Connecting Housing, Community, and Health

Partners of the San Pablo Area Revitalization Collaborative supported residents in West Oakland, California, to complete dozens of creative projects, including a street mural in the center of the neighborhood. (Image courtesy of East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation)

The San Pablo Avenue Corridor extends about a mile north of downtown Oakland, California. Like many other low-income neighborhoods and communities of color across the United States—including Detroit, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles—it’s an area hit hard by decades of disinvestment in housing, schools, jobs, and services for local residents. Compared to their neighbors in the prosperous Oakland Hills, the nearly 8,000 residents around San Pablo Avenue can expect to live 14 years less on average.

Expanding access to affordable housing along the avenue is essential to equitable community development. When residents don’t have affordable places to live, the stress on families and neighborhoods can have dangerous implications. Individual and family health, and educational achievement suffer, and interactions with police and the justice system become more common. Right now, a lack of housing means that populations already more susceptible to COVID-19 are at even greater risk, because they literally cannot shelter in place.

But housing is only part of the equation when it comes to addressing historical inequities and ensuring healthy communities for all. Increasingly, research shows that human health and well-being depend on a range of interconnected social, economic, and physical factors that impact the environments where we live, learn, work, and play.

For decades, philanthropy has supported community development corporations and community-based groups to work with community members on housing-focused solutions to neighborhood challenges. But community development in neighborhoods where there is a history of racial inequity, economic disinvestment, and poor health must address a combination of forces simultaneously and thoughtfully, and in true partnership with residents and community organizations. The key to success is making sure residents: a) are engaged in decision-making, and b) have access to transportation, living-wage jobs, small business investment, and cultural activities, as well as essential services like grocery stores, parks, and health care.

A collaborative entity called the San Pablo Area Revitalization Collaborative (SPARC) is putting this “housing-plus” approach to the test. Residents, community-based organizations, and others are partnering with nonprofits and government to build nearly 400 new units of affordable housing in Oakland within the next five years—plus, implementing a range of other projects and services. SPARC’s work, together with other Oakland initiatives in communities like Chinatown and Fruitvale, rests on four cornerstones that funders, community development organizations, and others can use in their own efforts to build stronger, healthier communities.

1. Preserving Culture

Working to protect the culture, traditions, and legacy of a community is important to creating a sense of place and building buy-in for change among residents. When we feel a connection to the story of our neighborhood, and when we take pride in where we live, we are much more likely to join in the work of preserving and improving our surroundings. We are also better equipped to bring in partners to help realize our vision, because we have a powerful story to tell about the past, present, and future of our corner of the world.

Decades ago, the San Pablo Avenue Corridor was a largely African-American neighborhood with a thriving business, music, and cultural scene. At the center of it all was the California Hotel. Built in 1929, the hotel hosted performances by jazz and blues greats including Billie Holiday and Big Mama Thornton. However, bookings fell into steep decline in the 1960s, when construction of the I-580 freeway adjacent to the building cut the corridor off from the rest of the city. Many years later, in 2011, the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) joined with neighborhood residents, community leaders, and city government officials in an effort to preserve and renovate the building. The hotel now provides 137 residential units of affordable housing, on-site social and medical services, a community garden and greenhouse, and 8,000 square feet of commercial space. The California Hotel Live! Cultural Hub, a visual and performing arts center, pays homage to the neighborhood’s historic past, and next door is SPARC-it-Place, a community gathering and event space. This work has shown us the value of preserving local culture while creating new housing and spurring home-grown commercial development.

One laudable commitment to creating and reinforcing a sense of place and community is Kresge Foundation’s Building and Supporting Equitable Development (BASED), an $8 million initiative focused on placemaking and supporting community development through arts and culture. As part of the first cohort in the initiative, EBALDC is now working with residents, collaborative partners, and culture bearers in the San Pablo Corridor to take on creative projects—including murals, community events, protests, gardens, and research projects—that build social cohesion and resident leadership, and celebrate history while pushing systemic and policy changes that center racial equity.

2. Centering Community Power and Voice 

Building vibrant places where people and families feel ownership, and become actively involved in tackling challenges and opportunities, requires listening to and honoring residents’ hopes and dreams. Residents may not be able to build affordable housing themselves, but they can help developers identify locations, purchase suitable properties, and convey the amenities they desire to make projects successful. Solutions imposed from the outside rarely work; the better approach is to co-create with residents.

Government and institutional partners are recognizing the power of this approach for projects across Oakland. More than a decade ago, the City of Oakland and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board pushed for a plan to redevelop the area around the Lake Merritt BART station in the heart of Oakland’s historic Chinatown. EBALDC—in partnership with a coalition of local nonprofits, churches, and businesses—spent the next 10 years engaging local networks to identify priorities for the development. The aim was to create new community benefits, such as improved and new community parks, without displacing the predominantly low-income, Asian and Pacific Islander American communities. In 2018, BART selected EBALDC’s proposal for a transit-oriented development that would also support the community’s vision for Chinatown’s future. Today, EBALDC, BART, and Strada, our for-profit partner, are continuing to work with residents, small businesses, and other groups to shape the development. One way we are doing this is by hosting community design workshops that are open to all.

Over in the San Pablo Avenue Corridor, residents are playing an important role too. They comprise 51 percent of SPARC’s Steering Committee, while representatives from other partner organizations make up the rest. SPARC’s partners are meanwhile actively soliciting ideas from the community about how to address the local issues impacting their neighborhoods and to support them in taking action. Design Dash, for example, is an initiative that supports creative projects that local leaders and residents envision. The initiative kicks off each year with a community outreach campaign to rally local organizations and resident leaders, and to incubate ideas for projects. Each project receives $1,000 in seed funding, plus in-kind support from professional designers, guidance from program managers, meeting space, and capacity-building training. Since 2015, SPARC has supported resident and partner teams to complete 34 diverse Design Dash projects along the Corridor, including the launch of the Friends of Hoover Durant Public Library, a community-based campaign to bring a library back to the neighborhood by 2022.

3. Collaborating Across Sectors 

In the same way that resident engagement and leadership are essential, so is the involvement of government, business, and nonprofit partners. The more resources initiatives can bring to bear, the more likely they are to succeed. It’s especially important to engage service providers that can meet the full range of community needs.

Going back to Oakland’s Chinatown community, EBALDC solicited feedback from community members over many months to determine what should go on the ground floor of Prosperity Place, a family affordable housing building completed in 2017, in partnership with the Oakland Housing Authority. After learning that space for affordable medical services was a critical need, we worked with Asian Health Services, a federally qualified health center serving immigrant and refugee Asian communities, to develop an on-site dental clinic. The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Dental and Wellness Clinic is a state-of-the-art facility and the first community dental clinic of its kind in California, offering mental health services and screenings, in addition to dental care.

Residents, small businesses, and other groups share their feedback and help shape the redevelopment around the Lake Merritt BART Station in Oakland, California.

Another example of cross-sector collaboration is EBALDC’s partnership with Community Foods Market, a full-service grocery store in West Oakland whose mission is to provide fresh and affordable food. San Pablo Avenue Corridor community members had identified access to healthy food as a pressing and long-time need. EBALDC provided real estate and financing expertise to help raise funds and secure a location, and after working together for nearly five years, the store finally opened in 2019. In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, Community Foods Market has become an essential resource for local residents and has gone so far as to discount electronic benefit purchases by 50 percent during the crisis. 

4. Connecting Housing and Services 

We know that successful approaches to community development combine housing and critical services, and one great way to achieve this is through mixed-use developments. 

At the California Hotel mentioned earlier, EBALDC has partnered with Lifelong Medical Care to implement primary care and case-management services. These connect residents to additional supportive services they need, alongside our own in-house resident services that promote community building and connect residents with the SPARC neighborhood initiative. This combination of supports allows residents to get health-care checkups right in their building and to take advantage of opportunities to build leadership skills. Leadership services include individual coaching for resident leaders, as well as support for resident-led groups or projects that will make the California Hotel and San Pablo Area a healthier place to live.

Another good example is Casa Arabella in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood, which combines mixed-income housing, retail, and community space, all connected to a mass transit hub. The development was named after Arabella Martinez, founder of the Unity Council, a community-development corporation created to work on issues that impact Fruitvale’s Latinx community. In 1991, the transit organization BART unveiled its plan to construct a parking structure that would separate the Fruitvale BART station from the surrounding community. After reviewing the plan, the Unity Council organized community opposition to it and began working on a better way to develop the area around the station in partnership with BART. The result was the Fruitvale Transit Village, which constituted the first of two phases of development and opened in 2003. It included two new buildings with housing, office space, and a pedestrian walkway connecting the station area with the greater Fruitvale area. From there, the Unity Council and EBALDC partnered to develop Casa Arabella—phase two of the project—down the street. This affordable housing development opened in 2019 and is now home to 250 residents, including 40 formerly homeless households, with family incomes between 20 and 60 percent of the area median income. At least 21 percent of the units are reserved for formerly homeless US military veterans. The development is also just steps away from the Fruitvale BART station and a planned bus line, and offers on-site support services, including a full-time resident service and workforce coordinator who connects residents with economic empowerment opportunities. There is also a full-time veteran services specialist on-site, as well as computer centers, learning spaces, community gathering spaces, and play spaces for children. 

As these examples show, the seeds of a new approach to helping communities thrive are taking root in Oakland and can serve as a model for other neighborhoods. Turning things around means tackling the housing affordability crisis at the same time that we work to expand access to opportunity, critical services, and good health. This approach is centered on the input and leadership of residents, like those driving change in Chinatown, Fruitvale, and the San Pablo Corridor. Their voices provide the compass for our collective action in building healthy and vibrant neighborhoods.

Read more stories by Charise Fong, Romi Hall & Jill Kunishima.