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

1 month 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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Activism

Community Opposes High Rise Development That Threatens Geoffrey’s Inner Circle

City Council chambers were full for the May 17 Planning Commission hearing, and almost all the 40 speakers who had signed up to make presentations talked about the importance of the Inner Circle as part of Oakland and Geoffrey Pete as a stalwart community and business leader who has served the city for decades.

Published

2 days ago

May 30, 2023

Oakland Post

Geoffrey Pete went to City Hall to appeal the city Planning Commission’s approval of the high-rise development that threatens the closure of his 44-year historic cultural mecca. Photo by Jonathan ‘Fitness’ Jones.

By Ken Epstein

An outpouring of community supporters – young, old, jazz lovers, environmentalists and committed Oakland partisans – spoke out at a recent Planning Commission hearing to support Geoffrey Pete and his cultural center – The Inner Circle – an historic Oakland landmark whose future is threatened by a proposed skyscraper that out-of-town-developer Tidewater Capital wants to build in the midst of the city’s Black Arts Movement and Business District (BAMBD).

The speakers argued passionately and persuasively, winning the sympathy of the commissioners, but were ultimately unsuccessful as the Commission unanimously approved the high-rise to be built either as a residential building or office tower on Franklin Street directly behind Geoffrey’s building.

Mr. Pete has said he would appeal the decision to the City Council. He has 10 days after the hearing to file an appeal on the office building. His appeal on the residential tower has already been submitted.

Mr. Pete said the Planning Department still has not published the boundaries of the BAMBD. “Tidewater’s applications and subsequent applications should not be approved until the Planning Department fully acknowledges the existence of the BAMBD,” he said.

“This (proposed) building poses a grave danger to the historic (Inner Circle) building next to it, arguably Oakland’s most meaningful historic building,” Pete said.

“We’re here to advocate for what’s best for the African American district and community that has gotten no representation, no advocacy, as of yet,” he said. “The (commission) is guilty, the City of Oakland is guilty, and Tidewater is guilty.”

One of the first speakers was Gwendolyn Traylor, known as Lady SunRise, who directly addressed the developers.

“With all due to respect to your business, it’s not a need of this community. I would like to ask you to reconsider the location …What is being (promised) here does not add to the healing of this community,” she said.

Naomi Schiff of the Oakland Heritage Alliance emphasized that Geoffrey’s Inner Circle is a treasure of Oakland’s history.

“Our first concern is the integrity of the historic district, in particular the former Athenian-Nile Club, now Mr. Pete’s equally historic venue, which has been the location of a great number of important community events,” she said. “It would not be OK with us if the integrity of the building were damaged in any way, no matter how much insurance (the developer bought) because it is very difficult to repair a historic building once it’s damaged.”

The Inner Circle was previously owned and operated by the Athenian-Nile Club, one of the Bay Area’s largest all-white-male exclusive private membership club, where politicians and power brokers closed back-room deals over handshakes and three martini lunches.

Cephus “Uncle Bobby X” Johnson pointed out that commissioners and the city’s Planning Department have “acknowledged that you went through the entire design review process without even knowing that the Black Arts Movement and Business District existed.”

The district was created in 2016 by City Council resolution. “At the heart of the opposition to this building is the desire to further the legacy of local Black entertainment and entrepreneurship exemplified by businesses like Mr. Pete’s … a historical landmark and venue (that serves) thousands of people who listen to jazz and other entertainment and hold weddings, receptions, and memorial services,” said Uncle Bobby.

This development is taking place within a context in which the “Black population in Oakland has decreased rapidly … because of the city’s concentration on building houses that are not affordable for people who currently live in Oakland,” he said.

John Dalrymple of East Bay Residents for Responsible Development said, “This project will result in significant air quality, public health, noise, and traffic impacts. He said the city has not adequately studied the (unmitigated) impacts of this project on the Black Arts Movement and Business District.

“This project is an example of what developers are being allowed to do when they don’t have to follow the law, and they don’t have to be sensitive to our city’s culture and values,” he said. The commission should “send a signal today that we will no longer be a feeding ground for the rich.”

Prominent Oakland businessman Ray Bobbitt told commissioners, “Any decision that you make is a contribution to the systemic process that creates a disproportionate impact on Black people. Please do yourself a favor, (and) rethink this scenario. Give Mr. Pete, who is a leader in our community, an opportunity to set the framework before you make any decision.”

Though the City Council created the BAMBD, the 2016 resolution was never implemented. The district was created to “highlight, celebrate, preserve and support the contributions of Oakland’s Black artists and business owners and the corridor as a place central historically and currently to Oakland’s Black artists and Black-owned businesses.”

The district was intended to promote Black arts, political movements, enterprises, and culture in the area, and to bring in resources through grants and other funding.

Activism

Community Meeting on Crime and Violence

Join Oakland City Councilmember Dan Kalb to discuss the uptick in crime and violence in District 1 and across Oakland. Representatives from the Oakland Police Department will be in attendance. This event will be held in-person and online.

Published

2 days ago

May 29, 2023

Oakland Post

Oakland City Councilmember Dan Kalb

Tuesday, May 30, 2023
6:30 p.m. – 8 p.m.

Oakland Technical H.S. Auditorium
300-340 42^nd St.
Oakland, CA 94611

For more information, contact District 1 Chief of Staff Seth Steward: ssteward@oaklandca.gov, 510-238-7013.

Bay Area

UniverSoul Circus Opens in Richmond

Described by show organizers as a highly interactive combination of circus arts and theatre that spans musical genres, UniverSoul Circus will feature flipping motorcycles, stilt dancers, Fire Limbo Benders, ancestral carnival characters, clowns, flamboyantly costumed dancers and more “in a celebration of energy.”

Published

2 days ago

May 29, 2023

Oakland Post

Clowns who perform with UniverSoul Circus. Photo courtesy UniverSoul Circus.

By Kathy Chouteau | The Richmond Standard

UniverSoul Circus kicked off its Bay Area run under the Big Top at Hilltop Mall last week with the performances continuing during various times through Sun., June 19.

The UniverSoul Circus is a single ring circus, established in 1994 by Cedric Walker and Calvin “Casual Cal” Dupree, an African American man who had a vision of creating a circus with a large percentage of people of color performing. He began searching for people from all around the world with incredible talents. Richmond police Chief Bisa French and City Manager Shasa Curl were set to be guest ringmasters for the opening night show.

“Get ready to be amazed and frightened at the terrifying, gravity- defying acrobats on the Wheel of Death or the bold, breathtaking daredevils on the High Wire,” said UniverSoul Circus in a statement about the show.

This season’s theme is, ‘We All Belong,’ according Walker, the circus founder and CEO. “We all belong to one human race. Everyone is coming together, different cultures, different people, a new transcultural fusion, a new generation inclusive and together in a UniverSoul Experience!”

Venue:
Hilltop Mall
2200 Hilltop Mall Rd, Richmond, CA 94806

Showtimes:
Thurs-Fri: 7:00 p.m.
Sat: 11:30 a.m., 3:30 p.m., 7:30 p.m.
Sun: 11:00 a.m., 2:30 p.m., 6:30 p.m.

Box Office Hours:
Tues: 11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Wed-Fri: 11:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Sat: 9:00 a.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Sun: 9:00 a.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Mon: 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (Memorial Day)

Tickets range from $27.50 to $60 depending on your seat and you can purchase them on Ticketmaster. Visit www.universoulcircus.com for more info.