When there is land with attractive properties - in this case location - the normal market forces will tend to bid up the price. Even if you are an existing home owner with clear title to your property the increase in property taxes is a back door way to cause you to vacate your property. A government lien on your property for unpaid taxes can trigger a forced removal.
The sight of the development of Oakland was night and day. I took a honeymoon trip through the Bay Area in the mid 90's and returned about 10 years later to the "Jack London Square" area. What had been blocks of abandoned buildings turned into a sprawling Asian marketplace that was bustling with commerce on the Saturday afternoon that I spent exploring there. Credit should be given to the people who had the foresight to greatly enhance the utility of that patch of land and trigger economic boom and revenues to the city as a consequence.
There is nothing personal about my commentary as a results of my observations and research. The sad truth is that certain people are dogmatic in their entrenched viewpoints. In retaining their disposition they end up losing out as others use their strategy and leverage to displace them. Nothing that I saw among the Asian residents who were grabbing a foothold of the city from the water-side inward is impossible for the original residents to replicate.
They are instead forced to move to Richmond and beyond and then take extra-long commuter rides into Oakland or San Francisco for employment. Those who foment "activist struggle" need to instead turn around and learn how to leverage the resources that they have at their disposal to create value and build up an economy that works in their favor.
The black population in counties like San Francisco, San Mateo and even Alameda have declined sharply due mostly to a lack of affordable housing, according to a new study of Census data from Urban Strategies Council, the influential nonprofit in Oakland. It was commissioned by Bay Area Blacks in Philanthropy.
Instead, blacks are moving increasingly inland, to parts of Contra Costa and Solano Counties, or into the valley, to cities like Tracy, Lodi or Stockton.
To many people, especially those who remember what the Fillmore District looked like decades ago, black flight from San Francisco isn't quite breaking news.
But the study has some interesting tidbits from 2000-2008, the period it covered.
-- Oakland lost about a quarter of its black population in the eight-year period, from 142,460 to 106,491.
-- Daly City and Berkeley have the largest decline in proportion of blacks with drops of 42.3 percent and 35.5 percent, respectively. It's not clear what the absolute figures are.
-- Antioch's black population has surged by 114 percent, pushed in part by the housing subsidy program Section 8.
Eric Arnold at Oakland Local has an interview with Urban Strategies' Steve Spiker and Junious Williams. The full report is also viewable on Oakland Local.
Williams said San Francisco is probably "the most active in focusing on the pattern of black population decline and [it] has attempted to address it through its certificate program for black families." That long-standing program was kickstarted a few years ago by supervisors Sophie Maxwell and Ross Mirkarimi.
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