Previously an unincorporated area of San Mateo County, it was a place mostly forgotten. When East Palo Alto was founded it was abysmally poor. Inside are the police headquarters, library and city hall. Two central streets run through the city, and at their crossroads is a nondescript three-story beige building with darkened windows. It covers only 2.5 square miles and has roughly 30,000 residents. "How do we preserve our community and stay relevant?" East Palo Alto's beginningsĮast Palo Alto is a small town. "Residents are worried about being displaced from the community that they've grown up in," said East Palo Alto Mayor Lisa Yarbrough-Gauthier, who was raised in the town. Now East Palo Alto is dealing with another problem: the expanding reach of the world's top tech companies and the influx of their employees. It's erected sprawling shopping centers to bring in revenue and jobs, cleaned up toxic waste sites, built dozens of new homes and converted the old county dump into a shoreline park on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. It's gone from being the per capita murder capital of the US in 1992, with 42 homicides, to having just 5 murders last year. And it's been working ever since to achieve those goals.Ĭheck out all the places we've been on CNET's Road Trip 2015. Incorporated in 1983, the town was established with high hopes that its own local government could bring the area's residents the same things that its prosperous neighbor Palo Alto already had: jobs, homes, health care and safety. East Palo Alto is one of the youngest cities in California. With the tech industry raising the cost of living and pushing folks out of other cities, East Palo Alto is one of the latest communities to attempt the balance between gentrification and preserving its roots.
The Palo Alto side of the creek is flush with tech money - and it's not unusual for people to throw down millions for a single-family home - while nearly a fifth of East Palo Alto residents live below the poverty line. "These are two different worlds on each side of the creek."Įast Palo Alto serves as a stark illustration of the growing divide caused by the tech boom. "This creek comes from the Santa Cruz Mountains," said Carlos Martinez, East Palo Alto's city manager, as he looked across the divide toward Palo Alto. It's nothing more than a messy tangle of trees, bushes and vines.
This now-dry creek is roughly 50 feet across. The defining border separating Palo Alto - home to tech billionaires such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Larry Page, as well as the family of Apple's late co-founder, Steve Jobs - and East Palo Alto, a small town known for murder, gangs and poverty, is a creek named San Francisquito. East Palo Alto is a small town that's far different than its Silicon Valley neighbors.ĮAST PALO ALTO, California - How great is the divide between rich and poor in Silicon Valley? Fifty feet.
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