Contra Costa County
East Bay for Everyone drafted a fantastic letter calling the Contra Costa County Planning Commission to reverse existing patterns of segregated living and instead plan for integrated and balanced patterns of living. Affirmatively furthering fair housing is a requirement for ALL housing elements adopted after January 1, 2021, and EB4E gives specific examples of how planning regulations reinforce segregated patterns as well as policies for how to promote fair housing. Bravo!
30 Muir Road
Martinez, CA 94553
November 24, 2020
Honorable Members of the Contra Costa County Planning Commission:
East Bay for Everyone is a network of people fighting for the future of housing, transit, tenant rights, and long-term planning in the East Bay. We are excited about the work being done as part of the Envision Contra Costa 2040 Plan. We are encouraged that special attention is being paid to communities that have been historically disadvantaged, to wildfire zones, and to specific area demographics as part of the planning document.
We are concerned about the lack of attention, and the lack of change, recommended for unincorporated Contra Costa County's most advantaged communities, the ones with the highest area median income, specifically, Alamo, Castle Hill, Diablo, and Blackhawk. This letter's primary author is writing from a home in Alamo that was forbidden by deed to be sold to nonwhites for 30 years after its construction. To this day, 8 of 9 Alamo residents are white, and the area median income (AMI) is very high relative to the region as a whole. This pattern of racial and economic exclusion contributed to the conditions that led Bay Point, Crockett, North Richmond, and others to be labeled as disadvantaged communities. But to mitigate this, the plan calls largely for changes to be made only to those disadvantaged communities and for the advantaged, exclusionary cities to "maintain [their] safe, quiet, and bucolic small-town characteristics" (page 9).
