Rebuilding Home and Reconstructing Community: Neighborhood Ties and Culture in post-Tubbs Fire Coffey Park, California

Abstract

With climate change having an ever-increasing and direct impact on communities across the globe, there has been an effort to better understand how these communities change following a natural disaster. In this study, Coffey Park, a neighborhood of Santa Rosa, California, which was destroyed following the 2017 Tubbs Fire, is presented as one of these communities. I examine how the neighborhood did, or did not, change post-disaster. Previous research findings are mixed on the topic, but many present post-disaster environments that are vastly different than those before the disaster, especially when viewed through a lens of gentrification. Using interviews with a sample of residents in Coffey Park, I found that the story is complex. While some residents felt that their neighborhood had changed, with many changes fostering a stronger community post-fire through a sense of shared identity, there were lines drawn of who and what this shared identity encompassed. Participants also had mixed feelings as to whether the neighborhood was gentrified, with many pointing to other neighborhoods lost to the Tubbs Fire and rebuilt that they thought were gentrified in comparison. As demonstrated in quantitative data and under a conventional understanding of gentrification, the neighborhood did not meet the definition: it lacked a large influx of wealth and businesses, a dramatic decrease in non-White residents, or the sense that there was a displacement of prior residents, even as home prices rose due to the production of brand-new homes among existing, non-displaced residents. In this scenario, while gentrification may have simply not occurred, this study suggests that gentrification can happen in other forms and that the idea of gentrification is more fluid than conventionally defined. Participants by and large felt a stronger sense of community, significantly higher levels of trust, and a powerful sense of shared identity that at times precluded new residents or those that did not share their experience.