In the Shadows of Silicon Valley: An Ethnographic Study of the Gentrification of East Palo Alto

Abstract

The purpose of my research is to analyze the impacts of gentrification that residents of the town of East Palo Alto perceive across three themes. The three themes of interest for this study were: schooling, housing, employment—specifically, the relationships of these individual themes with gentrification. My research explores these themes and relationships through a series of in-depth interviews with various East Palo Alto residents. The interviews ask questions about the three themes to get to the perceived impacts of gentrification on across these themes and the participants’ observations of changes, if any, that they have observed within the town. This research, at its core, intends to shed light upon the perceived impacts of gentrification in a small town that is composed primarily of people of color—with Latinos being the majority—and how these impacts differ across themes such as home ownership and immigration status.