$25,000 / Fall 2017
East Palo Alto, CA
youthunited.net
This renewal grant will enable Youth United in Community Action (YUCA) to provide a safe space to develop and support a core of young people to organize on affordable housing and education reform for Brown, Black and Pacific Islander communities in East Palo Alto, CA. Over the next year, YUCA will continue to develop and support a core of young people in East Palo Alto (EPA) to organize on social and environmental justice issues centering on affordable housing policy and school discipline and to engage parents around student support and curriculum reform. Last year, YUCA’s goals were to win policies in East Palo Alto that support affordable housing preservation and development and to organize students to begin to dismantle the school to prison pipeline. YUCA, a lead member of the Build East Palo Alto coalition, was able to get a youth leader elected to the community advisory body of the city’s General Plan in 2016 and in 2017 won a Tenant Protection Ordinance and Housing Impact Fees for new developments in the EPA General Plan, to help preserve affordable housing and incentivize its future development. In the coming year, YUCA will monitor implementation of the General Plan and will continue organize East Palo Alto youth and work with school staff to end unjust suspensions and expulsions of students of color at local Menlo Atherton high school.