A $1.1 billion project will mean thousands of jobs in Sacramento. Will renters be displaced?

By Theresa Clift | September 14, 2020 | The Sacramento Bee

Guadalupe Del Angel-Garcia moved into her North Oak Park apartment 14 years ago. Three years ago, her rent was about $800 a month. Now it’s $1,100.

The rent is increasingly difficult for her family to pay, especially since her husband was laid off from his restaurant job due to the coronavirus pandemic. But Oak Park is home. She’s lived there more than two decades and belongs to a close-knit community through her church.

When she heard about Aggie Square, a sprawling new project bringing thousands of jobs to the UC Davis Medical Center about a mile away, she was deeply concerned.

Click here to read the full article.

Click here to learn how ECOS is involved in trying to get UC Davis to uphold the community development principles taught in their classes and make sure Aggie Square doesn’t cause more displacement in Sacramento’s underserved neighborhoods.


Image by Leroy Skalstad from Pixabay

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/

Photo of worn shoes of someone lying on dirty pavement, skateboard next to them

Environmental review for UC Davis’ 150-acre Sacramento campus moves forward

July 31, 2020 | By Felicia Alvarez | Sacramento Business Journal

Expansion plans at the UC Davis Medical Center and Aggie Square are continuing to pick up momentum.

On Friday, the University of California Davis released the draft environmental impact report for its long-term development plans at UC Davis Medical Center. The draft report captures all 146 acres at the campus, including the university’s planned tech hub, Aggie Square, and approximately $1.9 billion in new facilities and renovations for the medical center.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2020/07/31/environmental-review-underway-uc-davis-sacramento.html

The Environmental Council of Sacramento has been working with a coalition of community members and advocacy groups to ask UC Davis to ensure that the community also benefits from this investment. Click here to learn more about the effort.

Click here to read the full article.

Photo by Taufiq Klinkenborg from Pexels.

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

Innovation without gentrification?

By Graham Womack
April 1, 2020
Sacramento News and Review

The promise and pitfalls of Aggie Square in Oak Park

“The reality is Aggie Square could be the best thing for the neighborhood, and it could be the worst thing for the neighborhood,” said Sacramento City Council member Eric Guerra, whose district is directly east of UC Davis Med Center.

https://sacblog.newsreview.com/2020/04/01/innovation-without-gentrification/

Even a UC Davis official—Hendry Ton, the university’s associate vice chancellor for health equity, diversity and inclusion—has questions about Aggie Square causing gentrification and displacing residents.
“I think there’s a lot of questions about that and I certainly have questions about that as well,” Ton said. “I think that the potential is that if the people in Aggie Square and the university are thoughtful and careful and collaborative about this, this can be a very significant force for good in the neighborhood.”
So far, however, collaboration hasn’t exactly been smooth, with officials and residents clashing on plans to ensure the neighborhood benefits from the project.
A group connected to the California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities initiative, known as Sacramento Investment Without Displacement, has been working on a legally binding community benefits agreement for Aggie Square.
A January draft of the agreement called for local hiring from nearby zip codes, anti-demolition policies to protect homes and enrollment of at least 50 percent of Medi-Cal recipients living within five miles of Aggie Square.
“We believe that this project has a lot of potential to be successful. But it also has a lot of potential to displace working families.”
Gabby Trejo is executive director of Sacramento Area Congregations Together.
“We want to see Aggie Square be successful,” said Gabby Trejo, who has been working on the agreement and serves as executive director of Sacramento Area Congregations Together. “We believe that this project has a lot of potential to be successful. But it also has a lot of potential to displace working families. And we want to make sure that working families in our region are protected.”
City leaders have yet to commit to a community benefits agreement, however. Guerra and Councilman Jay Schenirer, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, are instead working on a letter of intent, which city leaders declined to provide.
“I’m less concerned about the type of document and more concerned about an honest agreement… that will last longer than whatever we call the agreement,” Guerra said.
But Trejo and Sasso said the letter is insufficient. “We’ve seen other folks be bad actors in that things are promised and then they’re never delivered,” Sasso said.

https://sacblog.newsreview.com/2020/04/01/innovation-without-gentrification/

Click here to read the full article.


ECOS’ Involvement

ECOS is a part of the Sacramento Investment Without Displacement coalition to work towards preventing the displacement of long-time residents and local businesses that could occur as a result of this significant, new project at the UC Davis Medical Center.

Click here to learn more about Aggie Square and ECOS’ involvement.


Image credit: Edna Winti, 2016/366/238 Proceed with Caution

ECOS Comments on Aggie Square NOP

UC Davis has an opportunity to lift up rather than disrupt the Sacramento Campus’ surrounding community. Investment alone is not enough; these major investments must be coupled with anti-displacement strategies to ensure that existing residents will equitably reap the benefits of these improvements. We hope [UC Davis] seize[s] this opportunity to demonstrate what a true relationship between the University and the community can bring.

ECOS Comment letter dated March 10, 2020

On March 10, 2020, ECOS submitted a comment letter on the Notice of Preparation for an Environmental Impact Report on the UC Davis Sacramento Campus 2020 Long Range Development Plan Update (LRDP), which will serve as a project-level EIR for Aggie Square Phase 1.

Click here to read the letter in full.