Bay Area

Data Shows Some Bay Area Populations Struggling Financially in Post-COVID Economy

As the Bay Area’s economy continues its up-and-down recovery from the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, recent data shows that many low-income households and communities of color are getting left behind. In a January report based on data analyzed via the “Bay Area Recovery Tracker” online tool, the Bay Area Equity Atlas found that despite some promising economic gains, the hope that a rising tide would lift all boats appears to be floundering.

Published

2 years ago

April 24, 2023

Oakland Post

A report from the Bay Area Equity Atlas shows low-income workers and communities of color still face significant hurdles when it comes to fully participating in the Bay Area’s recovery from the worst of the pandemic’s economic downturn. (Courtesy of Bay Area Equity Atlas via Bay City News)

By Kiley Russell
Bay City News

In a January report based on data analyzed via the “Bay Area Recovery Tracker” online tool, the Bay Area Equity Atlas found that despite some promising economic gains, the hope that a rising tide would lift all boats appears to be floundering.

“We’re finding this consistently, that low-income adults and people of color are continuously struggling to cover their usual expenses,” said the report’s author Simone Robbennolt.

The report found that six in 10 low-income adults in the Bay Area — people living in households earning less than $50,000 a year — and almost half of adults of color still report having a somewhat or very difficult time paying for usual expenses, compared to 21 percent of white people and 22 percent of people with higher incomes.

“That’s anything from buying groceries to paying house and utility bills or just keeping up with monthly card payments, and so we’re seeing consistently that this number is not really shifting and we’re kind of seeing almost a stagnation for some of these indicators where we would want to see progress almost three years out, four years out,” said Robbennolt, an associate with PolicyLink, which produces the Bay Area Equity Atlas along with the San Francisco Foundation and University of Southern California’s Equity Research Institute.

This comes amid an environment where many economic indicators continue to show some promise, despite worries over inflation, rising interest rates and tech-sector layoffs.

For example, data from the U.S. Department of Commerce shows that gross domestic product is estimated to have increased by 3.2 percent nationally in the third quarter of 2022 compared to the previous quarter and by 2.7 percent in the fourth quarter.

Also, gross domestic product — the value of goods and services produced in specific areas — increased by nearly 4 percent in California during the third quarter, with personal income growth hitting 5.2 percent in the state.

But by October 2022, 26 percent of people of color in the Bay Area reported a loss of income due to job loss or a reduction in hours or wages, while just 8 percent of white people reported a similar loss of income, according to data incorporated into the Equity Atlas dashboard from the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey.

“We’re also seeing a gap widening between lower-income and higher-income households experiencing loss of employment income,” Robbennolt said. “When the pandemic first hit, there was about an 8 percentage point gap between these two groups and since then it’s increased threefold and we’re seeing a 23 percentage point gap.”

This appears to show that while higher-income white people are steadily recovering from the worst of the COVID downturn, lower-income people of color are heading in the opposite direction, despite some efforts to ensure an equitable economic recovery with policies like direct COVID relief payments and expanded unemployment benefits.

The report points out that there have long been “stark differences in income inequality” in the Bay Area, where income grew by 69 percent for very-high-wage earners and by 53 percent for high-wage workers from 1980 to 2019.

During the same period, income grew by 17 percent for middle-income workers and actually dropped by 2 percent for low-wage earners and 9 percent for very-low-wage earners.

“The pandemic, in a lot of ways, laid bare a lot of the existing inequities and made a lot of them worse,” said Louise Auerhahn, director of economic and workforce policy at Working Partnerships USA, a Silicon Valley organization that works to foster a more equitable regional economy, among other things.

It was “forcibly brought home” during the pandemic that the majority of jobs deemed essential — things like retail, food service and long-term care — are not well compensated or “valued in proportion to the value they bring to the economy,” Auerhahn said.

“The overwhelming majority of those in-person essential jobs are done by workers of color, immigrants and women in the Bay Area,” she said.

This phenomenon of “occupational segregation,” wherein workers of color are overrepresented in low-wage and low-quality jobs, is a consistent factor in the region’s racial pay gaps, according to the report.

For example, in San Mateo County, Latino workers account for 25 percent of the total working-age population but make up 74 percent of building and grounds cleaning and maintenance workers, while white workers are 38 percent of the working population and hold 54 percent of management jobs.

To help lower-wage workers keep afloat during the pandemic, many federal, state and local governments implemented a variety of emergency policies, including food assistance, expanded unemployment benefits, direct payments and utility shutoff and eviction moratoriums.

“There’s a lot of data that those worked, that they really reduced poverty and people entering homelessness,” Auerhahn said. “But all of those are ended or are ending. It’s quite likely to get a lot worse in the next year if we don’t take some actions to mitigate the end of these supports that have helped people hang on.”

The report suggests several policies that could help foster a more equitable economic recovery, including implementation of a living wage, ensuring workers have health care, paid leave, retirement accounts and stable working environments, as well as ensuring people have the right to unionize.

“I think a lot of things are still in flux and there’s still an opportunity to make (the recovery) more equitable,” Auerhahn said. “You have to understand that our economy, as it is now, as it was before the pandemic, is very deeply and structurally inequitable, so if we proceed with business as usual it’s going to increase inequality.”

A link to the full report can be found at https://bayareaequityatlas.org/recovery-tracker/economic-security.

Copyright © 2023 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area.

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Chevron Richmond Installs Baker Hughes Flare.IQ, Real-time Flare Monitoring, Control and Reduction System

While the sight of flaring can cause concern in the community, flares are essential safety systems that burn pollutants to prevent them from being released directly into the atmosphere. They activate during startup and shut-down of facility units or during upsets or equipment malfunctions. The typical flare stack is about 200 feet high so that vapors are well above street levels.

Published

6 days ago

May 19, 2025

Oakland Post

Image courtesy The Richmond Standard.

The Richmond Standard

Chevron Richmond recently installed flare.IQ, a real-time, automated system that will improve the facility’s flaring performance.

The technology, developed by Panametrics, a Baker Hughes business, uses sensors to monitor, reduce and control flaring in real time. It collects and assesses data on refinery processes, such as temperature, pressure, gas flow and gas composition, and adjusts accordingly to ensure flares burn more efficiently and cleanly, leading to fewer emissions.

“The cleaner the flare, the brighter the flame can look,” said Duy Nguyen, a Chevron Richmond flaring specialist. “If you see a brighter flame than usual on a flare, that actually means flare.IQ is operating as intended.”

“A key element in Baker Hughes’ emissions abatement portfolio, flare.IQ has a proven track record in optimizing flare operations and significantly reducing emissions,” said Colin Hehir, vice president of Panametrics, a Baker Hughes business. “By partnering with Chevron Richmond, one of the first operators in North America to adopt flare.IQ, we are looking forward to enhancing the plant’s flaring operations.”

The installation of flare.IQ is part of a broader and ongoing effort by Chevron Richmond to improve flare performance, particularly in response to increased events after the new, more efficient hydrogen plant was brought online in 2019.

Since then, the company has invested $25 million — and counting — into flare minimization. As part of the effort, a multidisciplinary refinery team was formed to find and implement ways to improve operational reliability and ultimately reduce flaring. Operators and other employees involved in management of flares and flare gas recovery systems undergo new training.

“It is important to me that the community knows we are working hard to lower emissions and improve our flaring performance,” Nguyen said.

Also evolving is the process by which community members are notified of flaring incidents. The Community Warning System (CWS), operated by Contra Costa County is an “all-hazard” public warning system.

Residents can opt-in to receive alerts via text, e-mail and landline. The CWS was recently expanded to enable residents to receive notifications for “Level 1” incidents, which are considered informational as they do not require any community action.

For more information related to these topics, check out the resources included on the Chevron Richmond, CAER and Contra Costa Health websites. Residents are also encouraged to follow @chevronrichmond and @RFDCAOnline on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), where additional information may be posted during an incident.

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Activism

Oakland Hosts Town Hall Addressing Lead Hazards in City Housing

According to the city, there are 22,000 households in need of services for lead issues, most in predominantly low-income or Black and Latino neighborhoods, but only 550 to 600 homes are addressed every year. The city is hoping to use part of the multimillion-dollar settlement to increase the number of households served each year.

Published

6 days ago

May 18, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Magaly Muñoz

The City of Oakland’s Housing and Community Development Department hosted a town hall in the Fruitvale to discuss the efforts being undertaken to remove lead primarily found in housing in East and West Oakland.

In 2021, the city was awarded $14 million out of a $24 million legal settlement from a lawsuit against paint distributors for selling lead-based paint that has affected hundreds of families in Oakland and Alameda County. The funding is intended to be used for lead poisoning reduction and prevention services in paint only, not water or other sources as has been found recently in schools across the city.

The settlement can be used for developing or enhancing programs that abate lead-based paint, providing services to individuals, particularly exposed children, educating the public about hazards caused by lead paint, and covering attorney’s fees incurred in pursuing litigation.

Most of the homes affected were built prior to 1978, and 12,000 of these homes are considered to be at high risk for lead poisoning.

City councilmember Noel Gallo, who represents a few of the lead-affected Census tracts, said the majority of the poisoned kids and families are coming directly from neighborhoods like the Fruitvale.

“When you look at the [kids being admitted] at the children’s hospital, they’re coming from this community,” Gallo said at the town hall.

In order to eventually rid the highest impacted homes of lead poisoning, the city intends to create programs and activities such as lead-based paint inspections and assessments, full abatement designed to permanently eliminate lead-based paint, or partial abatement for repairs, painting, and specialized cleaning meant for temporary reduction of hazards.

In feedback for what the city could implement in their programming, residents in attendance of the event said they want more accessibility to resources, like blood testing, and information from officials about lead poisoning symptoms, hotlines for assistance, and updates on the reduction of lead in their communities.

Attendees also asked how they’d know where they are on the prioritization list and what would be done to address lead in the water found at several school sites in Oakland last year.

City staff said there will be a follow-up event to gather more community input for programming in August, with finalizations happening in the fall and a pilot launch in early 2026.

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Alameda County

Oakland Begins Month-Long Closure on Largest Homeless Encampment

At 8 a.m. sharp, city workers began piling up trash and dismantling makeshift homes along the nearly five-block encampment. City crews blocked off streets from 14th Ave to 17th Ave, between E. 12th and International Blvd, due to the Safe Work Zone Ordinance that was passed by the city council in 2022 to protect workers from harassment during cleanings, according to a city spokesperson.

Published

6 days ago

May 18, 2025

Oakland Post

The City of Oakland began sweeping their largest homeless encampment on E 12th St. Monday morning. Advocates claim that the city has not done its due diligence with providing ample resources or outreach for residents at the encampment. Photo by Magaly Muñoz.

By Magaly Muñoz

The City of Oakland began a three-week-long breakdown of the largest homeless encampment in the city on E. 12th Street on Monday morning. Residents and advocates said they are devastated about the displacement of dozens of people.

Jaz Colibri, one of the many advocates at the closure, said the encampment sweeps were “intense and terrifying” to witness. They claimed that several residents, many of them non-English speakers, had not been aware that the sweep was happening that day because of a lack of proper communication and outreach from Oakland.

Colibri added that the city had done a Census “many months ago” and “had not bothered to count people since then”, meaning dozens of individuals have missed out on housing and resources in the last few weeks because the city doesn’t offer outreach in multiple languages.

“Basically, [Oakland] dropped the ball on actually getting to know everybody who lives here and then creating a housing solution that meets everyone’s needs,” Colibri said.

City spokesperson Jean Walsh told the Post that notices of the closure operation were posted in Spanish and Chinese prior to Monday, but did not clarify if outreach was done in those languages as well.

Nearly a dozen Oakland police vehicles, California Highway Patrol officers, and Oakland Public Works staff were gathered along E 12th waiting for residents to pack up their belongings and move away from the area.

Advocates said residents “felt unsafe” due to the hefty law enforcement presence.

One city worker, who was picking up debris near 16th Ave, said, “They’ve known we were coming for a long time now” in reference to resident confusion about the sweeping.

The state doubled down on its requirement to get cities and counties to deal with their homelessness crisis at a press conference Monday afternoon. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office released a “model ordinance” that is intended to provide a starting point that local municipalities can use to build from and adjust in creating their own policies on encampments, if they haven’t done so yet.

Newsom said “No more excuses, time to deliver” after the state has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into solving the issue.

Oakland was awarded a $7.2 million grant from the state in 2024 to close long-standing encampments in the city, including camps at Martin Luther King, Jr. and 23rd Street, and Mosswood Park.

Residents at these encampments were offered wraparound supportive services, temporary shelter, and eventually will be transitioned to permanent supportive housing, according to a city statement from last year.

Residents who accepted housing at these three encampments were moved into newly acquired property, formerly the Extended Stay America Hotel in West Oakland, which will first serve as interim housing for up to 150 individuals and couples in 105 units, and in the coming year, will be converted into 125 units of permanent housing.

Walsh said as of May 2, “32 residents of the recently closed Mosswood Park encampment moved into the Mandela House program” and as of May 12, “41 residents of the East 12th Street encampment have already accepted offers to move to the Mandela House.” The city will provide final numbers of how many accepted and moved into housing after the closure operation is over.