COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...

Members of the Labor Association labeled this takeover the “K Street Massacre” and
attributed this as part of a pattern in which local government takes tax money from
workers and small businesses and gives it to large corporations. This type of urban
renewal, they emphasized, “always means urban renewal for local businesses and
residents, who find their shops and homes bought out from under them or priced out of
reach.”
The Labor Association further wrote about a situation in which in 1999, the
Housing and Redevelopment Agency demolished a minority owned store located on
Stockton Boulevard, despite a series of protests held to save the local business. The
agency ultimately handed over the property to the Raley Corporation. They warned that
in Oak Park a few other businesses were on the list for seizure through eminent domain
and the attempted takeover was underway for the owners of eleven lots, who are being
forced to sell their property to the Housing and Redevelopment Agency. The association
argued that the Oak Park neighborhood will get stuck with the bill for the redevelopment
scheme because the Housing and Redevelopment Agency won a local property tax
increase to pay for the development.
Further, they argued that housing prices in Oak Park have doubled in the last five
years, and are pricing low-income residents out of the neighborhood. Oak Park residents,
they claim, are not the only victims of this displacement. Many Californians can no
longer afford a medium-priced home. They wrote,
Government programs that pour in money at the top—a.k.a.
‘trickle-down’ schemes, which don’t trickle are increasing urban
blight. The responsibility of the situation, they claim, does not lie
with individuals, but with the system that enables corruption. For
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