a scheduled open date set for September 2016.99 Finally, in

June 2015, Sacramento-based credit union Golden 1 secured the naming rights to the new arena, establishing the name as the Golden 1 Center.100

Decades of failed attempts at securing a new arena, plenty of failed redevelopment plans, and the lack of funding all came to an end within two years as a result of Mayor Johnson’s willingness to apply pressure and his unrelenting pursuit. If nothing else, accomplishing this deal sealed his two-term run as mayor. Ex NBA player and native son turned politician were all monikers of his tainted legacy. The Golden 1

Center officially opened on September 30, 2016 and a month later, Kevin Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection – leaving a mixed legacy of accomplishments with a little scandal.

As the new Kings season rolled out, excitement, promise, and hope filled the city.

But Sacramento residents had no idea what actually happened to get this arena deal and that what happened to the city next would leave a stain. Johnson’s tenure in office saw the demolition of several low incoming housing projects throughout Sacramento, one of

99 Ryan Lillis, “Festive Crowd lines up for Sacramento City Council vote on new Kings arena,” The Sacramento Bee, May 20, 2014, https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/city-arena/article2599330.html 100 “Golden 1 gets downtown arena naming rights,” ABC 10 News, June 16, 2015, https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/sacramento-central/golden-1-gets-downtown-arena-naming- rights/181920695

66 these housing complexes included Dos Rios. Dos Rios, located at Richards Boulevard and North 12th Street, was a 218-unit low-income housing community, built in the early

1940s in an attempt to combat poverty. The demolition of the complex displaced over

400 residents as they had to relocate until the new complex was built.101 Residents who had spent their entire lives there, were forced to move and were not given any accommodations or relocation vouchers. In 1970, the U.S. Department of Housing and

Urban Development passed the Uniform Relocation Assistance and

Acquisition Policies Act that states that housing authorities must give 90 days’ notice and the right to receive relocation assistance.102

A new mayor assumed office December 13, 2016. Darrell Steinberg, previously senator pro-Tempore for the state of California, was now the mayor of Sacramento.

Before becoming the mayor, Steinberg served as a member of the California State

Assembly from 1998 to 2004 and a member of the California State Senate from 2006 to

2014. During his first mayoral campaign in 2016, Steinberg ran on a platform that addressed Sacramento’s homelessness, mental health, education, the high unemployment rate, and further emphasized the opening of the Golden 1 Center that jump started the city’s economic development plan. Two years into his first term, Steinberg along with

U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui placed a bid submission to the National Basketball Association to

101 Tony Bizjack, “Sacramento will demolish Twin River housing project,” The Sacramento Bee, July 23, 2017. 102 United States. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Uniform Relocation Assistance and Real Property Acquisition Act. D.C. Washington: Government Publishing Office, 1970. https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title42/chapter61&edition=prelim

67 host All-Star Weekend in 2022 or 2023. His reasoning behind wanting to host All-Star

Weekend was that it would drive economic activity. Steinberg cited New Orleans’ $23.7 million dollar revenue and Los Angeles’ $116 million dollar revenue. He further explained that hosting All-Star Weekend would boost the city’s visibility, bringing it to the national level that Kevin Johnson once dreamed of.103 The building of the Sawyer

Hotel and the Public Parking Financing Model were essential to this All-Star Weekend bid. The city had to have enough hotel space for incoming tourists as well as a place for them to park in order for Sacramento to appeal to the NBA and be deemed a valid host city.

It is important to highlight, detail, and trace every single step City Hall took in order to get the Golden 1 Center built. Over the span of three years, the City passed and implemented several policies all in alignment with obtaining the land and property rights to build an entity they believed would revive Sacramento’s economy. To the general public, it appears as if the City fought really hard to keep the Kings – and they did.

However, that fight ultimately changed the city forever. Similar to the 1954 announcement of the Capitol Mall Project, the construction of the Golden 1 Center has had rippling effects on businesses and affordable housing throughout Sacramento. The amount of gentrification that has taken place throughout the city of Sacramento

103 Ben Van der Meer, “5 things about the Kings’ bid announcement for the NBA All-Star Game,” Sacramento Business Journal, February 22, 2018, accessed April 9, 2020. https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2018/02/22/5-things-about-the-kings-bid-announcement- for-the.html

68 contributed to Sacramento’s on-going housing crisis. Where affordable housing complexes used to be, there are now skyrise lofts; where small mom and pop shops once stood, chain coffee shops and thrift boutiques have taken over.

69 Chapter 3

An Analysis of Displacement

Cities are complex organisms shaped by countless forces, but their organization bears the fingerprints of planners and policy makers who have shaped these cities for decades. At the root of many of these policies lie racism leaving modern cities to carry out the legacy of discrimination. In the midst of an era of social protest, with movements such as Black Lives Matter, Sacramento was reminded of the historic redlining practices that shaped the city in the early 1900s. This chapter then, reassesses the practices that have bolstered these problems, and how Sacramento can fix them.

The first step is understanding the urban policies that got us here. For decades, planners and policy makers slashed through neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal and blight removal and were underwritten by federal funding from the Housing Act of

1949 and the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, displacing residents using legal courses of action like eminent domain and condemnation laws. As a result, much of our highway system is built through Black neighborhoods. Sacramento and its Black residents have been the constant victims of all of these practices: the 1957 demolition of Japantown and the West End – which housed over 50% of Sacramento’s minority population – and the building of Interstate 5 in 1960 that gave way for travelers to have easier access to Tahoe for the Winter Olympics. This same I-5 destroyed much of Meadowview – which is a predominantly Black neighborhood within Sacramento. These methods failed because at

70 best, they only shifted slums from here to there, adding their own stain of hardship and disruption. At worst, they erased neighborhoods where constructive and improving communities exist and where the situation calls for assistance rather than destruction.

Sacramento’s consistent pattern of policy implementation that directly leads to displacement is evident. The most recent case of displacement formed as a result of prior economic circumstances that were heightened by the construction of the Golden 1 Center.

This chapter provides a quantitative analysis of displacement in Sacramento from 2000 to

2018. I would like to distinguish between measuring gentrification and calculating displacement. While gentrification is one of the main identifiers for displacement, the process of gentrification only measures how often a neighborhood changes.

Displacement, on the other hand, identifies how many people were removed from a neighborhood during the gentrification process. This chapter also examines the different type of policies that promote displacement. An outline of the methodology used to measure and calculate displacement will be explained and applied to demonstrate how the construction of the Golden 1 Center caused this displacement. While data from 2000 to

2018 is used to measure, the focus is primarily on the years 2014 to 2018, since it is these years that saw an increase in aggressive policy implementation from the City of

Sacramento’s City Council, and the Golden 1 Center was built during this timeframe.

In the most literal sense, displacement refers to the act of moving or being pushed out of the usual or original place. It is a key notion and theme that we, as a people, come across in postcolonial times. Displacement aims to interpret the crisis of identity. It is

71 perceived as being voluntary and involuntary and can take many forms, depending on the contextual circumstances in which it happens. Migration, desertion, exile, diaspora, exodus, eviction, banishment, travel, discovery, imprisonment, and escape are all forms of displacement. In its many forms displacement often forces vulnerable populations to confront alienation and a sense of loss, a loss of language, culture, and a loss of people.

In more modern times, displacement still renders a sense of loss but under different circumstances. In metropolitan regions across the country, residents face restricted, expensive and rising income inequality. As neighborhoods change, housing demands shift, and new policies are implemented: are presented with a new set of financial prospects. Evictions, demolition, and displacement are central components of the changing landscape, altering the geography of race and class across regions.

Sacramento County, specifically the City of Sacramento, is no exception, even with having one of the highest rates of homelessness. In Sacramento, displacement has taken place in many forms such as transit-oriented displacement, rising housing costs and re- segregation, climate-change, investment-related, and local government policies.

Cities around the world promote smarter growth patterns by expanding their transit systems to accommodate population growth, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and meeting the new demands for mobility and accessibility. The updates to local transit systems alter the way some neighborhoods look physically and socially. They further shape how race and class change in the context of inequality. This is considered transit- oriented displacement. Residents are uprooted from their homes and their neighborhoods

72 because a new transit line was built within their neighborhood without consideration of the effects the new transit system will have on that specific community. These new transit systems are often built-in communities that have poor road construction, low housing costs, and the residents are low-income people of color. For Sacramento, this kind of displacement took place in the 1900s when Pacific Gas and Electric expanded the use of streetcars and sent all low-income residents to live in the West End.

Secondly, rising housing costs also contribute to displacement. As housing costs rise, they force low-income Black people into higher poverty, lower-resource neighborhoods where it becomes much more difficult to claw their way out of poverty. It places low-income households in vulnerable positions. As low-income households are forced to leave their neighborhoods, even their move forces them to pay a higher percentage of their income in rent. Today, the residents of Sacramento are experiencing this kind of displacement. The demolition of the longstanding affordable housing complex Dos Rios along with the Alder Grove housing project and the development of multiple high-rise lofts demonstrates the rise in housing costs.

Climate-change, typically referred to as global warming, does not displace people.

Instead, the climate change produces environmental effects that make it impossible for people to remain or survive where they are. The aftermath of a hurricane can displace a whole city, hence the results of Hurricane Katrina. Sacramento is not prone to hurricanes, but it does experience floods from time to time. Throughout Sacramento’s infancy, the city experienced annual flooding. This usually came at the expense of Native Americans

73 who formed their homes along the American River. In other cities and parts of the world, climate-change displacement is a large part of life and displaces thousands every day.

The next two forms of displacement – investment-related and local government policies – are both intertwined, in a sense that policies passed by local government set the tone for who or what entities can investment in the city. In the same way, local government can create ordinances that protect or exploit tenants. The Sacramento City

Council under two administrations, Kevin Johnson and now Darrell Steinberg, have created policies that contribute to the continued residential segregation of low-income

Black residents. These policies have opened the door for large entities such as the Kings

Organization to “invest” in the city and create private-public partnerships. The partnerships then, result in the construction of sports stadiums that have the long-lasting effects of rising housing costs and displacement.

It is clear that the City of Sacramento has a long history of redevelopment and displacement. Often times, each new change within the city is the result of a change in policy implementation. City councilmen draft and pass legislation with no regard for the parts of the town and housing complexes scheduled to be demolished. The buildings that rise after demolition are high-rise condos, lofts, and new coffee shops. Rent doubles, grocery stores are no longer in walking distance, and the demographics shift to a mid-30s and white population. The economic development plan is then marketed as increases in jobs, more affordable housing, and the elimination of homelessness. City leaders, lured by economic development, create general plans that outline development stages for the

74 city. They draft and pass legislation with no regard for the parts of the town scheduled to be demolished. Again, the Dos Rios housing complex demolition is an example of this.

And the outcome of this process is that several Black families were displaced with no relocation assistance. Thus, the reasoning for this analysis.

There are two primary goals in writing this chapter: 1. to demonstrate that displacement is indeed a phenomenon in Sacramento as a result of city policies and 2. to provide considerations for measuring change in order to prevent future displacement. I examine how the housing market after the 2008 market crash and the building of the

Golden 1 Center created an environment ripe for displacing Black residents in already disadvantaged census tracts. I hypothesized that if the vacancy rate is high, there is housing available, but if the median rent increases, and the median income stays the same, there is displacement. This displacement occurs wherever there are high vacancy rates in census tracts that are already burdened or overly burdened. This is where displacement becomes visible because it demonstrates how housing units are available; however, the rent is too high to afford to live there. To come to this conclusion, a series of quantitative analysis using the geographic information system ArcMap, were performed. Using 2000 and 2010 Decennial data, 2005 and 2015 American Community

Survey data, I analyzed the population at the census tract level to determine and identify the disadvantaged census tracts within Sacramento County. Concentrations of low- income tracts were established as well to further demonstrate the effects of displacement.

75 For the extent of this analysis, there are some key terms that need to be defined to set the parameters. In this chapter, I often refer to census tracts. The U.S. Census Bureau has a standard hierarchy of Census Geographic Entities that displays the relationships between legal, administrative, and statistical boundaries maintained by the U.S. At the top of this hierarchy is the national level, that allows Census data to be examined for the

U.S. as a whole, instead of by each state. Census blocks lie at the bottom of this hierarchy. This level is the smallest geographic unit used by the Census bureau to analyze data at the micro level, or neighborhood. Census tracts, on the other hand, coincide with the city and county limits and boundaries. Each neighborhood within the Sacramento

County boundary has its own tract number. Analyzing data at this level allows me to focus strictly on the effects of the population within Sacramento only. Sacramento

County has a total of 317 Census Tracts.

Terms such as low-income, poverty line, and housing burden are heavily used throughout my analysis because the communities I examine often bear the burden of being low-income and struggle due to a housing burden. The U.S. Department of

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines low-income as a member of a family that has an income equal to or less than the Section 8 low income which is also established by HUD. These amounts vary by city and state. A person is considered to be very low-income if their annual income is fifty percent of the area median. For example, if the City of Los Angeles’ median income is $100,000 dollars, then a person who makes

$50,000 dollars would be considered low-income. Establishing this definition becomes

76 essential when certain tracts are marked as low-income to further demonstrate the ramifications of displacement in those areas. The poverty line then, is the measurement of the estimated minimum level of income needed to secure the necessities of life. By that same token, a household that pays more than thirty percent of their income in housing costs such as rent or mortgage, is considered to be a housing burden.

Environmental Setting:

1n 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act was repealed. It was originally passed by

Congress in 1932. After the Stock Market Crash of 1923 and the Great Depression, the law forbade commercial banks from participating in investment banking businesses.

When the act was repealed, it was with the intention of spurring financial innovation. By deregulating the market, it freed banks from Depression-era banking regulations and allowed them to make risky loan choices. This repeal gave way for Sacramento to build

68,600 homes between the years 2000 and 2006.104 Sacramento’s housing market at the time flourished. But by the end of 2006, housing prices began to decline, and the market crashed in 2007. The market owed to the high concentration of subprime loans in predominantly non-white neighborhoods. Subprime loans often come with high interest rates over a shorter repayment process. This then increases the chances of borrowers defaulting on their loans because the payments are too high. As in other parts of the nation, Sacramento was not exempt for this. These subprime loans were concentrated in

104 Jeff Wilser, “Booms and Busts,” Comstock Magazine, January 15, 2019, https://www.comstocksmag.com/longreads/booms-and-busts

77 areas of Sacramento that experienced redlining and effected Black families.105 In 2008 alone, Sacramento saw 17,801 home foreclosures.106 The data below tells the story of

Sacramento before the recession and after the recession with the building of the Golden 1

Center. The five-year interval, 2005 to 2010, is Sacramento before the recession and during. The purpose of highlighting these years are to demonstrate the housing market before the housing crisis worsened in the following years. The second five-year interval,

2010 to 2015, shows the housing market after the recession and the implementation of certain policies such as the vote to build the Golden 1 Center and the General Plan

Update. This is the housing market and economy that Mayor Johnson would inherit in

2008. And it is this housing market that contributed to and created Sacramento’s housing shortage.

Census and American Community Survey Variables:

Population –

The 2000 Census estimated Sacramento County’s population at 1,223,499 which represented a 15 percent increase from 1990. Of that 1.2 million, Black residents represented 10 percent of the population or 121,804 persons.107 The 2010 Census estimated Sacramento County’s population at 1,418,788 indicating a 16 percent increase from the year 2000. Black residents still represented 10 percent of the population or

105 Hernandez, 16. 106 Ibid, 2. 107 U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Census Population and Housing Units, 2000 Census Tracts, Sacramento, California

78 147,058. This does not factor in the Bay Area insurgents that fled to Sacramento at the first sight of housing increases in the greater San Francisco area.108

Poverty Line and the Housing Burden –

As defined by HUD, California’s poverty line in 2000 was an annual income of

$17,050 for a family of four. In other words, if a person has a family of four and their annual income was $17,050, they are considered to be in poverty because their income does not allow them the ability to secure life’s essentials. In 2005, the poverty line moved to $19,350 for a family of four. By 2010, the poverty line jumped to $22,113 and then

$22,250 in 2015, for a family of four. The housing burden then, is if 30% or more of a family median income is allocated to rent, then they have a housing burden. But if more than 50% of the median income is allocated to rent, then that family is overburdened.

Housing –

At the same time, the 2000 Census estimated that 474,814 housing units were located in Sacramento County. As of the 2010 Census, there were an estimated 513,945 housing in Sacramento County, indicating an 8 percent increase in housing. The 2000 housing vacancy rate was 4.5 percent, or 21,212 units. By 2010, the housing vacancy rate was 8.1 percent, or 41,466 units. In 2015, Sacramento County had a total of 561,460 housing units; and a vacancy rate of 5.9 percent, or 33,173 units.109

108 U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Census Population and Housing Units, 2010 Census Tracts, Sacramento, California 109 U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey Housing Units, 2010 Census Tracts, Sacramento, California

79 Median Income –

The median household income in the United States was $42,148 in the year 2000.

For California, the median household income was $61, 800.110 Sacramento County’s median household income was $44,796. California median income was $58,900 in 2010 while Sacramento County’s median income was $52,655. Then finally, in 2015

California’s median income was $64,500 and Sacramento County’s median income was

$58,735. However, these numbers are significantly lower for census tracts that are home to predominantly Black households. For example, in 2010, the median household income for Census Tracts 64, 65, 67.01, and 67.02 were $17,672, $16835, $17976, and $14,082 – which is well below the $22,000 poverty line that year. These neighborhoods, Del Paso

Heights and the Strawberry Manors, are neighborhoods where Black families make up majority of the households.

Median Rent –

From 2000 to 2010, the average median income was $1,116. Over the next five years, the average median income in Sacramento County increased to $1,313, from 2010 to 2015. While the $196 change is small, when cross examined with the median income from 2005 to 2015, households would need to make an extra $2,400 year to be able to afford rent.

110 U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey Median Income, 2010 Census Tracts, Sacramento, California

80 Analysis:

The thresholds established and outlined up until this point were critical to the development of my maps. Sacramento population, housing units, median income, median rent, and the vacancy rate were all used in performing a geospatial analysis through the

GIS software ArcMap to help show displacement throughout Sacramento. The project saw the completion of two different maps. Map 1 (See Figure 1A) is an in-depth analysis of Sacramento’s housing market and the Black population before the recession and before the building of the Golden 1 Center, spanning the years 2005 to 2010. Map 2 (See Figure

1B) examines Sacramento’s housing market, the Black population, and the rent increase after the recession and the official opening of the Golden 1 Center, spanning the years

2010-2015. I hypothesized that where there is high vacancy and housing units available cross examined with median income and the median rent, there is displacement. It was determined that, even in low-income areas, rent was still too high to afford, which is why there is high vacancy. Sacramento has an affordable housing shortage, that was further inflated by the construction of the Golden 1 Center.

From the years 2005-2010, neighborhoods such as Pocket, South Sacramento,

Downtown, and North Sacramento all reflect a Black population greater than 25%. 60

Census Tracts had a vacancy rate higher than 5% -- that is, 19% of Sacramento’s housing market had units available but were unoccupied. The highest vacancy rate was 30% in

Downtown Sacramento. Of those 60 Census Tracts, 59 were also below the 2010 poverty line meaning all Black families made less than $22,113 annually. Those 59 census tracts

81 represent 20% of the Black population living below the poverty line before and during the recession. When the neighborhoods with high vacancy are combined with neighborhoods living below poverty, the neighborhoods are the same. Then add the median rent -- $1,116 – Black families are severely burdened as they pay $13,392 of

$22,113 (60% of income) on rent. There are census tracts such as CT 66 and CT 67.01

(Del Paso Heights) where the total median income is $18,000, rent then, consumes majority of the income for the families in these census tracts. This is displacement. Figure

1A shows that housing is available in large quantities; but the map also demonstrates that while housing is available, rent is also too high to afford to live in those areas – even in low-income neighborhoods such as Dos Rios Triangle.

As the housing market recouped in the latter half of 2010, that is when Mayor

Johnson and City Council began to implement policies in search of “economic prosperity.” April 27, 2010, City Council approved a land swap deal to build an arena in the downtown railyards. Two years later, on February 27, 2012, Johnson along with NBA

Commissioner David Stern and the Maloofs reach an agreement to construct a $387 million arena. By March, City Council approved the financing deal and the plan called for the city of leverage millions out of its parking operations (TIF). In May 2013, the

NBA owners vote to keep the Kings in Sacramento and Mayor Johnson recruits Vivek

Ranadive to purchase the Kings from the Maloofs. One year later, City Council votes 7-2

82 to approve the development plan for the Golden 1 Center.111 And in October 2016, the

Golden 1 Center finally opens for business and entertainment.

The construction of the Golden 1 Center was a massive undertaking beginning with the eminent domain that saw the closure of Downtown Mall Plaza. It force closed several mom and pop shops throughout downtown Sacramento. Businesses that had been around for atleast ten years closed for good as several new lofts and boutiques emerged.

The landscape of Sacramento changed too. Sacramento’s Black population increased.

Some neighborhoods, like parts of Natomas and downtown, saw a decrease in Black population (the change from dark purple to a lighter purple) while vacancy over 5% in those neighborhoods still persisted. From 2010 to 2015, the poverty line increased from

$22,113 to $24,250. With this increase, the number of census tracts living below the 2015 poverty line increased to 80 census tracts. And the number of Black families below the poverty line also increased from 20% to 38%. At the same time, the median rent for

Sacramento increased to $1,312. Although the median rent only increased by $200 from

2010, this increase means that a family would need an additional $2,400 a year to pay rent. This is similar to the increase in the poverty line, so again, Black families are still overly burdened by a housing cost. The number of census tracts that had a vacancy rate higher than 5% decreased from 60 to 45. However, Sacramento saw the demolition of

111 Ryan Lillis, “Highs, lows, hoops and pie. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson through the years,” The Sacramento Bee, December 4, 2016, https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article118759813.html.

83 several low-income housing projects such as the Dos Rios and Capitol Towers. It also saw the demolition of several single room occupancy residential hotels that are typically used by low-income, seniors, or disabled residents like the Marshall Hotel. Dos Rios alone, is a loss of 225 residential units. While the number of census tracts experiencing high vacancy decreased, it is not because the housing has been filled, but because the housing units that were available no longer exist.

To summarize, Black residents of Sacramento were already experiencing displacement due to high prices and the recession. But when City Council implemented the economic redevelopment plan – the Golden 1 Center – it created a housing shortage on affording housing throughout Sacramento. The building of the Golden 1 Center saw the demolition of several housing complexes and residential hotels such as Dos Rios,

Capitol Towers, The Marshall, The Ridgeway and the Rendell. This is a reduction in affordable housing that is needed for a growing Black population. Some parts of

Sacramento are still experiencing vacancy rates greater than 5%, but the rent is too high to afford to live there. Both of these cases are forms of displacement and primarily effect the Black community. Displacement because no relocation vouchers are given to these residents once their homes are demolished and displacement because they can no longer afford to live in their own communities. As City Council continues to modify and update the Sacramento General Plan, low income housing complexes such as New Helvetia,

Marina Vista, and Alder Grove are up next for demolition as City Council and the

84 Sacramento Redevelopment and Housing Agency have already voted to do so back in

August 2020.

The problem with these changes is that they are aggressively changing the city and fast. The housing is gone before residents can begin to process what is happening.

The lack of transparency and absence of information from the city is a major issue. If

Black communities were given the proper information and resources to confront these issues, Sacramento would not see the erasure of Black communities so often. Instead the

City would be able to work with these communities to serve them.

85 Conclusion

In the case of Sacramento, the city government failed to sufficiently and equitably provide for its residents by inadequately considering the traditional land use of neighborhoods. Although California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) meetings and investigations into these neighborhoods often occur before demolition, they rarely produce results and have not been fairly incorporated into the policy realm of city planning and the preservation of Sacramento’s minority communities. Through this project, we have discovered that displacement has and actively continues to wreak havoc on Black families and remove them from their communities. This complete erasure carries a heavy burden for the families that are displaced, not only of relocation, but of culture, of sense of self, loss of home, and of money.

To this dismay, this paper concludes with the proposal of a solution to be used by the City of Sacramento in collaboration with its residents to help better understand the problem of displacement and how to prevent it. This proposal emphasizes three main issues: 1. The importance of Participatory GIS (PGIS) as a tool to increase awareness of community needs and help address the potential devaluation of land to secure and maintain affordable housing; 2. The ability of PGIS to inform policy when applied correctly, and 3. The opportunity for the City of Sacramento’s Planning

Division to serve as a legislative body to align and incorporate PGIS into development planning on behalf of the city.

86 PGIS combines a range of geospatial information management tools and methods such as sketch maps, participatory 3D models, community-based air photo and satellite imagery interpretation, GPS transect walks and GIS-based cognitive mapping.112 The integration of community participatory action learning and the application of geospatial technology are the basis of PGIS. The term participatory implies that the community takes a high level of control over the decision-making process when it comes to restructuring communities. I propose the solution of using a participatory research design that will aid and contribute to a better understanding of the problems Sacramento face as we continue to thrive as a city. From a local government standpoint and a resident point of view, accessing and using GIS-based data sources and technology can be useful when it comes to determining what (and who) needs preserving. For more than two decades,

Participatory GIS (PGIS) has been widely used to support the mapping of community resources in order to protect communities and their resources. With PGIS and the use of community mapping, maps are generated to retain a community’s place and address important local issues. But it is also used for community land mapping which maps land tenure for individuals and families. The results of PGIS when documented and shared provide local government with enhanced insight to ensure proper recognition of

112 Corbett, Jon, Rambaldi, Giacomo, Kyem, Peter, Weiner, Dan, Olson, Rachel, Muchemi, Julius, McCall, Mike, and Chambers, Robert. "Overview: Mapping for Change the Emergence of a New Practice." PLA Notes 54, no. 1 (2006): 13-19.

87 community land use and promote access to community resources that align with development plan and spatial planning policies.

If residents are expected to play an increasing role in the planning of our cities, access to the information and learning how the information can be used is imperative.

When housing projects such as Dos Rios are demolished, the residents that lived there are unaware of the importance of participating in CEQA and Section 18 meetings due to a lack of resources. To implement a community project such as PGIS, accessibility and inclusion are necessary. The neighborhoods and communities that would benefit most from PGIS, do not have the proper resources to understand what PGIS is and its purpose.

Therefore, I further argue that access cannot be limited to the ability to obtain data, hardware and software, but also needs to consider community groups’ awareness of information sources and GIS technology, as well as the ability to apply the technology and information in ways that best suit the community. The City of Sacramento needs to identify, which this paper has already done, the census tracts that are in need of this kind of community participation.

Still, there is the issue of access, which is viewed as a multi-dimensional term.

Access includes awareness, acquisition, and application. The first step toward implementing a participatory GIS project is ensuring that the community knows about the available resources. Entities such as Sacramento Library branches, the Urban League, and

Sacramento employment agencies, have the ability to give access to GIS technology and

GIS-based data to the general public. After awareness is addressed, there is the matter of

88 acquisition. Often, people want to be able to attend city meetings, but they face time and financial restraints that intrude on their ability to attend. Similar to SACOG’s and the

City of Sacramento’s Open Data portal, GIS-based data pertaining to Sacramento and its different neighborhoods can be accessed for community members to assess. City council meetings, CEQA meetings, new development meetings, as well as Census data on

Sacramento can be provided through an open data portal. This open data portal should be interactive, that way maps are readily available for viewing. For example, if the City of

Sacramento is proposing the construction of a new Starbucks next to Grant High School in Del Paso Heights, the proposed planning sketches can be uploaded for members of the

Del Paso Heights Community to review. By doing this, it further engages the community and leads to a more participatory reaction to new developments; but it also gets community members actively commenting on what they do not want in their neighborhood and what they need. In the same way that more affluent neighborhoods dictate what is built in their neighborhoods. Then there is the process of application. Once a community or neighborhood has obtained GIS technology or access to spatial data, they need to be able to apply the information received in a way that makes a positive contribution to their community. When community organizations have the necessary information, they have the ability and experience to put maps together to determine where a new chain grocery should go or where a community center needs to be built.

Lastly, for this kind of implementation to be successful, the type of geographic information needed varies so that communities can properly assess their needs. Census

89 and American Community Survey data regarding housing and property information such as: type, condition, tenure, property values and zoning are important especially in relations to the housing shortage. Population data such as race, age, income, household type, and the length of residency are equally important. This allows for the City of

Sacramento and the residents to see the diversity of their neighborhood and who (and what) the amenities or lack of amenities are servicing, to see what communities need and address those needs, like transportation with regard to traffic volume, patterns, bus routes, sidewalks, bike routes, and access to Sacramento’s Lightrail system. This data helps the

City of Sacramento and residents see just how much these communities do not have access to grocery stores because of lack of transportation. Public health statistics and crime statistics give more insight into the physical and social environment. Finally, information regarding economic development, show existing businesses, available employment, and business potential. Communities need to know what is available to them and what changes are to come.

I understand that a project of this capacity includes are large allocation of money, time, and the necessary training. But the economic prosperity of Sacramento does not and should not depend on the removal of Black communities or any other minority community. Sacramento thrives when all of its residents have all the resources they need to have a good quality of life. That includes access to affordable and equitable housing without running the risk of demolition and displacement. Communities and

90 neighborhoods can be reborn again without losing their natives. A PGIS project of this size will take time, but it is crucial.

91

Figure 1A Map of Sacramento 2005-2010

92 Figure 1B Map of Sacramento 2010-2015

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