Spotlight on EBALDC’s Cristina Bowers,

Property Manager at

Giant Road and Lillie Mae Jones Plaza

Cristina Bowers is planning a Garden Series for residents at Giant Road Apartments in San Pablo and Lillie Mae Jones Plaza in Richmond. “There’s a lot of people here with a green thumb, people who love to garden”, said Cristina, Property Manager of both complexes. Her vision is to build community, one plant at a time, with residents from each building working with each other.

To even conceptualize this vision was unthinkable when Cristina first joined EBALDC at the end of 2021. In her first property management position in Contra Costa County, Cristina’s first large task was to conduct the annual income certification with each household (a requirement in affordable housing developments). Says Cristina, “As a new property manager, building trust with residents is important as you have to get income information, signatures, and bank information from every household every year. The residents had to see me so much, and I had to contact them multiple times. When it was difficult, I’d have conversations with them and be very transparent, which helped ease their anxiety. I just had to tell them that my presence was going to be stable—I reassured them I’m going to stay here. I knew that if I kept showing up and showing them love, that eventually it would come. And now, I have a wonderful relationship with the residents at Giant Road. I’m very communicative with my residents. Now I text with them. Call them. They stop and see me. They’ll stop and wave and check in with me. They’re very kind of possessive. ‘Oh, you got a promotion. Are you going to Lillie Mae? You can’t go there. We need you here.’ I feel the love from the residents. They love on me how I loved on them.”

Cristina credits her success with residents with lived experience of having been homeless and experienced evictions. “I had three evictions by the age of 23. I didn’t know then [how to navigate the system] – now I know it. You have to learn from experience. I experienced three evictions and being homeless. And being lost—not knowing what kinds of questions to ask and not knowing how to ask them. I know sometimes when I talk to people that something else is going on, and I just ask them, ‘What’s going on here?’ I ask people the kinds of questions that I think [show care]…something that I wish had been done for me. Ten years later, after all I went through, I’m so grateful to be able to use my experience to help others.”

Cristina has even earned the trust and respect of Giant Road’s youth, sharing “I live on the site and every time I heard the kids cussing, I would have them do pushups. I would say ‘Your mom said to do them!” Now, when I hear cussing outside the office and ask ‘Who cussed?’ the kids all expect the pushups.”

What’s more, Cristina’s presence is a sign of warmth and comfort, with the youth doing their homework and reading books in the community room right next to her office.

And this brings us back to Cristina’s Garden Series. “When it comes to our communities, it just takes some innovative ideas,” says Cristina. “I’m not going to say it’s easy, but innovation goes far when you’re responsible for a community. It starts with a Property Manager who sets the tone for residents and even for the staff.”

A joint project with EBALDC’s Resident Services team, the Garden Series is based on donations. “We have flowerpots donated already – over a hundred – and plants we can regrow from cuttings. I am hoping for people to donate some soil. I’d love to see a flowerpot bed in the exterior of Lillie Mae in the hopes of deterring the traffic from people who come through and throwing trash and litter down.”

A member of EBALDC’s Property Management team, since the end of 2021, Cristina Bowers successfully led Giant Road Apartments, a 56-unit multi-family affordable housing property for extremely and very low-income families and individuals, through second half of the pandemic. Now managing both Giant Road and Lillie Mae Plaza—properties straddling San Pablo and Richmond in Contra Costa County, Cristina recently sat down to share her experiences–both successes and challenges—with EBALDC’s communications team. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.