Cars in poor condition, unused land, modest houses inhabited by black or Latino tenants, a few homeless people. Looking at these images, it’s hard to believe that we are in the heart of Silicon Valley, in one of the richest regions in the world. Yet this is the case.
A few hundred meters from the headquarters of Facebook and Google, a few steps from the dapper cities of Palo Alto and Menlo Park, where tech engineers with big salaries rub shoulders with Stanford professors, the streets of East Palo Alto seem like light years of this healthy California.
East Palo Alto? Around 30,000 residents, 60% of whom are tenants, with modest financial means. The arrival, over the years, of the giants Facebook and Google and their cohort of well-paid employees has profoundly changed life in this working-class enclave, heir to a long activist tradition.
Militant energy
East Palo Alto has always been a special place. In the 1960s, modest workers could find housing there at a lower cost, and the black community was already defending the premises against the appetites of developers.
Over time, families from Mexico settled in the small town in San Mateo County. The city’s multicultural identity and its activist energy are still relevant today. But today the threat is becoming more and more pressing.
How will the poor be able to stay in apartments that they have occupied for so many years while, to house their employees, the tech giants and developers are greedily eyeing the only unused land still available in the area, in the heart of East Palo Alto? And dream of destroying modest buildings to build luxury residences?
“I pay monthly rent of 1,200 dollars [1,100 euros]. New residents, often Google or Facebook employees, pay $2,200 per month,” summarizes Laura, a housekeeper from Mexico who came to settle with her two children in East Palo Alto in the early 2000s and who fears now expulsion.
Choosing an unusual format (three episodes of twenty minutes each), author and journalist Fabien Benoit talks about emblematic people: Laura, who knows East Palo Alto to perfection; but also Antonio, a young municipal councilor, also of Mexican origin, who wonders if negotiating with developers is not the best way to limit social damage.
There is also the ambitious Mark Dinan, who obviously dreams of transforming East Palo Alto into a rich ghetto. Without forgetting the veteran Ruben Abrica, a most modest candidate for more than thirty years for the leadership of the East Palo Alto city council. It’s a shame that the short format of this documentary series prevents us from going further. In the meantime, the fight continues in the southern San Francisco Bay.
