A Closer Look:The Sociocultural Legacy

of Economic Disinvestment in Richmond, CA*D

*In other words: “What the heck went wrong with Richmond?”

Further The Work: Why We Exist

“Tikkun olam”: A Hebrew phrase meaning “to restore the world,”

tikkun olam carries within it the conviction that each of us – every single human being, everywhere

– has both the opportunity and the obligation

to help restore the world.

At Further The Work, we hold this belief at the core of our being.

Further The Work: What We Believe

• We believe that maintaining the status quo isn’t good enough - not in a world in which suffering born of inequity is part of that status quo.

• We believe that there is no excuse to squander resources, whether of time, of attention, of wealth, or of expertise.

• We believe that for-profit organizations have an ethical obligation - and a practical opportunity - to contribute to the greater good, rather than just recirculate wealth among the traditional beneficiaries of that wealth.

• We believe in using excellence as a tool to promote social equity, bringing for-profit, market-competitive standards to our work in the nonprofit world.

We advocate a comprehensive approach to community change:

- Intentionally aligned

- Multi-sector

- Place-based

- Born of coordinated planning

- And emphasizing integrated implementation

....or, “It takes a village.”

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

- George Santayana, Life of Reason

A Closer Look:The Sociocultural Legacy

of Economic Disinvestment in Richmond, CA

Richmondhugs the western

edge of Contra Costa County, in San

Francisco’s East Bay.

Richmond’s access to multiple

waterways, and its direct connection to the continental landmass (unlike SF), have been

critical to its history.

[Note the town of Milpitas. We’ll come back to it later.]

Where, exactly, is Richmond?

Richmond: 30 square miles of land and 32 miles of shoreline

North Richmond is an unincorporated

area under County

jurisdiction. With a

population under 4,000, it is now an area of concentrated

poverty and violence. The Iron

Triangle is the historic heart of Richmond, named for the three railway

lines that mark its boundaries.

With a population of about 15,000, it is now an

area of concentrated poverty and

violence.

Since the 1950s, a great

deal of land has been

annexed to Richmond,

giving rise to suburban-style

bedroom communities (and even a

country club).In the ’70s, Hilltop Mall opens, five miles from downtown.

An Extraordinary Confluence:

1. Natural Assets:

• Cheap and readily available unimproved land carried over from 19th-century landgrants

• Calm bay inlets easily connecting to open ocean

2. Infrastructure Development:

• Coast-to-coast railway connection, with railway terminus within the city (1900)

• Ferry system from Richmond to Alameda, San Francisco (1900)

• Dredged port and customized landfill (1910-1920)

3. Financial and Economic Demand and Capital:

1. Local, risk-tolerant businessmen with access to capital (1900-1940)

• War-fueled escalation of demand, with focus on efficiency and productivity (1940-1945)

• Social Mobility:

1. In-migration from the American South following Reconstruction (1920s and later)

• In-migration from the American Midwest following the Dust Bowl (1930s)

Four Forces Shaping Richmond, 1900-1950

Not a Bubble: A Boom (1900-1950)• 1892: The Giant Powder Company opens on the northern shore, creating the small company

town called Giant. Later, the 2,500 acres will be annexed to Richmond, becoming Point Pinole Regional Shoreline.

• 1900: Augustin Macdonald persuades Santa Fe Railway to establish a terminus in Richmond with a ferry to San Francisco, completing the transcontinental railway, with ferry service to San Francisco. Later, Pullman Company will build sleeper cars and employ African American men as porters.

• 1901: Standard Oil Corporation (now Chevron) establishes operations in Richmond. In the 1950s and ’60s, 1000s of acres of Chevron’s “tank farms” will be sold to Richmond & developers for residential homes.

• 1907: Mechanics Bank is established to serve railway workers, who are called “mechanics.” Later, while still based in Richmond, it expands to serve the larger region.

• 1912: San Pablo Bay is dredged to allow deep water shipping. The dredged silt is in turn used to build a bay-side landmass, on which the Ford Assembly plant will be built.

• 1915: The Panama Canal opens. Richmond becomes a major Pacific mercantile port.

• 1931: Ford Assembly Plant opens, after Fred Parr assumes all costs of building the plant on spec to Ford. Grows to employ over 2,000 people.

• 1939: Henry Kaiser opens the Kaiser Shipyard, which soon becomes a leading military supplier.

• 1940: Kaiser Medical is formed to provide medical care to employees.

• 1941-1945: Kaiser builds tens of thousands of units of housing for Kaiser employees.

• 1941-1945: Daycare facilities for Kaiser families are opened in response to the female workforce.

“[During the war,] Kaiser was early in requesting that the Maritime Commission help address the housing shortage in Richmond....

The Maritime Commission made several addenda to the [Kaiser contract] in order to build housing, schools, and other community facilities.

The first, awarded 10 September 1942, was to build 6,000 units of housing [900 two-bedroom, 4,000 one-bedroom, and 1,100 single-room] and a school....

The next addendum, dated 17 December 1942, was for another 6,000 units of housing.

A third awarded in 1943...called for 4,000 more units of housing, 4,000 dormitory rooms, schools and nurseries, a market, hospital, and a community center.”

Historic American Engineering Record, prepared for The National Park Service, Rosie the Riveter/World War 11 Home Front National Historical Park, Frederick L. Quivak, 2004, p. 206A Rising Tide:

Heavy Industry Leads to Housing Construction....

Kaiser Shipyard, circa 1942

During WWII, 767 Liberty Ships were built at the Kaiser shipyards.

Scale and Productivity: Day 3 in Building a Liberty

Ship,Kaiser Shipyard, 1942

Richmond’s shipyards led the nation in number and speed in the

production of Liberty ships.It took an average of about 17 days to build a Liberty Ship in Richmond; its record was five

days.

Shift Change:Kaiser Shipyard, 1942

The shipyard ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for five years.

Skilled Trade Managers at the Shipyards

Buford Payne, 4-Yard Bond Coordinator; Fred Alexander, Pipe Welding Superintendent; Wm. Pierce, Masterpiperfitter; R. Tracy, Asst.Master Welder; Chas. Bradford, Burner Superintendent; Fred Hamby, Master Riveter; Ernie Rossi, Ass't O.F.D. Hull Supt; VinceMillicich, Master Shipfitter; Ed. O'Gaffney, Hydrostatic Tests; J. W. Beidler, Master Welder; Harry Feldhahn, Plant Maintenance

Superintendent; Ray Hamilton, Fabrication Superintendent; Earl Stiles, Safety Superintendent; Ivan Duncan, Master Shipwright; A.Underkoffler, Hull Superintendent; Helmer Ingebrigtsen, Chief Trial Engineer; Art Mori, Master Loftsman; H. McDonald, Machinist

Superintendent; Harry Tipps, Equipment Superintendent; 0. K. Outman, Sheetmetal Superintendent; M. T. Melvin, Ass't OutfittingSuperintendent; J. A. Cbokae, Machine Shop Superintendent W. W. Cooper, Master Boilermaker.R Feenstra, Chief Clerk;

Jack Stoddard, Bond Manager; K. L Sage, Outfitting Superintendent; R. Johnson, I. B. M. Dept Yard Two;G. Devereaux. 4-Yard Bond Accountant; J. C. Konrad, General Superintendent; C. P. Bedford, General Manager Richmond Shpyds;

M. G. Vanderwende, Executive Ass't; J. A. Sullivan, Warehouse Superintendent; W. F. Tustin, Labor Superintendent;T. C. Goff, Ironworker Superintendent; R. L. Davis, Stage Rigger; C. A. Walker, Yard Superintendent.

Shipyard #4, August 1944

Hard to Imagine, But Archives Tell Us....In early In early

1943, there 1943, there were 85,100 were 85,100

people people employed in employed in

the the Richmond Richmond

Kaiser Kaiser shipyards.shipyards.

Maybe It Hadn’t Been a Bubble...But There Was a Bust, Nonetheless (1945-

2000)

• 1946: Post-war conversion of industrial manufacturing centralizes in the midwest, with its ready nation-wide distribution capacities. Out-migration from Richmond begins, as skilled laborers with transferrable, portable skills move east to pursue the post-war boom.

• 1947: Kaiser shipyard closes down. Thousands of units of substandard housing remain in downtown Richmond.

• 1953-1957: Richmond annexes substantial amounts of outlying land, expanding city boundaries and creating a “suburban” ring. Bedroom communities develop, pulling many middle-class people away from downtown and attracting commuters from other areas.

• 1955: To accommodate increased market demand for cars, the Richmond Ford Assembly plant closes, and a larger plant opens in Milpitas.

• 1968: Racial unrest flares across the country; there are riots in downtown Richmond, which by now is almost entirely African American.

• 1976: Richmond’s Hilltop Mall opens, 5 miles north of downtown, serving the annexed “suburban” neighborhoods. It is a death blow for Macdonald Avenue, Richmond’s longtime Main Street.

Richmond’s Population 1900-2010

1899: Railway terminus and ferry

1901: Standard Oil

1912-1917: Harbor dredged

1931: Ford Plant opens

1939: Kaiser Shipyard opens

1953-1957: The City annexes land

1976: Hilltop Mall opens

2000-2005: Richmond endures a staggering municipal fiscal crisis, running a 30% deficit in 2003-2004.

1990 and onwards: Immigration from Mexico and Central America increases.

1955: Ford Plant closes

Mapping Industrial Population Patterns

“[O]ut-migration and population loss (OPL) is detrimental to a region...because the migration process selectively removes the ‘best and brightest,’ damaging the region’s endowment of human capital and therefore its competitiveness.”

“Out-migration, Population Decline, and Regional Economic Distress”, 1/99, byEdward J. Feser and Stuart H. Sweeney, Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina

Chapel Hill Funded by the Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, p. 53

Out-Migration and Population Loss:A Fateful Combination in Richmond

Profound Cultural Shift During Out-Migration and In-

Migration

“[S]evere boom-bust cycles accompanied by particularly rapid population adjustments

can damage the fiscal position

of local governments

as maintenance of infrastructure and services expanded during a boom must be financed

by dwindling populations with fewer financial resources following a bust.”

Op. cit., Feser and Sweeney, i.

Local Governments and the Lag EffectOf Out-Migration and Population Loss

Deficit Spending: A Powerful Intervention

During Out-Migration Busts

A case study of industrial communities in Wyoming and Illinois/Indiana makes the following observation:

“[B]oth regions faced a crisis not unlike a natural disaster that required deficit spending by local

governments struggling to maintain underutilized infrastructure and possibly overutilized services

(e.g., public assistance, counseling, and law enforcement).”

Op. cit., Feser and Sweeney. p. 34

What It Takes: Aggregated Expertise and Shared

Goals1. Intellectual leadership, vision, and advocacy “owned” by a community

revitalization “hub”

• To spur wholesale community economic and social development

• To advise, advocate, agitate, educate, and hold accountable

• To identify and pursue external opportunities that would serve the City (Choice, Promise, Sustainable Communities, Proposition 84, private funders)

2.Municipal leadership

• Able and determined to promote broadscale partnership and longterm investment

• Willing to invest substantial local dollars and to identify and leverage external dollars

• Business leadership that goes beyond “business mixers” and simplistic questions like, Business taxes: good or bad?

• Philanthropic leadership

• To cultivate comprehensive, localized knowledge to inform their investments (rather than depending on the “parts of the elephant” view that scarcity-model nonprofits are likely to offer)

1. Willing to commit to longterm goals enacted by partnerships, to raise the tide

• Capacity-building resources (and expectations) for nonprofits to counteract the “nonprofit starvation cycle”

1.Public systems (schools, health) committed to multi-sector pilot programs with tracked and targeted outcomes, not anecdotes

People ask me to predict the future,

when all I want to do is prevent it.

Better yet, build it.

Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway.

You look at the people around you,

the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe,

and predict more of the same.

We Need More Than a Faster Horse

To hell with more. I want better.~ Ray Bradbury, “Beyond 1984: The People Machines,”

in Cities: The Forces That Shape Them, Lisa Taylor, ed., 1982