Why this matters
Located in one of the city’s most diverse neighborhoods, New Roots Community Farm is a key cultural asset that has served as a sanctuary for refugees, many of whom have been able to find grounding there after surviving life-altering violent conflict.
A former associate director of the City Heights nonprofit that manages New Roots Community Farm has testified that the nonprofit’s president unfairly targeted two Black refugee farmers in a lease dispute at the urban garden and made derogatory statements about Black people.
Kyra Seay, who is Black, gave the testimony in a deposition for one of three lawsuits that have followed the dispute. In one, the nonprofit is suing the two farmers, a mother and daughter, for trespassing. In another, it’s suing the land’s last-known owner, the Hubner Building Company, in an attempt to obtain the deed to the land. The mother is also suing the nonprofit for unlawful eviction.
Until she left her job in January, Seay led racial equity work at the City Heights Community Development Corporation and reported to President and CEO Alexis Villanueva, who has led the nonprofit since December 2022. In the April 5 deposition, obtained by inewsource, an attorney asked Seay whether Villanueva had “ever shown anti-Black bias,” and Seay said “yes,” including the way Villanueva took steps to “villainize” the two farmers when they criticized the nonprofit after they learned it did not have a lease on the garden property but was charging them fees.
The nonprofit, which manages millions of dollars in public funds slotted for affordable housing and accessibility projects, has been grappling with concerns from the City Heights community since the dispute began last fall.
The deposition is the first public account from within the ranks of City Heights CDC that shows there was disagreement among the nonprofit’s leadership over the handling of the lease dispute with the farmers. When the farmers learned the CHCDC did not have an active lease on the property, some refused to sign new leases and pay fees to cultivate the land.
Seay’s testimony also shines light on how the City Heights community farm – for years an emblem of diversity and multicultural collaboration – became the epicenter of a land dispute mired in racial tension.
Seay was deposed under oath for a lawsuit for unlawful eviction filed by Fatima Abdelrahman, a Sudanese refugee, against the City Heights nonprofit. A judge issued a temporary ruling blocking the CHCDC from barring Abdelrahman from returning to the farm to cultivate her plot until the case concludes. The judge also wrote the nonprofit “has not proven that it has the authority to impose any rents or otherwise control the property.”
The fallout has shaken the community of mostly refugee farmers who since 2008 have transformed the once vacant lot between two roads and Chollas Creek into a lush food source and multicultural hub. The farm was developed and managed by the International Rescue Committee until the nonprofit transferred management to the City Heights CDC in 2020. Last fall, the farmers learned the CHCDC was running the farm without a valid lease agreement.
In February, San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott weighed in, confirming that there was no active agreement on the land. Elliot also said the city erred in allowing the IRC to develop the community garden on the property because the land lies along a public right-of-way, and a community garden isn’t an allowed use.
Villanueva denied Seay’s allegations in a statement to inewsource early this month.
“They are false and do not align with City Heights CDC’s beliefs and actions – from its staff, leadership and board. We will allow the legal process to prove this for us,” she said, adding, “What I can tell you, as the first person of color to lead this organization in over 40 years, I have prioritized the hiring and promotion of current staff and recruitment of board members who are more representative of the diverse racial make-up of the community that we serve.”
After publication, one of the CHCDC’s founders and another early member told inewsource that a Black woman held the executive director position in the organization’s early days, but they were unable to provide her name. They also said that since the organization’s beginning, the board reflected the diversity of the community including Black, Latino and Asian members.
“People already have misconceptions of Black people, especially Black women,” said Abdelrahman’s daughter Sahar Abdalla. “This narrative that [Villanueva] has carried out in response to us simply challenging their authority and wanting to stand up for ourselves…has caused a lot of trauma.”
City Heights CDC’s activist roots
Managing the New Roots Community Farm is a small part of what the City Heights CDC does. The nonprofit mostly runs affordable housing programs, invests in real estate and manages anti-eviction programs.
Over the years the CHCDC has become a prominent organization in the City Heights community, managing a little over $5 million in assets with a yearly revenue of just over $3 million, according to a recent tax document. Most recently it partnered with the city on a $98 million subsidized housing development called Cuatro, one of the most expensive projects of its kind in San Diego history.
But the nonprofit’s roots are in community activism. Founded in the 1980s, the City Heights CDC grew out of a response to the lack of a neighborhood planning committee in the mid-city area, one of the city’s most diverse communities.
Community members banded together to push back against the construction of the remaining piece of Interstate 15, which would essentially cut the neighborhood in half and destroy eight blocks of homes. When the highway was built, they set to work on projects that could mitigate its impact.
After roughly 30 years of work, the construction of Teralta Park over I-15 was completed as well as the Mid-City Centerline Station, projects the nonprofit counts among its successes.
Villanueva’s leadership marks the beginning of a more recent chapter of the nonprofit’s story.
Seay said that as far as she knew, she herself became the first Black woman to hold a leadership position on staff when she was hired as associate director in 2022, prior to Villanueva’s promotion.
In her deposition, Seay said she recommended that the nonprofit relinquish control of the farm.
She said she felt that way because the CHCDC had no lease on the farm property and the farmers had begun to hold community conversations about self-governance.
Seay also said that Villanueva villainized Abdelrahman and her daughter “for simply speaking up” with questions about who has authority to manage the farm, and that she received the same treatment.
“Those tactics of villainizing Fatima and her daughter, I had experienced, myself, in attempts to speak with Alexis about the way that I felt I was being treated,” Seay said in the testimony.
Seay also said that City Heights CDC staff were tasked with meeting with farmers who were not openly standing with Abdelrahman to convince them to oppose efforts toward self-governance. The conversations focused on Abdelrahman, and singled her out as the source of the conflict with the nonprofit.
According to Seay, Villanueva said that Abdelrahman’s daughter, Abdalla, would never be able to own land. Seay said she was unable to recall additional specific statements, but generally speaking she said she heard Villanueva make comments expressing the sentiment “that what black people are experiencing, some of that can be attributed to certain stereotypical behaviors, or a perception of them lacking something.”
Seay also said that Villanueva was describing Abdelrahman as “coming off as threatening” to other farmers, but that she had only ever heard that from Villanueva.
Seay said that when she requested meetings with Villanueva to address her concerns about the management of the farm, Villanueva didn’t honor her requests. And when Seay did finally square away a meeting, Villanueva invited human resources to attend.
“I saw that as a tactic to present me as problematic or aggressive in some way, that I had to have a monitored conversation with her,” Seay said in the testimony.
For some community organizers in San Diego, what has taken place at New Roots has triggered introspection about accountability while working in the nonprofit sector, especially in a tight knit community like City Heights where many employees move between jobs with partnering organizations and have also held positions in the city or county governments or sat on nonprofit boards, sometimes even concurrently.
“I really do want to take ownership for and be clear about the ways that nonprofit organizations interact with and profit from the community,” said Ellee Igoe, a former IRC worker who helped start the farm. Igoe later co-founded Foodshed, a food distribution cooperative that addresses food insecurity in low-income communities.
“We get our salaries and livelihoods from the community without being terribly accountable for what actually happens in the long term,” Igoe said.
The City Heights CDC centered New Roots as a key part of a grant application for state funds filed in October, almost two weeks after staff learned they did not have a lease on the land.
Racial tensions spread
For some 15 years, New Roots has been a second home to a multi-generational community of refugee farmers and their families. The garden was also nationally recognized as a “model for building healthy communities” by then-First Lady Michele Obama who visited in 2010. But where before the gates were open to volunteers and extended friends and family, a security guard now holds watch, barring all but those on a list of plot holders, including Abdelrahman for now.
The situation has sparked questions about how the current leadership of the City Heights CDC addressed the concerns of a vulnerable population – questions that Seay addressed in the deposition.
“I sensed that we knew, as an organization, that we really had no legal ground for what was being done,” Seay said in the testimony.
Additional documents obtained by inewsource also indicate that despite knowing it did not have a lease on the land and that the city might not even own it, the nonprofit created and enforced rules on the farmers.
The rules included prohibiting guests and volunteers from entering the premises without several months’ notice, as well as not being allowed on the farm without a signed plot agreement which the CHCDC would consider as trespassing.
The nonprofit created the rules during the lease dispute and said Abdelrahman violated them, Seay said in her deposition. When asked by an attorney, Seay confirmed that Villanueva had said she would try to have Abdelrahman arrested if she entered the property without a plot agreement.
Seay said that during a City Heights CDC board meeting, when the issue of the lease on the farm as well as Abdelrahman came up, the recording was stopped after a board member suggested they should step away from the farm and leave it in the hands of the farmers.
Seay said she was glad that a board member echoed concerns she had previously expressed.
At the time, the nonprofit was working with the city to figure out how to attain rights to the land. Two members of the board, Maryan Osman and Venus Molina, who are also staffers for city councilmembers Sean Elo-Rivera and Jennifer Campbell, were involved in streamlining those conversations. Blaming a city error for the paperwork confusion, Elo-Rivera issued a statement that the nonprofit was acting in good faith that it had the authority from the city to manage the farm.
By mid-December, when the lease dispute was heating up, Seay gave notice of her resignation.
More recently came the lawsuits between City Heights CDC, Abdelrahman and Abdalla. The two Sudanese women were the only farmers sued for trespassing despite them not being the only ones who entered the property in protest shortly after the CHCDC had put new locks on the gate, barring entry.
In response, Abdelrahman sued the nonprofit for wrongful eviction.
The language in the lawsuits shows how bitter the dispute between the CHCDC and the farmers has become: The nonprofit accuses Abdelrahman of “driving around in and around CHCDC premises, as if to cause serious injury to CDCDC staff” and of theft.
Those are racist tropes, say Abdelrahman, who denies the claims, and others close to her. Meanwhile, Abdelrahman’s lawsuit says that while she was attempting to get her own property from the farm, the City Heights CDC security guard battered her, grabbing her arm and threatening her with mace.
The farmers’ concerns about the security guard peaked when discovery for the lawsuit produced a text message conversation between the guard and a City Heights CDC employee tasked with communicating with him.
In an email to her staff, Villanueva asked that the guard take photographs of Abdelrahman’s plot each day when she arrives and leaves.
The guard complied. He photographed her movements throughout the property, noting each conversation she had with fellow farmers, what she did or did not advance in farming her plot as well as the times she arrived and left. At one point the security guard describes Abdelrahman’s activity in the garden as “plotting” adding that the pun was intended. On another occasion, when a number of refugee farmers stood outside the gate unable to open the lock, the guard sent a meme of sad clowns standing in a line.
“Sorry, but I simply could not help the comical urge to share this photo of them patiently waiting by the gate,” the guard wrote.
Other community members have asked why the CHCDC has been holding on so tightly to this parcel of land it gained management over just a few years prior. In contrast, some of the refugees have raised their kids to adulthood on the land.
Igoe, the former IRC member who helped start New Roots, wondered why neither the CHCDC nor the IRC gave the farmers more autonomy.
“Why hasn’t the work been done to empower the farmers to take on self-management, either at the CDC or at IRC, and why can’t it happen now?” Igoe said.
Igoe also said that while the conflict affects everyone, “ultimately, the people who pay the most are the folks that always pay – it’s the ones that have the least power.”
Her former colleague who helped start the farm, Amy Lint, says that in her view handing over power to the community is the ultimate goal of community development, but that is not what she sees is happening.
“(The IRC) didn’t want to let go of it either. Because at the time, it was still kind of a great fundraising tool,” Lint said.
Correction: June 1, 2024. This article has been updated to reflect that another person of color may have been the first to hold the top leadership position at the Community Heights CDC, according to a founder of the organization and another early leader. They were unable to provide the person’s name.
