FROM RED LINES TO PRICE LINES: The New Geometry of San Jose
On Housing, Historical Memory, Wealth, Displacement, and the Right to Remain ___Thursday (09/10/2026): Gospel Demos & St. Worships with Silicon Valley Neighbor in San Jose
A city does not escape its history merely because it changes the vocabulary of exclusion.
Yesterday, the boundary might have been written into a covenant, a lending practice, a zoning decision, or a map.
Today, the boundary may appear as a number:
$1.5 million.
$4,000 a month.
Income required: three times the rent.
Down payment: beyond reach.
No official has drawn a red line around the neighborhood.
No ordinance announces that a particular racial group must remain outside. No sign stands at the entrance declaring:
You do not belong here.
And yet many people still encounter a boundary.
The boundary has become a price.
This is what I mean by the new geometry of San Jose.
The old red line has been legally repudiated.
But in one of the wealthiest metropolitan regions on earth, another line increasingly determines who can approach opportunity, who can remain near employment, who can establish roots, and who must move farther away.
The red line was drawn with a pencil.
The price line is drawn with arithmetic.
They are not the same.
But San Jose must ask whether parts of the old geography are being inherited by the new.
Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
On Housing, Historical Memory, Wealth, Displacement, and the Right to Remain ___Thursday (09/10/2026): Gospel Demos & St. Worships with Silicon Valley Neighbor in San Jose
A city does not escape its history merely because it changes the vocabulary of exclusion.
Yesterday, the boundary might have been written into a covenant, a lending practice, a zoning decision, or a map.
Today, the boundary may appear as a number:
$1.5 million.
$4,000 a month.
Income required: three times the rent.
Down payment: beyond reach.
No official has drawn a red line around the neighborhood.
No ordinance announces that a particular racial group must remain outside. No sign stands at the entrance declaring:
You do not belong here.
And yet many people still encounter a boundary.
The boundary has become a price.
This is what I mean by the new geometry of San Jose.
The old red line has been legally repudiated.
But in one of the wealthiest metropolitan regions on earth, another line increasingly determines who can approach opportunity, who can remain near employment, who can establish roots, and who must move farther away.
The red line was drawn with a pencil.
The price line is drawn with arithmetic.
They are not the same.
But San Jose must ask whether parts of the old geography are being inherited by the new.
Pastor Steven G. Lee
St. GMC Corps
September 9, 2026
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