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All San Franciscans deserve to live in safety and prosperity. But today, not all San Franciscans do. In truth, while we are one City, united in name and government, we remain separate communities. In the Bayview, Visitacion Valley, and other neighborhoods, there is a San Francisco that is a community apart, separated by geography, violence, and decades of neglect. 34,204 (4%) of San Franciscans live in the Southeast corner of the city yet they make up over two-thirds of the city’s overall poverty rate. This, in the context of a growing yet fragile city economy with a $6 billion budget presents a unique opportunity for monumental change.
San Francisco’s unequal income distribution could jeopardize the City’s future competitiveness and overall economic stability. The role of government is to intervene where the market fails society’s most vulnerable populations, the city’s poorest residents. This includes investing public funds to counteract policies that disadvantage a geographic area, promote localized economic development, create jobs, and increase the provision of goods and services. Because most nonprofits lack the economies of scale to construct infrastructure, and private actors have little incentive to invest in reweaving the frayed social fabric, government through a strategic public-private partnership is uniquely positioned to create the required innovative infrastructure to eradicate poverty. This infrastructure facilitates novel policy development, the formation of equitable redevelopment, enhanced service access and increased social capital in areas of concentrated poverty.
Poverty has been defined in many different ways. But any effort to dismantle this community dilemma must understand that the intersection between “structural ” and “cultural” poverty is the systemic cause of generational poverty. David Shipler, noted poverty scholar describes the complexity of the factors that create and keep families entrenched in poverty in America:
Poverty is a constellation of difficulties that magnify one another: not just low wages but also low education, not just dead-end jobs, but also limited abilities, not just insufficient savings but also unwise spending, not just poor housing but also poor parenting, not just the lack of health insurance, but also the lack of healthy households… The troubles run strongly along macro and micro levels, as systemic problems in the structure of political and economic power, and as individual problems in personal and family life[1].
Creating opportunity for socially and economically isolated San Franciscans requires a multi-faceted and comprehensive approach. In San Francisco, this approach is called “Communities of Opportunity” (COO):
COO is the constellation of systems and opportunities that magnify one another: not just the removal of barriers, but also access to employment, not just quality education but also the creation of living wage careers, not just new housing developments, but also stable family structures, not just better parenting but also positive social networks, not just safer neighborhoods but also a collective intolerance toward violence. Not just a checking account but also opportunity to own a home, not just choice, but more importantly empowerment. These opportunities provide direct access to the “prosperity grid” and address the ever-widening wealth gap that exists in this city.
Bayview resident, Christina Sandoval also understands that if we are to be successful residents must play significant role:
Prosperity is new to me but I know what I want. It’s new jobs, housing, schools, stores, parks, and a strong community withoutconstant death of young people. These are all the things we’ve been asking for forever and we see it’s happening right in front of us.The city canonly create opportunity, if we don’t take advantage it’s on us, and we won’t prosper.
This conscience overlap between governmental responsibility and individual accountability is the underpinning of the COO strategy and the framework for successful implementation.
COO is an opportunity to rigorously examine the most creative strategies in the field of community and economic development, and to mount an unflinching effort to reverse historical patterns of racism and disparities in areas of concentrated poverty.
[1] David K. Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America (New York: Knopf, 2004) 285.
