I worked for the City of Oakland, Mayor’s Office for the director of housing policy. My project was to identify homeownership strategies for the City of Oakland. This fits with the City’s larger mission because the City is focused on reducing displacement and increasing racial equity. Historically, Oakland’s White residents have experienced the majority of the gains of homeownership while Oakland’s Black residents have been excluded from homeownership due to racist policies such as redlining, eminent domain, and later reverse redlining. Oakland experienced a huge increase in home values in recent years, which further magnified the racial wealth gap in the city and displaced many of Oakland’s Black residents. The City government sees homeownership as a tool to address some of the displacement Oakland’s Black residents have experienced. My project took the form of a memo that I wrote for the director of housing policy, Darin Ranelletti. It is important to note that the current mayor, Libby Schaff, is leaving office in January. As a result, the recommendations made the memo will likely be implemented by a future administration.

I applied a mix of what I learned CBS and GSAPP. I also applied some of what I learned from before school from working in venture capital. From CBS, I applied my understanding of what makes real estate transactions successful to identify creative tools for the city to augment real estate transactions that would fail otherwise. From GSAPP, I applied what I learned in terms of racial and spatial equity to the policy solutions I was recommending. Ultimately, each policy solution had a racial equity focus. I also found my planning education to be very helpful in understanding the historical context of Oakland. Although Oakland was a new city for me, I was able to situate the city in the context of other industrial cities I had learned about at GSAPP. Finally, I found my background in venture capital to be helpful during this experience. Working near Silicon Valley, I was able to reach out to venture capitalists I had known, ask about new innovations, and adapt them for the City of Oakland. Most importantly, I was able to recommend ways that these technological innovations could avoid potentially more displacement for Oakland’s Black residents.

There were many challenges associated with this project. Oakland is a city that is wary of outsiders. It has experienced a huge amount of change in a short period of time as San Francisco and the Bay Area have become the center of the technology world and wealth. I had to be aware of my limitations and my position as an outsider — an outsider who had worked in venture capital, an industry that is particularly distrusted in Oakland. I learned the most about this challenge going to neighborhood meetings in West Oakland and meetings with community members. These experiences also helped me to learn more about Oakland and hopefully helped me be more effective.

The more time I spent in Oakland the more I was struck by how challenging life in Oakland was and how much more challenging life in Oakland had become since COVID. Oakland is a high-cost city, so I was expecting it to be a city with wealth. Instead, I realized that largely it is a city that lacks wealth surrounded by extreme wealth. Although there is wealth in the land and properties, the residents of the city do not have access to that wealth. It was exciting and hopeful to work with the City of Oakland on solutions because the situation was so dire that they were deeply motivated to make changes for their residents. During this experience I was applying to jobs and received offers in both the public sector and the private sector, and this experience helped me decide to work in the public sector because I believe that is where I can have the greatest impact.