In an attempt to push back against increasing rates of displacement, Redwood City has developed and adopted the Anti-Displacement Strategy (ADS), a three-pronged policy roadmap. Almost a quarter (23 percent) of households in Redwood City live in neighborhoods that are susceptible to or experiencing displacement. Displacement and gentrification also disproportionately affect the city’s communities of color—from 2010-2019, Redwood City lost 54 percent of its lower income Black households, compared to 25 percent of its lower income White Non-Hispanic households.
In 2020, Redwood City began to develop a citywide strategic plan to address these displacement pressures, and was awarded a Partnership for the Bay’s Future Challenge Grant to make this possible. After an extensive process involving surveys, focus groups, and workshops engaging stakeholders like local property owners and managers, tenants, community leaders and tenant union organizers, and mobile home park residents, the Redwood City City Council adopted the ADS in June 2022.
The ADS consists of policy recommendations in three key areas—the preservation of unsubsidized affordable housing, mobile home preservation, and tenant protection ordinance amendments—to help the city achieve its housing priorities. Six additional policy ideas were raised over the course of the community engagement process, and Redwood City intends to analyze and investigate these further before potentially expanding on the current ADS roadmap.