Privacy or Safety? Experts Call Surveillance Debate Misleading See Pg. 7
Community News, Youth Voices
www.ccpulse.org
May 2026
Coming Home: North Richmond Residents Buy Back Their Community
D’Shawn Goodwin is a key figure in an organized effort to help longtime Black residents of North Richmond like himself buy back properties from the former Las Deltas housing project. (Denis Perez-Bravo / The CC Pulse)
BY DENIS PEREZ-BRAVO
I
n North Richmond, Black residents have organized to buy back 25 dilapidated units in the abandoned Las Deltas housing projects following a unique collaboration that prioritized former residents. The unincorporated community just outside Richmond city limits became a destination for Black families from the South during World War II. Residents have faced environmental challenges and decades of disinvestment. Rising housing costs have pushed some families out of the community they once called home. Still, North Richmond remains a resilient place, shaped by generations of history, struggle and love. Now, after more than a decade of organizing, residents are not just watching redevelopment happen around them. Through a first-of-its-kind preference policy, many are becoming homeowners in the very community they fought to stay in, a rare example of development without displacement. “I don’t think it’s ever been done before,” said lifelong North Richmond resident D’Shawn Goodwin.
The initiative is a rare victory for a neighborhood often overlooked. For North Richmond, a historically Black community, the buyback is a direct challenge to decades of displacement. Using below-market sales, “right to return” policies, a community land trust model and grassroots organizing, residents are turning blighted properties into permanent affordable housing. “Everybody got a slogan, ‘Buy Back the Block,’” Goodwin said. “But we really just did it.” His motivations stem from the regional displacement and the financial strain in the Bay Area that mean Black residents experience the highest rate of housing cost burden; more than 50% of Black renters spend over 30% of their income on housing, according to the San Francisco Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice. Goodwin’s roots in North Richmond stretch back to an era when the neighborhood was a beacon for those seeking a new life on the West Coast. “My family came here in the ’40s, bought their land right there on Sixth Street and basically worked at the shipyard,” Goodwin said, “and built little, small houses before they were able to
build big houses in the front.” The family home became a gateway for relatives fleeing the Jim Crow South. “A lot of my cousins from the South came to our house first when they came to the West Coast,” he said. “This was like a landing point, a breath of fresh air.” Through generations of migration and labor, the community established its identity as a historical center for minority families. “So North Richmond was always a minority hub and always been there,” Goodwin said. Las Deltas provided affordable housing dating back to the 1950s. But in 2020, after decades of underfunding and a lack of maintenance, the project was decommissioned and the last residents relocated with no clear path to stay. “The plan was to just sell them. And that was it,” said Richmond LAND executive director Princess Robinson. Then, Robinson and Alfonzo Leon began to envision the North Richmond EcoVillage. The project plans to introduce 12 community land trust condominium units. “The community land trust model is a permanent affordable housing tool model
that we are using to keep our community in place,” Robinson said. To bring this vision to life, the Housing Authority of Contra Costa County and Richmond LAND worked to sell the Las Deltas properties back to the community rather than to the highest bidder. Robinson said they partnered with the Partnership for the Bay’s Future to implement “Just Right to Return” and “Local Preference” policies, which prioritize former residents and people with ties to the neighborhood. First, they sold property at belowmarket rates, then at market rate, and this is where people like Goodwin stepped up. “I started off just as a community member going to the meetings,” he said. Goodwin became a conduit of information for others while pursuing a property himself. “We had classes every Monday,” he said. “Teaching people about credit, teaching people about how to buy a house, teaching people about first-timebuyer ownership.” Goodwin helped organize the Aug, 2, 2025, “Buy Back the Jets” housing fair to connect interested buyers with financial institutions and counselors. They had See Home, pg. 6
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The Contra Costa Pulse is a community media project focusing on local and health news coverage in West and East Contra Costa County. The project is supported by STRONG Collaborative Fund.
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