Local media treatment of anti-displacement report tilts left

Veteran journalist and media analyst Mark Lisheron does a close read of local coverage of upcoming anti-displacement report and recommendations, and finds, surprise! that's it's clearly slanted toward hard-left progressive agendas while virtually ignoring free market solutions to the issue. Article by Mark Lisheron.

Unless you were paying particularly close attention, you might not know the San Jose City Council is a few weeks away from considering an anti-displacement policy, ostensibly to protect renters from being uprooted from their homes.

And if you were paying attention, you probably couldn’t help but think this sort of renter protection is long past due.

“San José has been and continues to be a place of great opportunity, but it has also been shaped by a legacy of regional racial segregation, housing discrimination, and uneven investment in neighborhoods,” say the authors of an San Jose anti-displacement report, issued last month. “This legacy combined with a long-term regional housing shortage and a booming economy has resulted in gentrification and harm for many low-income residents, many of whom are people of color, particularly black, latinx, and Vietnamese residents.”

To remedy this skewed legacy, the San Jose Anti-Displacement Policy Network in their 80-page report has offered up a 13-point plan based on three Ps: protection of tenants, preservation of existing affordable housing and production of new affordable housing.

There is a disclaimer to make sure you are aware that this is a Policy Network Team report and not a report generated by San José staff. The policy network team, however, is made up of city staff including, the Housing Director Jacky Morales-Ferrand, and several community activist organizations, created as part of something called the All-in Cities PolicyLink Anti-Displacement Policy Network.

PolicyLink is a non-profit based in Oakland, that “advocates for groundbreaking policy changes that enable everyone, especially people of color, to be economically secure, live in healthy communities of opportunity, and benefit from a just society.”

Reporters for the San Jose Spotlight, The Mercury News and San Jose Inside featured those three Ps in their Oct. 2 accounts of the Policy Network’s presentation to the city council. More precisely, the stories dutifully noted the presenters’ primary interest in tenant protection.

That P has driven local coverage of anti-displacement from the first time Jacky Morales-Ferrand, the director of the city’s Housing Department, mentioned it as a defining issue for the city in a Silicon Valley Business Journal story Jan. 1, 2019.

Had you read every print media story on anti-displacement in San Jose written since then, as we did, you’d find a faithful stenography of activists and advocates, from Policy Network talking points to Op-Eds repeating those talking points from key participants in the policy report process.

Although city housing officials have said the Policy Network report will be just one component of its final report dues sometime in March, you cannot be sure from the news coverage what other input they intend to incorporate.

Many of the stories open dramatically, like this one on The Mercury News website Jan. 24:  “As thousands of residents struggle to keep up with the region’s skyrocketing housing costs and developers look to drastically reshape the city, San Jose leaders and community advocates are closer to forging ahead with a plan to stop residents from being priced out of the area.”

You will also find quotes in those Oct. 2 stories from local two business people who were asked by city officials to appear that night to represent the production third of the anti-displacement equation. 

Both men said that without changes making it easier and cheaper to build new housing in San Jose, there wasn’t much you could do for the other two Ps. “The ‘three P’s’ really need to be changed to production, production, production,” Jeff Zell, who owns his own property management firm in San Jose, said that night, according to the Spotlight.

Neither Zell, nor Shawn Milligan, a partner with KT Urban, a developer based in nearby Cupertino, say they were asked to participate in the anti-displacement policy study. They weren’t consulted by the city or the network before or after the meeting, they said. And neither was contacted by any reporters following up on their comments at the meeting.

“They ask us our opinions, but they don’t really want them,” Milligan told me. “All they want is to be able to check the box that says they talked to us.”

It’s easy to see from the coverage who is driving the anti-displacement narrative in San Jose. Representatives from the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, Working Partnerships USA and SOMOS Mayfair are quoted again and again in the stories.

Alison Brunner, CEO of the Law Foundation, Camille Llanes-Fontanilla, executive director of SOMOS, and Derecka Mehrens, executive director of Working Partnerships USA, co-wrote an Op-Ed touting the anti-displacement report run Jan. 17 by The Mercury News and the East Bay Times.

The stories, however, don’t inform readers that these groups are made up of social justice warriors fighting on behalf of people “pushed to the margins of the political process.” “We do not accept the chronic crises caused by the inequitable distribution of power and resources,” the SOMOS mission statement says. “We believe that urgent action, even in the face of conflict and risk if necessary.

Readers might better put this advocacy in context if the reporting would have pointed out that that Law Foundation, while working for a city anti-displacement policy, also receives two annual block grants from the city totaling $900,000. SOMOS Mayfair gets one for $150,000.

None of the news stories, nor  an Op-Ed published July 10 by The Mercury News, carry a disclaimer pointing out that Mehrens  is on the board of directors for the non-profit San Jose Spotlight.

Although you cannot discern it from the coverage, the top-heavy influence of the activists might explain why, of the 13 recommendations, only two of them deal with production.

The report calls for a limit on rent increases, requires cause for eviction and asks that the city enforce all new protections. The report recommends the city adopt a preservation ordinance requiring owners to give tenants advance notice of their intention to sell housing units and give them first right to purchase.

Almost entirely unmentioned in the coverage are proposals to create a preservation investment fund for the city to preserve and rehabilitate affordable housing and to add new fees for developers as an incentive to build more affordable housing.

Where this funding might come from or how it might affect the people expected to provide the production is absent from the report and the stories about it.

If anyone from the local press had asked, Milligan and Zell said they would tell them that larding more fees and requirements onto 30 years of regulation will produce a result opposite of the goal in the Policy Network report.

Milligan has no faith that his P, the most important in making the economics of anti-displacement work, will get any attention from the local press.

“I’d like to believe the people with the Housing Department have good intentions, but we have the data. It’s a matter of supply and demand,” he said. “But people don’t look at data, they deal with emotions and come up with feel-good measures.”

This article also appeared on California Policy Center.

Mark Lisheron is a longtime Austin, TX-based investigative reporter and media analyst for newspapers, magazines and for the last 10 years online publications.

Follow Opportunity Now on Twitter @svopprotunity.