Dangerous by design: How Sacramento’s un-walkable roads imperil and kill Black residents

By Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks And Phillip Reese | August 30, 2021 | The Sacramento Bee

Black pedestrians in Sacramento County were more than twice as likely to be killed in a car collision and three times as likely to be injured compared to the rest of the county.

City planners, state officials and traffic engineers have for decades prioritized cars as the predominant means of travel. Streets have gotten faster and roads have grown wider, with major urban thoroughfares slicing through low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. In the areas of Sacramento where people are most likely to lack access to a car, walking or biking to nearby stores, parks, clinics or public transit stops is a risky undertaking.

Click here to read the full article.


Photo by The Humantra from Pexels

UC Berkeley Urban Displacement Project Presentation to ECOS – Monday, March 8

On Monday, March 8 at 6:00 pm the ECOS Land Use Committee will host two guest speakers from the Urban Displacement Project UC Berkeley at its meeting. The Urban Displacement Project aims to understand the nature of gentrification and displacement in American cities. It focuses on creating tools to help communities identify the pressures surrounding them and take more effective action. Tim and Julia will discuss the ongoing research their team is doing in several major US cities, and how it can help guide public policy in Sacramento. We hope you will join us! 


Tim Thomas PhD, Research Director, Urban Displacement Project

Tim Thomas is a postdoctoral scholar and research director at the Urban Displacement Project specializing in urban sociology, demography, and data science. His research focuses on how neighborhood change, housing, and displacement affects household socioeconomic stratification by race and gender in the United States. Tim is also the Principal Investigator for the Evictions Study, a multi-metropolitan analysis on the neighborhood drivers of eviction using census data and text mining court records. . . In 2019, his team’s work on evictions provided empirical evidence that helped pass several tenant protection laws in Washington State.

He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Washington and was a Moore/Sloan Data Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington’s eScience Institute.


Julia Greenberg, Research Manager, Urban Displacement Project

Julia is a research manager at the Urban Displacement Project. She is interested in using geospatial and data analysis to understand the impacts of land use, housing policy, and climate change on housing vulnerability and displacement. Julia is committed to collaborating with community-based organizations, governments, and other stakeholders to promote strategies that increase equitable access to affordable housing.

Julia graduated from George Washington University with her Master’s in Public Policy and has a bachelor’s degree in Urban and Regional Studies from Cornell University.


To join the meeting

Link to join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/543524123

To phone in: 1 669 900 6833 – Meeting ID: 543 524 123

Click here to learn more about the Land Use Committee.


Pushed Out: Displacement Today and Lasting Impacts

Please! Attend Thursday’s public hearing on Aggie Square

August 2020

At 5pm on Thursday, September 3, 2020, UC Davis is holding a Zoom public hearing on the Aggie Square Supplemental Environmental Impact Report. We need you to register online and briefly express your concern about community displacement and related issues as Aggie Square is built out.  

If you can attend, please register now. You must register prior to the hearing.

Register here: https://ucdavisfoa.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8Ij6K0WSQDW_Ho0pgtbWzg

Hearing is: Thursday, September 3, 2020 starting at 5:00 p.m. online via Zoom webinar.

For a link to Thursday’s public hearing and the full Supplemental EIR, please go to: https://environmentalplanning.ucdavis.edu/sacramento

We are also encouraging written comments be sent to UC Davis prior to its comment deadline on Sept 16.


Community Concerns that YOU can bring up on Thursday, Sep. 3rd:

  • Displacement of families.
  • A commitment from UC Davis to implement a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA).
  • Access to affordable housing on & near Aggie Square
  • Local hiring for community members living in zip codes 95817-24 and those displaced in last five years; job application support and streamlining; ‘ban the box’ for offenders.
  • Local business protections and support, local business purchasing, and a focus on improving existing commercial corridors without neglecting neighborhood-serving commercial.
  • Environmental protections and improvements, including policies to support clean air and safe and healthy lighting.
  • Transit-oriented development serving those with highest likelihood of using public transit
  • Support and programs to keep neighborhood youth in schools; high-school and community college student job opportunities with mentoring, school-to-job pipeline; safe homework space and assistance.
  • Anti-demolition policies and procedures to protect homes in surrounding neighborhoods
  • An increase in the number of MediCal recipients seen at UC Davis from surrounding neighborhood

Click here to learn more about Aggie Square and ECOS’s involvement: https://www.ecosacramento.net/aggie-square-ucd-med-center-in-sacramento/

No More Broken Promises

By Bill Motmans and Tamika L’Ecluse
June 10, 2020
Sacramento News and Review

“…city leaders have proposed federal stimulus funds for economic development projects, including UC Davis’s Aggie Square (a major real estate development aimed at attracting biotech companies), and bolstering the local tourism industry. Neither of these proposed investments will address the immediate and enormous suffering of families, the elderly and children living in neighborhoods such as Fruitridge, Del Paso, North Sacramento, Oak Park and Meadowview. Quite the opposite, investment in Aggie Square commercial projects without a community benefits agreement that includes a large prior investment in new affordable housing and existing neighborhood businesses, will, over time, increase demand for existing housing and commercial space and further destabilize and displace residents and small businesses.

A new coalition of several organizations working in vulnerable neighborhoods, called Sacramento Investment Without Displacement, was created to ensure that public financial investment builds up Sacramento neighborhoods, rather than destabilize them. Our coalition calls on local elected officials to fulfill their commitments to voters. No more broken promises. Now more than ever, with COVID-19 disproportionately hurting communities of color and disadvantaged neighborhoods, public investment must directly and immediately provide relief to our city’s most vulnerable residents.”

Click here to read the article in full.

Click here to learn more about the work being done by Sacramento Investment Without Displacement, of which ECOS is a part.

Photo by Retha Ferguson from Pexels

Summer Days Often Feel Much Hotter If You Live In One Of California’s Historically Redlined Neighborhoods

May 26, 2020 | By Randol White | Capital Public Radio

California’s triple-digit heat is back — and new research shows residents in the state’s most underserved neighborhoods suffer the most when the mercury rises.

Portland State University’s heat-mapping project tapped volunteers last summer in four California metro areas to attach GPS-equipped temperature collection gadgets to their cars and drive along set routes for an hour in the morning, afternoon and evening. They drove through the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Victorville and Sacramento.

The research project was led by Vivek Shandas, a professor who believes this form of heat-data collection can help city planners solve decades-old problems.

“We’re trying to bring the understanding of climate change and the changes happening on a planetary scale down to the individual person and down to the individual city block,” Shandas said.

The data collected that day indicates the temperature differentials between neighborhoods can vary by as much as 20 degrees.

Wealthy, tree-canopied neighborhoods are typically cooler, and low-income, asphalt-heavy communities run hotter.

Click here to read the full article.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels.

Anti-gentrification effort aims to shape Aggie Square

By Felicia Alvarez, Staff Writer
February 18, 2020
Sacramento Business Journal

A group of residents under the name Sacramento Investment Without Displacement are calling for Aggie Square’s planners and developers to help protect the area against gentrification.

The group is advocating for a “community benefits agreement” that would make some of those protections legally enforceable, said Gabby Trejo, the group’s leader.

Sacramento Investment Without Displacement is working with a coalition[*] that includes the Sacramento Housing Alliance, the La Familia Counseling Center, Sacramento Area Congregations Together and Building Healthy Communities’ site in Oak Park, which is part of a $1 billion community development initiative by The California Endowment. Trejo is also the executive director of Sacramento ACT.

Click here to read this article.

*ECOS is proud to be a part of this coalition! Click here to learn more about Aggie Square and how ECOS is involved.

Image by Sri Harsha Gera from Pixabay