Burlingame, California

15 minutes south of San Francisco lies my home, where I have lived for the past 18 years of my life. It’s a suburb full of warm summer days spent in my neighbor’s backyard, cool morning air nipping my nose as my mom pulls the wagon on the walk to Lincoln Elementary, endless rotations between the swings and monkey bars at neighborhood parks.

It's a city with wide tree-lined streets scattered with bikes, dizzyingly sweet scents wafting over from the chocolate factory across the train tracks, neighbors exchanging homemade baked goods during the holidays

Burlingame has been a place of love for me, a community where I truly felt welcomed and supported. After spending 13 years in public schools, Parks & Recreation sports teams and endless summer camps, I felt immensely connected to the people and spaces of 94010.

Despite being rich in love and inclusion, Burlingame is also rich in a history of wealth, inequity and exclusion.

When I was in high school, I came across a covenant attached to our house. Dated to 1916, the agreement stated that my house, along with several others on my block, “shall not be sold, transferred, leased, occupied or possessed by any person of Ethiopian or Mongolian nationality, race, percentage or blood.”

Although the 1948 Supreme Court Case Shelley v Kraemer deemed such housing covenants void, many contracts have remained attached to Burlingame houses, getting passed down from seller to buyer, thus perpetuating a cycle of racial violence. As I revealed in an article for my high school newspaper, these covenants cannot be abolished by Burlingame’s local government, because the contracts were written through private property holders to bypass anti-discrimination laws.

The house that I grew up in, a place of nothing but love and acceptance, was once a physical statue of discrimination and hatred. It’s ironic that our front yard proudly displays a “in this house we believe” sign because, in writing, our land is still a symbol of oppression and racism.

Burlingame’s history extends past housing covenants — the zoning for public schools was made to exclude certain ethnic groups, allocating more resources and funding to the Burlingame Public Schools and less funding for the less privileged neighboring districts. Additionally, the zoning map shows a clear separation between the abundant single-family housing and minimal multi-family units. Most of the apartments and high-density residential units are located along busy streets, commercial or industrial areas, rather than the quiet, neighborhood streets offered to low-density units.

The city design choices of Burlingame reinforced systemic racism and classism, continually raising up the wealthy, white elite while attempting to exclude the less privileged. Today, our demographics still reflect these choices. In 2021, the US Census reported that 60% of the population identifies as white alone, only 4% of the population was considered to be in poverty and the median price of homes was over $2 million.

I am incredibly grateful to have grown up in Burlingame. It is a beautiful suburb full of community, inclusion efforts and progress. Yet, we are still plagued by systemic issues established by the city design choices of early builders. I believe that with structure and reform, Burlingame can become a more accessible, inclusive space for all.