The Trouble with Facebook’s Neighbor

[KamaAina]

https://medium.com/%40steveneperez21/a-look-at-gentrification-at-work-in-east-palo-alto-f7a1acb97001

It’s hard to miss Facebook’s new headquarters. The infuriating stop-and-go traffic on the Bayfront Expressway in Menlo Park gives drivers plenty of time to ogle the shiny, angular mass of glass and concrete overlooking muddy marshlands. Rainbow art installations are visible behind multi-story glass walls, and pine saplings rise from the rooftop park.

In 2015, over 2,000 Facebook employees moved into this Frank Gehry-designed building, the newest addition to the tech giant’s campus near the bottom of the San Francisco Bay. These offices and the first Menlo Park complex at 1 Hacker Way sit less than half a mile from East Palo Alto, the poorest and most dangerous city in Silicon Valley.

East Palo Alto is separated by Highway 101 from the bounty of the Stanford-Palo Alto machine, and its 30,000 residents today are mostly black, Latino, and Polynesian. Since Facebook moved into its nearby headquarters in 2011, East Palo Alto has experienced rapid change in the form of increased property values, displacement of lower-income people, and diminished crime — gentrification.

Gentrification has famously become an acute problem in the Bay Area. San Francisco is in the middle of what to some comes dangerously close to class warfare. East Palo Alto is the newest battleground; until Facebook’s move, the city managed to remain relatively affordable despite being located in the heart of Silicon Valley.

[pangaia]

1. I guess it is the same that happeens everywhere,,

in the form of 'developers."

Expand the YMCA, as happened in my town, but in doing so, displace 7-8 multi-apartment lower rent houses.. Where do those people go?

Buy up low property in a low income area at the head of a lake, including a mobile home park, force people out, and start building a mini- village with shops, unimaginative restaurants, expensive condos and apartments.....

Sucks...

[xfundy]

2. Where do those people go?

Who cares? They're not important like me!

[pangaia]

4. It's terrible.

I go to that YMCA. I doubt any of the people who were displaced for the expansion, mostly a YUUGE swimming pool, could afford to join. I have no idea what happened. it bothers me, but, what did I do about it? Nothing.

On the other hand, on the land along the lake that was bought up, one of the guys who lived in the mobile home park worked part time for me. He had a wife and 1 baby. real nice guy, totally dependable. Had one car and his wife needed it to go to work, a real j7unker, so I picked him up and brought him to my workshop.. about 17 miles.. and paid him way above minimum wage..

I helped them find another place and put them up for a couple months in my small "townhouse" (Don't be impressed by the term 'townhouse." :&gt )

Later he got a full time job that, even though maid less per hour, was mote time than I could give him...

I know the 'developer' who bought the lake front property..a number ONE asshole, liar, and crook.

Eh.,... back to March madness. :&gt )

[Dr. Xavier]

3. Yeah, just

wait until the crash, its coming and the landing will be a lot more difficult than the bust of 2001...