RACIAL EQUITY DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION INITIATIVE  

The Housing Department's mission is to strengthen and revitalize our community through housing and neighborhood investment. We recognize the injustices created through past government actions that have historically destabilized our communities of color and excluded many of us from accessing safe and stable housing. We seek to authentically advance our mission by using racial equity tools to erase racial disparities in services to the public and in our workforce.  

The Department believes that to successfully advance equity in its external work in the community, it is crucial to first look inside itself as an organization. Below is a summary of some of the work the Department has accomplished during this past year to advance racial equity.  

Housing Department GARE Team  

The Housing Department GARE (HDGARE) team is a diverse team of staff leaders committed to the Housing Department's racial equity work.  

The Team:

• Advises on the direction of the Housing Department's racial equity initiatives   
• Recommends or develops new initiatives to advance racial equity in the department
• Acts as department leaders implementing racial equity tools in their projects
• Promotes culture change to advance equity and inclusion in the Housing Department

The team meets bi-weekly, and any Housing Department staff are welcome to join. 

To learn more, reach out to current Housing GARE team members. 

ONGOING RACIAL EQUITY WORK IN 2022-2024: 

Racial Equity Design And Implementation Initiative (REDI Initiative)  

The Department began working with ARC4Justice (contracted through C4Innovations) in 2022 to conduct a multi-phase project to support the department's racial equity, diversity, and inclusion work.  

The REDI Initiative includes:  

Phase 1 | Conducting a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) assessment of the department organization: This provides the Department a baseline of where to make progress. This includes an equity survey, community engagement, interviews with staff, HR data analysis, racial equity evaluation for select programs, and racial equity review of strategic documents. 
Phase 2 |Develop a new department vision, mission, and values statement and policy affirming the priority of racial equity. 
Phase 3 | Develop Department’s first Racial Equity Action Plan based in root cause analysis.  

The scope of work of this project was created by the Housing Department GARE team in 2021. The project was designed to be co-led by BIPOC residents with lived experience of homelessness, housing instability, and/or of living in affordable housing through participating on a committee alongside Housing staff, called the Racial Equity Impact Team (REIT). 

Current Status and Next Steps:

Department Presentation 

The ARC4Justice Team provided a partial presentation on its findings from Phase 1: DEI Assessment at the March 7 Departmentwide meeting. The presentation included qualitative data analysis from:

• The Department’s first Racial Equity Survey administered to all staff in fall 2022
• Three listening sessions:
  • Project Hope community leaders from the following neighborhoods: Cadillac Winchester, Foxdale, Guadalupe Washington, Hoffman Via Monte, McKinley Bonita, Mclaughlin Area Tenants (MAT), Poco Way, Roundtable, and Welch Park. All participants were tenants of affordable housing or rent-stabilized housing. 
  • People with lived experience of being unhoused at the Roosevelt Community Center. A questionnaire was also collected at the Housing Department sponsored resource fair at Columbus Park. 
  • Listening Session with employees who work for the Rent Stabilization Program and Eviction Help Center. 
• Five virtual one-on-one structured interviews with past and current employees holding different positions across the Department 

Their initial findings and recommendations fell into the following categories: Experiences of people being served across the Housing Department programs; Departmental Culture; Staff Support, Empowerment, and Retention; and Structural Obstacles. 

Racial Equity Impact Team Roster: 

The Racial Equity Impact Team (REIT) meets every other week on zoom. The schedule and topics planned for the REIT meetings is below.  

Racial Equity Impact Team Meetings
		Topics
November 1, 2023		REIT Orientation   Project Overview  Go over group commitment, stipends, and meeting schedule.
November 8, 2023 Hillview Library Community room		Meet team members in-person. Get to know one another. Food is provided.  Mission, Vision, and Values building
November 15, 2023		Pt 2. Vision, Mission and Values Building
November 29, 2023		Policy Working Session Affirming Race Equity as a Priority
December 13, 2023		Finalize Equity Policy
January 10, 2024		Review Housing Department’s feedback on vision, mission, and values statement to center racial equity.
January 24, 2024		Finalize Vision, Mission, and Values
February 7, 2024		Introduction to the Equitable Results Framework (ERF)
February 21, 2024		ERF: Data Root Cause Analysis Session 1
March 6, 2024		ERF: Data Factor/Root Cause Analysis Session 2
May 29, 2024		Race Equity Action Planning Session 2  Sustainable Data Practices Factor Analysis Impact, Prioritization, and Accountability
May 30, 2024		Strategy and Action Step Development
May 31, 2024		Power Mapping and Sharing Power  Refining Racial Equity Action Plan
June 14, 2024		Submit 2024-2026 Racial Equity Action Plan to the Office of Racial Equity
June 26, 2024		Develop ongoing review processes that the Housing Department can use to continually assess if the policies are successfully addressing and furthering racial equity
June 28, 2024		Office of Racial Equity Finalizes Racial Equity Action Plan

Language Access Plan(LAP) Approved

In Summer 2023 the Department approved the new Language Access Plan. The new plan is an internal document which replaces the 2007 Department Language Access Plan in order to increase access to services and important documents for limited English proficient persons, including people with sensory disabilities. 

Current Status: All staff have been instructed to reference the new Language Access Plan as needed as part of their work. A budget request for a Community Access Program manager was submitted this past year as part of the City Manager’s Office Equity Budget Worksheets. The Community Access Program Manager would drive the professionalization of language access in the Department and manage the implementation of the LAP. The position was not approved.

Next Steps: The Language Access Team plans to conduct the annual How to Use Language Access Tools training in spring 2024. Including topics such as proactively planning for inclusive community engagement and language access, how to work effectively with bilingual staff, how to use telephone interpretation services, how to work with language vendors to translate complex documents, and more. The Language Access Team has designated Language Leads! Thank you to Theresa Ramos (Spanish), Janie Le (Vietnamese), Hong Hua (Chinese).

Housing Department Performance Measures Audit in Progress 

Description: The Housing Department is updating its’ community indicators, performance measures, and activity and workload highlights that are published annually in the Operating Budget as part of the CED CSA Modernization process. The HDGARE Team was asked to provide feedback on equity performance measures. 

Current Status: The HDGARE Team provided its input on the proposed set of performance measures which were presented to CEDC on January 22, 2024.  

The team’s recommendations are listed below:

• Include gender and disaggregated racial data on Housing portfolio occupancy % and # of affordable housing portfolio households by ethnicity. In order to identify disparities, compare this to the gender and racial composition of low-income households in San José.
• Track % of development funding to BIPOC/Emerging developers.
• Analyze selected grant programs to identify patterns in beneficiaries by race, beginning with the minor home repair program.
• Analyze how much the Housing Department Grants team contracts with small and BIPOC organizations.
• Track grantees’ Language Access Plan compliance.
• Track the number/percent of clients served in the Rent Stabilization Program and Eviction Help Center in languages other than English and in what languages. 

Next Steps: The performance measure update will support the Department and policy makers’ data driven decision making. Some of the HDGARE proposed equity performance measures may be included in the Budget Documents, some may be included as part of the Housing Department Annual Impact Report. Other equity performance measures will be identified as part of the final Racial Equity Action Plan. The new Department mission statement and measures will be approved by City Council as part of the upcoming 2024-2025 Fiscal Year Budget.  

Quantitative Analysis 

Currently, the HDGARE, Racial Equity Impact Team, and ARC4Justice are wrapping up the quantitative research for the Phase 1 Racial Equity Assessment for the Housing Department.  This includes analysis of:

• Employee demographics as compared to the City of San José population. 
• Identifying racial patterns related to hiring, retention, promotions, exits, and compensation.
• Demographics of beneficiaries of the minor home repair program, tenants living within our portfolio of affordable housing properties, and the motel voucher program. 

New Racial Equity Impact Analysis Training

In February 2023 City Manager introduced the Racial Equity Impact Analysis (REIA) section the Council memo template. The section provides questions to guide staff to consider racial equity outcomes when shaping policies, practices, programs, and budgets.  

Housing Department staff participated in introductory REIA training in spring 2023. The Housing Department is in the process of implementing this new section into Council memos.   

The Housing Department GARE team plans to create a REIA for Housing Guide which would include relevant history, data on racial disparities in homelessness and in housing needs, existing racial equity strategic goals, and examples of real applied practices in racial equity analysis from Housing Department staff. The HDGARE team will also develop new training to assist staff to deepen their understanding of and improve their skills in racial equity analysis. 

Labor Acknowledgement and Honorarium Provided

Description: Land acknowledgements uplift indigenous practice and combat the erasure of indigenous culture. The Housing Department created and approved its’ Land Acknowledgement honoring the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and Tamian Nation in 2022.  

Current Status: The Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Ambassador Julie Dominguez offered the Land Acknowledgement at the Housing Department departmentwide meeting in November 2023. The Housing Department provided a traditional offering at that meeting (thanks to Alejandra Tlalli-Miles) and also provided the tribe its first honorarium from the City of San José. The honorarium was paid in January 2024. 

Next Steps: The Housing Department has implemented land acknowledgements as part of departmentwide meetings. The Department is also exploring requesting land acknowledgements be part of every Housing Department sponsored groundbreaking or ribbon cutting.

Labor Acknowledgement

Description: A labor acknowledgement is a statement that recognizes that much of the economic progress and development of San Jose and America resulted from the unpaid labor and forced servitude of People of Color - particularly enslaved African labor.  

Current Status: A subteam of HDGARE team has drafted a statement! The statement is now being reviewed by the complete HDGARE team. 

Next Steps: The HDGARE team will seek approval of the Labor Acknowledgement to be used in meetings, similarly to the Land Acknowledgement. 

Please see the attached 2020 – 2024 timeline summary for more information on the Housing Department’s Racial Equity Initiatives. 

Definitions 

Racial equity is when race can no longer be used to predict life outcomes and outcomes for all groups are improved. Another way to define this is: a set of practices toward fair inclusion of all in society so that all may participate, prosper, and reach their full potential. These practices are rooted in a solid understanding and analysis of historical and present-day oppression and centered on the foundational oppression of racism. (Definitions) 

Anti-Racism is defined as the work of actively opposing racism by advocating for changes in political, economic, and social life. Anti-racism tends to be an individualized approach and set up in opposition to individual racist behaviors and impacts.  

Diversity is a multiplicity of races, genders, sexual orientations, classes, ages, countries of origin, educational status, religions, physical, or cognitive abilities, documentation status, etc. within a community, organization or grouping of some kind. Pop wisdom: Achieving diversity is not the same thing as achieving inclusion or equity.  

Inclusion is authentically bringing traditionally excluded individuals and/or groups into processes, activities, and decision/policy making in a way that shares power. 

Resources 

Documentaries  

Books  

The Non-profit Housing association also created a NPH Racial Equity and Inclusion Library with the goal to assist organizations to undertake the journey toward embedding racial justice into their work.