City officials from across the U.S. converged on Morgan Hill’s MOHI Ranch Jan. 30 to share strategies for helping low-income residents climb the economic ladder, as part of a national initiative to boost financial mobility in local communities.
The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) is a Washington, DC-based organization established to provide education and networking opportunities to its members. Each year, the organization offers a program for up to 15 local governments from across the country to join its annual Economic Mobility Peer Learning Cohort.
The City of Morgan Hill participated in the 2023 cohort, and this year was invited to host the final meeting of the 2024 cohort. City officials were excited to share their lessons and successes with this latest batch of representatives pursuing the same goal of improving economic mobility in their own cities and towns.
“For us in Morgan Hill, economic mobility was something that came to us in a very fortuitous way,” said Edith Ramirez, Morgan Hill Assistant City Manager for Community Development. “The state mandates for a Housing Element to be completed that tells the state how we are going to meet our housing needs. That report has a lot of data that shows that we have a number of Hispanic Spanish-speaking residents that are falling far, far behind.”
Economic mobility is defined as the ability of an individual to improve their economic status. The ICMA promotes economic mobility by offering participating governments a $20,000 Economic Mobility and Opportunity grant, along with a series of courses for city staff to share and teach strategies for improving economic mobility in their cities.
“Essentially, our reports said that we needed to figure out how to connect Spanish speakers to local jobs,” Ramirez said. “Through our journey with ICMA, we learned that if people don’t trust you, you can’t get to fixing what you need to fix—in this concept of asset-based community development, in the sense that trust is as big of an asset as having a job or having housing.”
When Morgan Hill first joined up with the 2023 ICMA cohort, Ramirez said, economic mobility was nowhere on their radar. Over the course of the next year, they needed to learn fast in order to catch up and develop the plan that would evolve into “ELEVATE! Morgan Hill.”
“What we’re doing through ‘ELEVATE! Morgan Hill,’ is really about addressing our Spanish-speaking residents and those who are on the lower economic scale and how we create a sense of belonging,” said Mayor Mark Turner. “Belonging is mostly about social connections, and we know social connections really equate to social capital. Research shows those who have higher levels of social capital tend to be happier, have greater access to jobs, tend to be healthier, and they have greater trust in their community.”
The findings unearthed by the “ELEVATE!” report revealed that more than 50% of Morgan Hill’s population is “cost-burdened,” meaning that they must spend half or more of their income on housing alone.
“The cost of living in California is very high,” said John Lang, Morgan Hill Housing and Economic Development Director. “A single-family house, here in Morgan Hill, average cost: $1.4 million. A condominium, townhouse, average cost: $823,000. Let that sink in.”
The “ELEVATE!” report aims to boost economic mobility in Morgan Hill by focusing on three distinct areas of improvement: jobs, housing and belonging.
“Housing costs have gone up 100% in 10 years,” Ramirez said. “Job salaries? No way that our salaries are going to keep up with the cost of housing. For us, economic mobility really comes down to, how do we ensure financial resiliency for our community to make sure they have a roof over their head?”
On the subject of belonging, Ramirez said that despite comprising more than 35% of residents, Hispanic and Spanish-speaking members of the community often feel unwelcome in their own city.
“These people, our residents, they’re invisible here,” she said. “You don’t see them. You walk downtown, you don’t see that diversity that we truly have. For us, part of this pivot was how to ensure that our residents who live here can feel safe, that they belong here, so they can access housing and jobs. Through one of our county surveys, more than 700 residents that answered the survey in Spanish said they don’t have an organization they can trust.”
While the ICMA program offered the guidance and funding that enabled the development of the “ELEVATE!” report, after a city has completed the program, the organization doesn’t provide continuing funding to sustain an ongoing program.
“This work is additive to our basic work program,” Ramirez said. “If we want to do economic mobility, we need to do it after hours, on breaks, and still make sure that the rest of the work gets done. Seed money to get us started is good and great, and it really opens us up to new conversations. How do we keep that sustainable and really launch forward programs? That is the big struggle.”
Calvin Nuttall is a Morgan Hill-based freelance reporter.
