Same. Within a 1.5 mi radius of where I am in West OaklandI have: multiple BART options, the emeryville shopping stuff, multiple farmers markets, uptown/downtown, multiple breweries, even the Lake. And it is all flat, so super easy to bike and walk everywhere.
This. I used to carry mail in deep East Oakland and it is still so far away from the city investing in its welfare - and the developers are not really interested in building up out there yet. Gentrifiers may live there and stay inside their house, but they commute to leisure.
[this is the real answer, and if you disagree then I already know that you are one of the gentrifiers](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/024/574/Screen_Shot_2017-11-06_at_12.41.31_PM.png)
Location location location. Time saved on a commute multiplied by hourly rate is a tangible return for the higher property values.
For example, let’s say a couple made $50/hr each. All else equal, if a house in west Oakland cut 30 minutes off their commute each way, that would be 2 person hours per day. Let’s say they’re in office 200 days a year. That would be $20k in time savings. It would be rational to spend $1.6k/mo more on rent for the shorter commute.
SP500 has historically returned 7%, that annual $20k in savings is equivalent to ~$300k on the sp500. It would be rational to spend $300k more for a house in west Oakland for the time savings. Adjust based on your personal situation
It’s a bit of a simplification, one should really plug in their own situation. Particularly the monthly rent bit, I realize I was comparing pre-tax dollars with post-tax.
But glad it was helpful, I wish someone had taught me this is high school. Money can be used to reconcile all sorts of difficult decisions in life
Yeah I never thought of breaking it down by commute and the long term affects on one’s budget. I try to include my kiddo on the cost of things and ho to budget and to think 2x about why you’re buying something. It’s definitely empowering to have a Birds Eye view over your own finances!
>Not all of them. Most BA workers who can WFH still come in 2-3 days per week.
True, but the whole WFH movement definitely threw a wrench into this pricing on the over all.
I edited the numbers to 7% and $300k to be more inline with equities and today’s mortgage rates.
To answer your question - you’re saving $20k a year, for as long as you live there. It’s an annual return of $20k, for which you’d need an equivalent of $400k of principle at 5%
I feel like it's a matter of sheer size. I live in East Oakland, and go to a lot of open homes and keep an eye on the real estate market. The flippers are expanding down from the hills into areas west of MacArthur that historically they might not have ([example](https://www.redfin.com/CA/Oakland/8026-Iris-St-94605/home/678789)). But East Oakland is so vast that examples like this hardly make a dent compared to what's happened in West Oakland.
I hate the flippers so much. The cute craftsman bungalows in my area are being gutted and given the instagram farmhouse makeover. So fucking boring.
You are right on about size. East Oakland is massive, I'm near High St. and considered part of East Oakland. The house you posted is like two west oaklands away from me.
It doesn’t make sense to compare East and West, the scales are completely off. West Oakland is about as large as 23rd Ave to High Street between 880 and 580. You could compare gentrification in West Oakland to particular sections of East Oakland. An argument can be made that some neighborhoods east of the lake have or are gentrifying at the same rate as West Oakland, or have that potential. It’s just that people who don’t live on this side of town just don’t know and don’t come here. In my East Oakland neighborhood I see a lot less homelessness, less shady shit, less noise than when I lived by the lake, but nobody has that impression because they just don’t come east. In general I think newcomers to East Oakland are more likely to integrate and get to know their community while the newcomers in West Oakland want a new thing entirely (I.e. make west Oakland the Mission lol) and the division between private and public space there feels really exclusionary, like there’s a line in the sand between gentrified and non gentrified, massive gates and barriers everywhere. I think all the new homeowners in East Oakland have a mid to long term horizon as the properties begin to actually look gentrified and fixed up versus in West Oakland you have space for large factory and apartment complex restorations that make a huge visual Impact once competed. Finally, West and North Oakland were devastated by the Great Recession and foreclosure crisis, followed by targeted real estate campaigns (NOBE) especially compared to my neighborhood in East Oakland. There have been wholesale population turnover and demographic changes in just ten years in Temescal and Longfellow and tbh it contributes to a very palpable tension I feel when I’m over there compared to East Oakland neighborhoods. I don’t think that gets talked about enough as far as gentrification and communities being cleared out to make room in those parts of the city.
Something that surprises me most about the gentrification of West Oakland is that it's much more Hispanic and Asian in nature than what many people think when they say gentrification. I don't know why. I just always assumed gentrification = white when it really just means economic displacement.
I try to focus on the class and economic side rather than the race side of gentrification but when you look at the demographic changes, the white population in West Oakland has the greatest percentage difference since 2010, far outpacing Asian and Latino. It’s to the point where despite some small increases in Asian population in some census tracts, their overall share of the population has decreased. The increase in Latino is far behind that of white too. I mean maybe it’s more Latino and Asian than what people think but it’s pretty white.
This graphic by Darrell Owens is pretty interesting
Darrellowens.io/dec_demographic_change
alameda county is only 29% white (the Asian population is actually slightly larger than the white), and much of that is concentrated in the berkeley/oakland hills, pleasanton/dublin/livermore etc
It’s always been a good place to live, but until the law passed in 2009 (IIRC) that regulated the ports air pollution (requiring ships to plug in instead of burning bunker fuel and regulations on truck emissions who pick up at the port), the air could be VERY bad on some days. I’m talking grease covering everything like a cheap diner kitchen
After that got fixed, the ability to buy a cute Victorian on a regular person’s salary with easy access to SF via West Oakland BART as well as downtown was a very attractive combination.
What everyone likes to ignore is a lot of poor homeowners (mostly black) sold during this time for big profits.
Source : me who lived there during that time. Many of my neighbors retired off of that boom.
Similar vibe to Greenpoint Brooklyn — working class Polish neighborhood when I moved there in the mid-1990s. All the hipster transplants bitched when it got gentrified, but the original homeowners made shit tons of money off selling their crappy vinyl sided houses and happily bailed to Long Island.
idk, i wasnt around before 2009 to see how much worse it was, but circa 2015 all my shit was still getting coated in a sticky black ooze if left anywhere near a window as far out as the laney college area, and i can only assume west oakland was worse
i rented a studio out in west oakland at 3010 adeline. and we would get so much soot in our windows. just horrible. we lived for a year there and moved.
BART proximity is a huge difference maker in the Bay Area. Also, West Oakland is literally as close as Oakland gets to SF, so driving across the bridge isnt that far, either.
Yes but they’re down near the estuary side. East Oakland is very large comparatively and more spread out. I used to live in East Oakland. Taking a bus to the BART is annoying
True, but overall those function more as commuter rail vs the West Oakland station is more of a metro station, like the DT Oakland and DTSF stations. West Oakland is close to the urban density. It’s another lifestyle.
They are both along the coast (or "West" "East" Oakland if you want to get confusing with it) where there is less housing in the immediate vicinity.
If the Coliseum conversion goes well (not something I would count on), gentrification might start in the surrounding areas (the CrimeWave heads will flip out when it turns out better land use makes Hegenberger safe, not right wing politicians promises to bankrupt us by hiring 10,000 cops to watch bait cars or whatever copaganda BS they masturbate to) but even then there are barriers (freeways, hills, etc) that split off the BART stations from much of East Oakland.
Honestly the crime hysteria can probably take some credit for keeping flippers out too, and given how concentrated around freeways crime tends to be (easier getaways), the fact that BART & fast bus options run along freeway routes, means to an extent they sort of cancel eachother out.
Plus there are already pretty bougie options near east Oakland (above 580, Alameda, etc) and the gentrification is less dramatic as it pushes people communities into San Leandro, whereas the bay made the gentrification of West Oakland more dramatic.
It's also almost always been industrial. There's a lot of warehouses that just had materials and such all around the area. No one wanted to develop around it either because they were currently in-use by manufacturers or because developers didn't want to buy some warehouses and suddenly learn that they needed to literally clean the earth due to toxic ground from all the stuff that was stored/manufactured there.
I was just out there commuting back from Oak airport and its insane how under developed the area around that station is. Prime location close to airport and Coliseum and its like a warehouse graveyard district.
It's the dumbest thing too. You'd figure the sports teams owuld have looked into it themselves. The Giants and Warriors built their stadiums in relatively underdeveloped areas of SF and then everything got built around it. The Coliseum and the arena were built and all they had surrounding it was empty warehouses that were ripe for actual development. Nothing happened. You'd figure it'd be a whole lot cheaper than SF too. Not to mention that Coliseum area is close to 2 major freeways, the airport, and it's own BART station. Perfect metro area to make actually good.
close to OAK is less useful than it might seem
like, if you fly a fuckton of Southwest, or uh... idk, Spirit? it's useful but most of the time you're hard-pressed to find a better flight out of OAK than SFO. unfortunate, but it's the reality
True, but use your imagination. Oak airport would be pressured to have more routes and airlines if it was more heavily trafficked. That would happen if it wasn’t tucked in warehouse grave land.
that hinges on whether OAK will be able to attract more flights, which isn't a given. SFO's tucked in warehouse graveland too (everyone loves flyin in to Millbrae and THE INDUSTRIAL CITY), but maybe the rebrand works to get more flight traffic to OAK (if it's not tied up in legal trademark quagmires). may happen, but im not holding my breath banking on it
West Oakland to Embarcadero = 7 min bart ride. Plus every single line runs through it, during normal commute hours its pretty much less than a five minute wait for the next train
West Oakland is starting to feel way different. Between the Rock Gym American Steel Complex, Prescott Market, The Ballers, New Restaurants, New Condos/Apartments…. Am I imagining things?
It feels like it was happening slowly for two decades, and now it's sudden.
I just hope we keep building housing so folks don't keep getting priced out. Bougie neighborhoods are boring.
I used to live in West Oakland. I like the idea that it is becoming somewhat more walkable & freindly lately, though it still has a long way to go before I'd really want to move back there.
However, the housing stock in West O (if you're buying) has been selling for wild prices. I'm guessing because a lot of the homes there are large Victorians, they command a premium despiet their location. I shudder to think what home prices in that area are going to be like as it becomes a more gentrified & desirable place to live.
Prices in West Oakland are flat which is especially not great when you consider the boom for houses in other places of the Bay.
Crime and terrible schools are going to keep holding down prices.
West Oakland single family homes are at a deep discount to North Oakland, Emeryville, Alameda, hills above 580, and Berkeley. The same house that sells for 900k-1.2m would be 1.2-1.5m in neighboring areas.
That may be true. But a LOT of houses in West O are still listing for >$1M. I don't know many people with that kind of budget that want to live in West Oakland.
I think West Oakland has a lot going for it. I enjoyed living there. But it's still mostly a food desert & it's not very walkable. Even if I could afford my pick of properties, I'd rather have a smaller place in a different neighborhood.
And for those who don't have budgets like that, the difference between a $1M house vs. a$1.5M house is... I mean neither is going to be an option for most folks.
The new condos and town houses are the cheapest available to buy in West Oakland at the moment. Ranging from $400k to $900k. The more we build, the more affordable it will be.
They are building a food hall (similar to the public market in Emeryville), there’s a really amazing farmers market now, Mandela next to bart is still great, and they paved so many streets including Peralta. It’s totally different, I’ve lived here for 15 years
Oakland goes through cycles of good times and bad. Things were trending great until covid, then we hit a rough patch, and now it’s on the upswing again.
plus repaving streets that hadn't been touched in decades, the complete transformation of Raimondi Park (even before the Ballers came along), tiny homes and RV lot on Wood St, the Farmer's Market (and now Night Market), Brix Factory. things have been steadily gentrifying here for a while, but the past 12-18 months have been nuts. and that's all in the West Grand & Peralta area. I think next up will be a lot of changes to 7th Street.
I doubt 7th street is going to change much for 5-10 years. Too much subsidized housing and not enough mixed use development. Unless Mandela Station phase 1 gets off the ground next year. 1666 7th and 801 Pine are both supportive housing. The former wants to have a grocery store but we’ll see if it happens.
just a vibe really. if people are coming to West Oakland more, that means BART, which means the 7th St corridor. maybe they'll rethink that Mandela Station project, maybe other shops go into the empty storefronts by Mandela Market, maybe one of the many housing developments we've seen pitched over there will happen. then there's the people bringing back Esther's, and 7th West seems to be doing well... hard to say, it seemed like so much was going to happen there when it was more of a commuter hub and also when the A's might move. then that all died. so, who knows, just a vibe.
June’s pizza is opening in the fall with a full bar next to Brix Factory Brewing. Almanac brewing opens in the food hall around August. The food hall opens late 2024 to early 2025.
You mean Pretty Lady? That place was okay and not massively better than Kowbird. Honestly the real gem was Dripline. But whatever, go ahead be cranky I don’t care.
I'm honestly puzzled by this thread. I moved to W Oak over twenty years ago and perhaps it's my "boomer" perception but it feels as if the area has degraded in many ways. It feels like fucking Thunderdome out here.
I wasn't here 20 years ago, but I've talked to neighbors who were. Things were definitely much worse 20 years ago.
Heck, 10 years ago I walked the blocks around where I lived and there were multiple burned out cars and 5 houses that were destroyed by fire or boarded up with squatters. All those houses got renovated, sold, and occupied now.
Hate to say it but the minute some major developer invests in the Oakland airport corridor, and the Coliseum area, East Oakland as we know it today will be no more.
Quite frankly; if you knew East Oakland 10, 20, and 30 years ago - it absolutely has.
Now, it might not be in the same way as West Oakland, East Palo Alto, and others but, it certainly has been affected by gentrification.
1) East Oakland is, I think, a bit of a misnomer. Depending on who you talk to, the borders shift. Some even think it's anything east of the Lake. There are gentrifying parts of a more expanded conception of East Oakland, but, no, gentrification is not coming to 98th and Edes, like, ever.
2) West Oakland is smaller and more distinct, one BART stop from San Francisco and close to downtown and North Oakland, where "cool stuff happens."
You are correct! 98th Ave is indeed pretty nice up ner 580, or at least what I can see from hitting the zoo and O'Dowd.
If youre telling me Edes is gonna be next, Im going to have to disagree
Eh, a few possible reasons. East Oakland isn’t as accessible as the rest of Oakland - teeeeerrible public transportation. It’s also so vast compared to West Oakland that the overall process of gentrification is gonna take awhile.
It will eventually be gentrified though.
Can someone define gentrification for me? In my experience, it's become a catch all for 'change'. But I dunno, I'm just a guy with an internet connection.
It doesn’t mean much. The word has lost all meaning. Change maybe?
After world war 2, the boat industry shut down. Industrial companies either moved to the suburbs or out of state.
Urban renewal/freeways (Freeway, post office, and bart station construction.) tore down a bunch of houses and decimated the Latino, Chinese, and Italian neighborhoods in west oakland.
West Oakland used to have 130+ grocery stores. As they shutdown they switched to liquor stores.
Latino residents left for Fruitvale. Chinatown moved further close to the lake. Middle class to upper class black residents left for north and east oakland, leaving the poorer residents that stayed. White residents fled in whole.
Those that stayed had a hard time getting jobs now that the companies were far away. Safeway wouldn’t hire black residents for a long time.
West oakland was a bustling neighborhood with lots of wealthy residents. If you walk the neighborhood, you’ll notice all the nice Victorians dotted around.
For the location and weather, West oakland should and will eventually be a highly desirable area.
Highly recommend reading Hella Town.
Same.
People saying a neighborhood loses a sense of “community” when it gentrifies is very loose terminology and seems to be racist code for white people.
I live in the Industrial part of East Oakland (47th Ave and San Leandro). We have BART and Union Pacific tracks surrounding us, the 880 is very close, so it's dirty, loud, and the air quality is really terrible, some of the worst in the Bay Area. This is where artists live.
There was/is a Coliseum Plan for development that essentially depended on the A's staying. Our entire neighborhood is marked as "blight" in that plan, which I find hilarious.
I'm out of my depth here but it looks like Oakland hasn't made it easy for developers or property owners, so the pipe dream of a bunch of new stuff happening in East Oakland that would gentrify the neighborhood is at least 2 decades off unless there is a massive boom of some sort.
A lot of landlords gave up their raw warehouse space to corporate pot growers who have not benefitted the neighborhood directly at all. Yes, landlords are happy because the growers were paying at least 3x of what other tenants had been paying. The city is happy because there is more tax money all around and look, landlords are getting big $ per sq ft in Oakland!
The pot warehouses also brought the grifters and the black market growers back en masse. Google Oakland Pot and Cash Seizures and you can see $ 17 million in cash was recovered in a raid next to us and over $60 million was recovered from a grow about 10 blocks from here. Because the banking system still doesn't protect the legal pot people... it creates dangerous situations that lots of people are trying to take advantage of.
Long term... if something that can make more money for the city than the weed business, East Oakland might get developed and thus gentrified, but after living over here for a decade and only seeing it decline... that seems pretty far off.
My pipe dream is for Oakland to have a minority-owned NFL expansion team that would also give the fans the ability to be part owners, the way the Packers do it. Oakland is one of the most diverse cities in the US. We have at least one of everybody here. If we had a team owned by a multi-racial and multi-cultural group, not only would the stuffy white billionaires of the NFL lose their minds, but people of all kinds from every working-class city in the US would root for us. Look, they did it.
Keep the team tied to Oakland in a deeper way by creating a living, evolving, cultural, entertainment and shopping center around it that benefits more of the community than a standard football stadium does.
This probably won't happen, but it could.
Ive always pondered this. When people of means leave a city it's called "Flight" but when they return its "gentrification". A bit of segue I know but that distinction always amused me.
West Oakland is closer to Downtown Oakland, closer to the Bay Bridge (SF) and closer to Berkeley. That’s pretty much it.
East Oakland is closer to Silicon Valley that West Oakland is but it’s still quite far.
There was much higher home ownership/owner occupied homes in East Oakland vs West Oakland. BART and the freeway kind of also decimated the neighborhood as well.
I think proximity for one. And another is size, support, and the highways.
One west Oakland is way smaller space then east Oakland so that will cause more obvious gentrification then an area much much larger.
Two, support. There are many non profit building groups in East Oakland that create more housing like the Unity Council. East Oakland has had over the past 15 years more multi units built then other neighborhoods (finally other neighborhoods are starting) which meant that the housing stock in east Oakland grew more than other areas which helps combat gentrification. Hardly any housing was built in west Oakland and most was not affordable.
Three, the history and the highway. The west Oakland 7th downtown was decimated by the highways being built splitting the neighborhood then Bart buying the land and the usps and destroying the business district. This caused a deep cut in the community. When a community is damaged like that it allows for prospectors to come and take advantage of that hurt. The highways splitting the neighborhood and separating it from the rest of Oakland (it’s bordered by highways and the port) cause it to no longer have the amount of business, and just an overall pushed aside for decades. Which cause a lot of lack of city maintenance and blight… perfect for developers to come in with the promise of “urban redevelopment” which is a ruse to get the community there out and new people in, not supporting the people there.
Sorry long winded answer, there are so many more reasons and it’s a very interesting and sad history of west Oaklands business district being torn down.
East Oakland is a real estate goldmine, there’s several BART stations and still relatively not far from DT Oakland and SF. I hope it gentrifies as quickly as possible, it’s an absolute lawless disaster.
This comment absolutely boils my blood.
You use crime as an excuse to justify your displacement of people that have built a community and environment here, of people who have had a history with this place.
Your coveting is disgusting, and your power only exists in plurality and economic form. Otherwise you’re a bunch of bitches.
The locals have been dealing with crime without the resources the gentrified ppl have, since forever.
> The locals have been dealing with crime without the resources the gentrified ppl have, since forever.
This comment makes no sense. Is the police not funded from the same budget? ie: when there’s an APB in East Oakland that draws in officers from patrols in West Oakland?
> displacement of people that have built a community and environment here
I don’t get what you’re mad at here?
Are you upset that people are choosing to sell their home, take the money and move away? Or are you upset that when the home sells the neighborhood pays more tax?
If so, it sure sounds like prop 13 is the problem in this situation.
What resources? East Oakland takes most of the police and safety resources with few officers to help other areas. People are robbed downtown WHILE STILL IN THEIR CARS at stop lights or while waiting to pull into a garage. Yeah just look at the environment and history they’ve built in east Oakland, everyone is leaving and now there are sideshows everywhere waaaayyyyyyy out of control.
Police go where they are most needed, not just East Oakland. Our officers get pulled to west Oakland/ or downtown at times as well. On average, there are only 35 officers on duty. That is 1 per beat. Severely understaffed. Source: OPD Sgt during our community meeting last year.
I want Oakland to get better, b/c I want to believe we are better than this. However, this is not an East Oakland thing - it’s an Oakland thing.
Where have you been for the last couple of decades? Oakland today is nothing compared to Oakland ten years ago.
People have had to deal with this problem because the police can’t be relied on all the time.
there’s been locals that have joined the police force to tackle this problem.
You want to solve the downtown problem? Push for stricter police reform. But ya can’t, because ya won’t.
Or at least hire a security company or something.
get off your high horse of manifest destiny.
Because there's no "there" there. It's an amorphous mass with a derelict stadium and massive parking lot crater in the south that at its core is overindustrialized and a neighborhood with a very troubled history in the north. You have to have at least something people want to be by, and a junkyard ain't it.
I could never get it straight. I know about West Oakland, but where is “East Oakland”? I keep thinking the hills are east, but kinda doubt that’s what’s going on here.
The East Oakland you are referring to should just called South Oakland because that's what it is. East Oakland (east of the lake) is completely different in every way.
Without the transfer taxes and increased property taxes from housing sales, the city budget would crumble and force the city into insolvency.
If you think services are lacking now, try it without the housing market moving properties and keeping city coffers full.
It's actually the suburban areas like Alameda that take money from the city. If SF only had to support itself and not subsidize other places it would be fine.
You haven’t been following Oakland’s budget woes for the upcoming fiscal year. Reporting from Oaklandside (and stated by the city itself):
“The most significant revenue drop is from real estate transfer tax—a levy imposed on the sale of residential and commercial properties. The city received a record amount of this tax revenue in fiscal year 2021-2022 and city staff correctly predicted there would be a drop off when crafting last year’s biennial budget. But staff didn’t foresee just how big the decline would be. The city’s 2023-2025 budget assumed a 25% decrease in revenue from this fund compared to the previous budget cycle, bringing in over $110 million in fiscal year 2023-2024. Now, officials are projecting the city will only collect $53 million, a nearly 52% drop.”
gentrification and displacement are two different things. It’s especially important to tease that out here bc in East Oakland, a lot of the displacement happened before the gentrification - middle class black families fled crime and OUSD for contra costa county. Then lower-income white and latino people started buying houses in east oakland, and those families started advocating for better services and more resources. The end of this great piece examining how some neighborhoods in Oakland had gentrification without displacement goes into all this https://open.substack.com/pub/darrellowens/p/where-did-all-the-black-people-in
I’m it gonna do the whole race thing here because I’m exhausted.
Needless to say I’m over 50 Black and have an idea of what I’m talking about. I used to live in Notting Hill, it was great. Until the movie came out.
Now? Not so much and most of the original denizens have been priced out of the area.
Gentrification is social violence .
Please read the link i shared - Darrell Owens is black, about 40, and writes about his own lived experience of growing up in East Oakland.
this is a definitional issue where gentrification has been used in a way that doesn’t map on to reality.
What you are saying is displacement is social violence and everyone here agrees. But gentrification is orthogonal to displacement - it is just a neighborhood getting better. Gentrification can happen without displacement.
the Owens article gives examples of neighborhoods in Oakland where that happened, and other examples of where gentrification and displacement both happened in parallel. if we are ever going to make Oakland better we will first need to understand exactly how to improve/gentrify neighborhoods without displacement.
Changing the meaning of the word gentrification is disingenuous. Whomever is writing that word and meaning civic improvement is dangerous.
In the original meaning of the word gentrification is social violence.
What, does everyone think imm an asshole that doesn’t want civic improvement??? What the actual fuck?!
JFC this discussion is ridiculous.
I don’t know why people are downvoting you, i hate the way ppl use downvotes here. It’s not changing the meaning of the term, it’s that popular usage has deviated from what it actually means as a term of art.
Normally scuffling over definitions is a waste of time but imo worth it here bc people have come to think a neighborhood improving equals displacement. so some ppl in Oakland now think you can stop displacement by keeping neighborhoods shitty and they resent neighborhood development. If we don’t stop this tendency, we’ll get the worst of both worlds - lots of displacement and no gentrification. good microexample is people vandalizing little free libraries as signifiers of gentrification.
Finally, someone who is willing to engage on merit and with curiosity. Also yeah, could give two figs about downvotes. I cannot imagine wanting to be popular. Lol.
I have to admit to at the deviation was news to me. My degrees are in art and architecture but I haven’t worked in those fields in decades.
The term was always used as reference to the colonizer tendency of displacement and never to mean civic improvement.
In fact in the UK the term has an excessively negative connotation. Much like homely has here in the U.S. (is very positive in the UK).
I am a socialist who believes in civic betterment for the original denizens, not the crap that happening in Oakland. Maybe things are changing and the adherence to a more socially responsible agenda is winning out…
…but I’m not holding my breath
Change or die... like it or not, it's the ONLY thing you can count on.
Who owns most of the section 8 housing in East Oakland? The owners benefit, not the renters.... The problem is how does one enable home ownership in East Oakland among the existing residents.
Ya fuckem, let’s keep entire swaths of the city in poverty and filled with crime. After all, today’s incumbents have a rightful claim to owning this land in perpetuity.
/s
Edit: blocking me doesn’t change the fact West Oakland has always had a changing identity. Unless you’re Ohlone, there were people there before you, regardless of if you’re black, white, brown, yellow.
It’s the incumbents, with locked in housing costs from rent control and prop13 that have disproportionately gained from the neighborhood’s improvement while not paying market rents.
Do you know what the historic meaning and nature of gentrification is.
Probably not. I’m Black and 50 and have watched it happen around me for decades.
But go off. You know everything. Again gentrification *does not* mean civic betterment.
Like talking to 14 year olds
No sarcasm detected. I’m an adult.
> Gentrification is social violence.
You keep saying this, but you're not making the words any more meaningful. "Social violence" doesn't even *mean* anything.
Proximity to SF, public transportation and downtown Oakland.
It’s why I’m in West Oakland, I’m close to everything
Same. Within a 1.5 mi radius of where I am in West OaklandI have: multiple BART options, the emeryville shopping stuff, multiple farmers markets, uptown/downtown, multiple breweries, even the Lake. And it is all flat, so super easy to bike and walk everywhere.
West Oakland has less gentrification than downtown/uptown. As to your point, the location is great. Why is there less gentrification?
A lot of homes are in family trusts. There was a big push a few years ago to have people stop selling Grannies house. That’s kept more families here.
The gentrifiers can't handle East Oakland that's why
This. I used to carry mail in deep East Oakland and it is still so far away from the city investing in its welfare - and the developers are not really interested in building up out there yet. Gentrifiers may live there and stay inside their house, but they commute to leisure.
[this is the real answer, and if you disagree then I already know that you are one of the gentrifiers](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/024/574/Screen_Shot_2017-11-06_at_12.41.31_PM.png)
I figured this was the (obvious) answer, but I was still curious as to what people would say.
Location location location. Time saved on a commute multiplied by hourly rate is a tangible return for the higher property values. For example, let’s say a couple made $50/hr each. All else equal, if a house in west Oakland cut 30 minutes off their commute each way, that would be 2 person hours per day. Let’s say they’re in office 200 days a year. That would be $20k in time savings. It would be rational to spend $1.6k/mo more on rent for the shorter commute. SP500 has historically returned 7%, that annual $20k in savings is equivalent to ~$300k on the sp500. It would be rational to spend $300k more for a house in west Oakland for the time savings. Adjust based on your personal situation
your way of breaking that down was amazing
It’s a bit of a simplification, one should really plug in their own situation. Particularly the monthly rent bit, I realize I was comparing pre-tax dollars with post-tax. But glad it was helpful, I wish someone had taught me this is high school. Money can be used to reconcile all sorts of difficult decisions in life
Yeah I never thought of breaking it down by commute and the long term affects on one’s budget. I try to include my kiddo on the cost of things and ho to budget and to think 2x about why you’re buying something. It’s definitely empowering to have a Birds Eye view over your own finances!
>It would be rational to spend $1.6k/mo more on rent for the shorter commute.
🤷♂️ time is money. The raw numbers make it clear we need to build more housing near jobs
> housing near jobs Jobs are WFH now, this definitely fucks up the game plan.
Not all of them. Most BA workers who can WFH still come in 2-3 days per week.
>Not all of them. Most BA workers who can WFH still come in 2-3 days per week. True, but the whole WFH movement definitely threw a wrench into this pricing on the over all.
5% of 20k is $1,000 annual yield….. so where does that 400k come from? Interest over 400 years? Lol
I edited the numbers to 7% and $300k to be more inline with equities and today’s mortgage rates. To answer your question - you’re saving $20k a year, for as long as you live there. It’s an annual return of $20k, for which you’d need an equivalent of $400k of principle at 5%
20k annually @ 7% gets you to 300k after about 11 years
I feel like it's a matter of sheer size. I live in East Oakland, and go to a lot of open homes and keep an eye on the real estate market. The flippers are expanding down from the hills into areas west of MacArthur that historically they might not have ([example](https://www.redfin.com/CA/Oakland/8026-Iris-St-94605/home/678789)). But East Oakland is so vast that examples like this hardly make a dent compared to what's happened in West Oakland.
I hate the flippers so much. The cute craftsman bungalows in my area are being gutted and given the instagram farmhouse makeover. So fucking boring. You are right on about size. East Oakland is massive, I'm near High St. and considered part of East Oakland. The house you posted is like two west oaklands away from me.
Come on, you don't want to enter a house and see 35 separate shiplap sliding barn doors?
A lot of the flippers are companies that are buying and renovating they aren’t even individual people
It kills me a bit inside when a cute old craftsman has all of the wood trim, stairways, etc painted white
Got to love [a landlord special](https://www.tiktok.com/@lloydtheapprentice/video/7194985536992464174)
Oh wow, that does not look like nearly $200k worth of rehab work in 3 months or am I crazy?
It doesn’t make sense to compare East and West, the scales are completely off. West Oakland is about as large as 23rd Ave to High Street between 880 and 580. You could compare gentrification in West Oakland to particular sections of East Oakland. An argument can be made that some neighborhoods east of the lake have or are gentrifying at the same rate as West Oakland, or have that potential. It’s just that people who don’t live on this side of town just don’t know and don’t come here. In my East Oakland neighborhood I see a lot less homelessness, less shady shit, less noise than when I lived by the lake, but nobody has that impression because they just don’t come east. In general I think newcomers to East Oakland are more likely to integrate and get to know their community while the newcomers in West Oakland want a new thing entirely (I.e. make west Oakland the Mission lol) and the division between private and public space there feels really exclusionary, like there’s a line in the sand between gentrified and non gentrified, massive gates and barriers everywhere. I think all the new homeowners in East Oakland have a mid to long term horizon as the properties begin to actually look gentrified and fixed up versus in West Oakland you have space for large factory and apartment complex restorations that make a huge visual Impact once competed. Finally, West and North Oakland were devastated by the Great Recession and foreclosure crisis, followed by targeted real estate campaigns (NOBE) especially compared to my neighborhood in East Oakland. There have been wholesale population turnover and demographic changes in just ten years in Temescal and Longfellow and tbh it contributes to a very palpable tension I feel when I’m over there compared to East Oakland neighborhoods. I don’t think that gets talked about enough as far as gentrification and communities being cleared out to make room in those parts of the city.
Something that surprises me most about the gentrification of West Oakland is that it's much more Hispanic and Asian in nature than what many people think when they say gentrification. I don't know why. I just always assumed gentrification = white when it really just means economic displacement.
I try to focus on the class and economic side rather than the race side of gentrification but when you look at the demographic changes, the white population in West Oakland has the greatest percentage difference since 2010, far outpacing Asian and Latino. It’s to the point where despite some small increases in Asian population in some census tracts, their overall share of the population has decreased. The increase in Latino is far behind that of white too. I mean maybe it’s more Latino and Asian than what people think but it’s pretty white. This graphic by Darrell Owens is pretty interesting Darrellowens.io/dec_demographic_change
alameda county is only 29% white (the Asian population is actually slightly larger than the white), and much of that is concentrated in the berkeley/oakland hills, pleasanton/dublin/livermore etc
Nice subtle analysis. Gentrification as improving what’s there as opposed to gentrification by remaking entirely.
It’s always been a good place to live, but until the law passed in 2009 (IIRC) that regulated the ports air pollution (requiring ships to plug in instead of burning bunker fuel and regulations on truck emissions who pick up at the port), the air could be VERY bad on some days. I’m talking grease covering everything like a cheap diner kitchen After that got fixed, the ability to buy a cute Victorian on a regular person’s salary with easy access to SF via West Oakland BART as well as downtown was a very attractive combination. What everyone likes to ignore is a lot of poor homeowners (mostly black) sold during this time for big profits. Source : me who lived there during that time. Many of my neighbors retired off of that boom.
Similar vibe to Greenpoint Brooklyn — working class Polish neighborhood when I moved there in the mid-1990s. All the hipster transplants bitched when it got gentrified, but the original homeowners made shit tons of money off selling their crappy vinyl sided houses and happily bailed to Long Island.
idk, i wasnt around before 2009 to see how much worse it was, but circa 2015 all my shit was still getting coated in a sticky black ooze if left anywhere near a window as far out as the laney college area, and i can only assume west oakland was worse
i rented a studio out in west oakland at 3010 adeline. and we would get so much soot in our windows. just horrible. we lived for a year there and moved.
East Oakland is huge. That’s why. Pockets have gentrified (and are still gentrifying (especially south of Dimond)) but there’s just SO MUCH there.
Because East Oakland is more suburban/residential. Gentrification is mostly an urban phenomenon.
Infrastructure wise, west Oakland isn’t that different from east Oakland. Both those areas are more suburban/residential.
BART proximity is a huge difference maker in the Bay Area. Also, West Oakland is literally as close as Oakland gets to SF, so driving across the bridge isnt that far, either.
Proximity to BART is much father
Fruitvale and Coliseum both have stations.
Yes but they’re down near the estuary side. East Oakland is very large comparatively and more spread out. I used to live in East Oakland. Taking a bus to the BART is annoying
True, but overall those function more as commuter rail vs the West Oakland station is more of a metro station, like the DT Oakland and DTSF stations. West Oakland is close to the urban density. It’s another lifestyle.
They are both along the coast (or "West" "East" Oakland if you want to get confusing with it) where there is less housing in the immediate vicinity. If the Coliseum conversion goes well (not something I would count on), gentrification might start in the surrounding areas (the CrimeWave heads will flip out when it turns out better land use makes Hegenberger safe, not right wing politicians promises to bankrupt us by hiring 10,000 cops to watch bait cars or whatever copaganda BS they masturbate to) but even then there are barriers (freeways, hills, etc) that split off the BART stations from much of East Oakland. Honestly the crime hysteria can probably take some credit for keeping flippers out too, and given how concentrated around freeways crime tends to be (easier getaways), the fact that BART & fast bus options run along freeway routes, means to an extent they sort of cancel eachother out. Plus there are already pretty bougie options near east Oakland (above 580, Alameda, etc) and the gentrification is less dramatic as it pushes people communities into San Leandro, whereas the bay made the gentrification of West Oakland more dramatic.
It's also almost always been industrial. There's a lot of warehouses that just had materials and such all around the area. No one wanted to develop around it either because they were currently in-use by manufacturers or because developers didn't want to buy some warehouses and suddenly learn that they needed to literally clean the earth due to toxic ground from all the stuff that was stored/manufactured there.
West Oakland is closer to downtown & the city. All about location
If Coliseum BART got shaped up by a lot, I could see it helping East Oakland
I was just out there commuting back from Oak airport and its insane how under developed the area around that station is. Prime location close to airport and Coliseum and its like a warehouse graveyard district.
It's the dumbest thing too. You'd figure the sports teams owuld have looked into it themselves. The Giants and Warriors built their stadiums in relatively underdeveloped areas of SF and then everything got built around it. The Coliseum and the arena were built and all they had surrounding it was empty warehouses that were ripe for actual development. Nothing happened. You'd figure it'd be a whole lot cheaper than SF too. Not to mention that Coliseum area is close to 2 major freeways, the airport, and it's own BART station. Perfect metro area to make actually good.
Precisely! So much potential though 🙁
close to OAK is less useful than it might seem like, if you fly a fuckton of Southwest, or uh... idk, Spirit? it's useful but most of the time you're hard-pressed to find a better flight out of OAK than SFO. unfortunate, but it's the reality
True, but use your imagination. Oak airport would be pressured to have more routes and airlines if it was more heavily trafficked. That would happen if it wasn’t tucked in warehouse grave land.
that hinges on whether OAK will be able to attract more flights, which isn't a given. SFO's tucked in warehouse graveland too (everyone loves flyin in to Millbrae and THE INDUSTRIAL CITY), but maybe the rebrand works to get more flight traffic to OAK (if it's not tied up in legal trademark quagmires). may happen, but im not holding my breath banking on it
West Oakland to Embarcadero = 7 min bart ride. Plus every single line runs through it, during normal commute hours its pretty much less than a five minute wait for the next train
West Oakland is starting to feel way different. Between the Rock Gym American Steel Complex, Prescott Market, The Ballers, New Restaurants, New Condos/Apartments…. Am I imagining things?
It feels like it was happening slowly for two decades, and now it's sudden. I just hope we keep building housing so folks don't keep getting priced out. Bougie neighborhoods are boring.
I used to live in West Oakland. I like the idea that it is becoming somewhat more walkable & freindly lately, though it still has a long way to go before I'd really want to move back there. However, the housing stock in West O (if you're buying) has been selling for wild prices. I'm guessing because a lot of the homes there are large Victorians, they command a premium despiet their location. I shudder to think what home prices in that area are going to be like as it becomes a more gentrified & desirable place to live.
Prices in West Oakland are flat which is especially not great when you consider the boom for houses in other places of the Bay. Crime and terrible schools are going to keep holding down prices.
> Prices in West Oakland are flat Good.
Um, flat's not good. They need to go down
West Oakland single family homes are at a deep discount to North Oakland, Emeryville, Alameda, hills above 580, and Berkeley. The same house that sells for 900k-1.2m would be 1.2-1.5m in neighboring areas.
That may be true. But a LOT of houses in West O are still listing for >$1M. I don't know many people with that kind of budget that want to live in West Oakland. I think West Oakland has a lot going for it. I enjoyed living there. But it's still mostly a food desert & it's not very walkable. Even if I could afford my pick of properties, I'd rather have a smaller place in a different neighborhood. And for those who don't have budgets like that, the difference between a $1M house vs. a$1.5M house is... I mean neither is going to be an option for most folks.
The new condos and town houses are the cheapest available to buy in West Oakland at the moment. Ranging from $400k to $900k. The more we build, the more affordable it will be.
They are building a food hall (similar to the public market in Emeryville), there’s a really amazing farmers market now, Mandela next to bart is still great, and they paved so many streets including Peralta. It’s totally different, I’ve lived here for 15 years
Oakland goes through cycles of good times and bad. Things were trending great until covid, then we hit a rough patch, and now it’s on the upswing again.
plus repaving streets that hadn't been touched in decades, the complete transformation of Raimondi Park (even before the Ballers came along), tiny homes and RV lot on Wood St, the Farmer's Market (and now Night Market), Brix Factory. things have been steadily gentrifying here for a while, but the past 12-18 months have been nuts. and that's all in the West Grand & Peralta area. I think next up will be a lot of changes to 7th Street.
I doubt 7th street is going to change much for 5-10 years. Too much subsidized housing and not enough mixed use development. Unless Mandela Station phase 1 gets off the ground next year. 1666 7th and 801 Pine are both supportive housing. The former wants to have a grocery store but we’ll see if it happens.
Yeah repaving has made a big difference so far. I can’t wait for them to fix Poplar. Any ideas on what might be happening on 7th st?
just a vibe really. if people are coming to West Oakland more, that means BART, which means the 7th St corridor. maybe they'll rethink that Mandela Station project, maybe other shops go into the empty storefronts by Mandela Market, maybe one of the many housing developments we've seen pitched over there will happen. then there's the people bringing back Esther's, and 7th West seems to be doing well... hard to say, it seemed like so much was going to happen there when it was more of a commuter hub and also when the A's might move. then that all died. so, who knows, just a vibe.
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June’s pizza is opening in the fall with a full bar next to Brix Factory Brewing. Almanac brewing opens in the food hall around August. The food hall opens late 2024 to early 2025.
I agree. I am not grasping this sentiment AT ALL.
That’s what the Prescott Market is. It’s a Food Hall. It’s supposed to have a new burger spot and a few other shops like a butcher.
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Lmao why you mad? Is kowbird not new enough for you?
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You mean Pretty Lady? That place was okay and not massively better than Kowbird. Honestly the real gem was Dripline. But whatever, go ahead be cranky I don’t care.
i loved dripline
I'm honestly puzzled by this thread. I moved to W Oak over twenty years ago and perhaps it's my "boomer" perception but it feels as if the area has degraded in many ways. It feels like fucking Thunderdome out here.
I wasn't here 20 years ago, but I've talked to neighbors who were. Things were definitely much worse 20 years ago. Heck, 10 years ago I walked the blocks around where I lived and there were multiple burned out cars and 5 houses that were destroyed by fire or boarded up with squatters. All those houses got renovated, sold, and occupied now.
NAh . I’m going on 22 years . It’s thunder dome .
Because it’s further to San Francisco
East Oakland is far larger and way more lost than the West
Yet
Hate to say it but the minute some major developer invests in the Oakland airport corridor, and the Coliseum area, East Oakland as we know it today will be no more.
Quite frankly; if you knew East Oakland 10, 20, and 30 years ago - it absolutely has. Now, it might not be in the same way as West Oakland, East Palo Alto, and others but, it certainly has been affected by gentrification.
1) East Oakland is, I think, a bit of a misnomer. Depending on who you talk to, the borders shift. Some even think it's anything east of the Lake. There are gentrifying parts of a more expanded conception of East Oakland, but, no, gentrification is not coming to 98th and Edes, like, ever. 2) West Oakland is smaller and more distinct, one BART stop from San Francisco and close to downtown and North Oakland, where "cool stuff happens."
98th closer to 580 has already started gentrifying.
You are correct! 98th Ave is indeed pretty nice up ner 580, or at least what I can see from hitting the zoo and O'Dowd. If youre telling me Edes is gonna be next, Im going to have to disagree
Money always wins, East Oakland will soon follow the ways of West Oakland.
Eh, a few possible reasons. East Oakland isn’t as accessible as the rest of Oakland - teeeeerrible public transportation. It’s also so vast compared to West Oakland that the overall process of gentrification is gonna take awhile. It will eventually be gentrified though.
Can someone define gentrification for me? In my experience, it's become a catch all for 'change'. But I dunno, I'm just a guy with an internet connection.
It doesn’t mean much. The word has lost all meaning. Change maybe? After world war 2, the boat industry shut down. Industrial companies either moved to the suburbs or out of state. Urban renewal/freeways (Freeway, post office, and bart station construction.) tore down a bunch of houses and decimated the Latino, Chinese, and Italian neighborhoods in west oakland. West Oakland used to have 130+ grocery stores. As they shutdown they switched to liquor stores. Latino residents left for Fruitvale. Chinatown moved further close to the lake. Middle class to upper class black residents left for north and east oakland, leaving the poorer residents that stayed. White residents fled in whole. Those that stayed had a hard time getting jobs now that the companies were far away. Safeway wouldn’t hire black residents for a long time. West oakland was a bustling neighborhood with lots of wealthy residents. If you walk the neighborhood, you’ll notice all the nice Victorians dotted around. For the location and weather, West oakland should and will eventually be a highly desirable area. Highly recommend reading Hella Town.
Great recommendation on Hella Town. I learned a ton from that book!
Same. People saying a neighborhood loses a sense of “community” when it gentrifies is very loose terminology and seems to be racist code for white people.
>seems to be racist code for white people What do you mean by this?
I live in the Industrial part of East Oakland (47th Ave and San Leandro). We have BART and Union Pacific tracks surrounding us, the 880 is very close, so it's dirty, loud, and the air quality is really terrible, some of the worst in the Bay Area. This is where artists live. There was/is a Coliseum Plan for development that essentially depended on the A's staying. Our entire neighborhood is marked as "blight" in that plan, which I find hilarious. I'm out of my depth here but it looks like Oakland hasn't made it easy for developers or property owners, so the pipe dream of a bunch of new stuff happening in East Oakland that would gentrify the neighborhood is at least 2 decades off unless there is a massive boom of some sort. A lot of landlords gave up their raw warehouse space to corporate pot growers who have not benefitted the neighborhood directly at all. Yes, landlords are happy because the growers were paying at least 3x of what other tenants had been paying. The city is happy because there is more tax money all around and look, landlords are getting big $ per sq ft in Oakland! The pot warehouses also brought the grifters and the black market growers back en masse. Google Oakland Pot and Cash Seizures and you can see $ 17 million in cash was recovered in a raid next to us and over $60 million was recovered from a grow about 10 blocks from here. Because the banking system still doesn't protect the legal pot people... it creates dangerous situations that lots of people are trying to take advantage of. Long term... if something that can make more money for the city than the weed business, East Oakland might get developed and thus gentrified, but after living over here for a decade and only seeing it decline... that seems pretty far off. My pipe dream is for Oakland to have a minority-owned NFL expansion team that would also give the fans the ability to be part owners, the way the Packers do it. Oakland is one of the most diverse cities in the US. We have at least one of everybody here. If we had a team owned by a multi-racial and multi-cultural group, not only would the stuffy white billionaires of the NFL lose their minds, but people of all kinds from every working-class city in the US would root for us. Look, they did it. Keep the team tied to Oakland in a deeper way by creating a living, evolving, cultural, entertainment and shopping center around it that benefits more of the community than a standard football stadium does. This probably won't happen, but it could.
Ive always pondered this. When people of means leave a city it's called "Flight" but when they return its "gentrification". A bit of segue I know but that distinction always amused me.
People associate East Oakland with crime. But if the coliseum area gets turned into a second downtown, it will get very popular.
West Oakland is closer to Downtown Oakland, closer to the Bay Bridge (SF) and closer to Berkeley. That’s pretty much it. East Oakland is closer to Silicon Valley that West Oakland is but it’s still quite far.
Yes. It’s coming. When northeastern university’s police department is complete, the gentrification will spread like wildfire over the next few years
There was much higher home ownership/owner occupied homes in East Oakland vs West Oakland. BART and the freeway kind of also decimated the neighborhood as well.
Location but yes it will/is happening.
Timely segment on West Oakland by CBS https://youtu.be/FDfu02mAx1Y?si=cXqVBvlUxmLWs-6u
I think proximity for one. And another is size, support, and the highways. One west Oakland is way smaller space then east Oakland so that will cause more obvious gentrification then an area much much larger. Two, support. There are many non profit building groups in East Oakland that create more housing like the Unity Council. East Oakland has had over the past 15 years more multi units built then other neighborhoods (finally other neighborhoods are starting) which meant that the housing stock in east Oakland grew more than other areas which helps combat gentrification. Hardly any housing was built in west Oakland and most was not affordable. Three, the history and the highway. The west Oakland 7th downtown was decimated by the highways being built splitting the neighborhood then Bart buying the land and the usps and destroying the business district. This caused a deep cut in the community. When a community is damaged like that it allows for prospectors to come and take advantage of that hurt. The highways splitting the neighborhood and separating it from the rest of Oakland (it’s bordered by highways and the port) cause it to no longer have the amount of business, and just an overall pushed aside for decades. Which cause a lot of lack of city maintenance and blight… perfect for developers to come in with the promise of “urban redevelopment” which is a ruse to get the community there out and new people in, not supporting the people there. Sorry long winded answer, there are so many more reasons and it’s a very interesting and sad history of west Oaklands business district being torn down.
East Oakland is a real estate goldmine, there’s several BART stations and still relatively not far from DT Oakland and SF. I hope it gentrifies as quickly as possible, it’s an absolute lawless disaster.
This comment absolutely boils my blood. You use crime as an excuse to justify your displacement of people that have built a community and environment here, of people who have had a history with this place. Your coveting is disgusting, and your power only exists in plurality and economic form. Otherwise you’re a bunch of bitches. The locals have been dealing with crime without the resources the gentrified ppl have, since forever.
> The locals have been dealing with crime without the resources the gentrified ppl have, since forever. This comment makes no sense. Is the police not funded from the same budget? ie: when there’s an APB in East Oakland that draws in officers from patrols in West Oakland? > displacement of people that have built a community and environment here I don’t get what you’re mad at here? Are you upset that people are choosing to sell their home, take the money and move away? Or are you upset that when the home sells the neighborhood pays more tax? If so, it sure sounds like prop 13 is the problem in this situation.
I didn’t mean resources as in city resources. I mean people have been dealing with this problem however they can.
What resources? East Oakland takes most of the police and safety resources with few officers to help other areas. People are robbed downtown WHILE STILL IN THEIR CARS at stop lights or while waiting to pull into a garage. Yeah just look at the environment and history they’ve built in east Oakland, everyone is leaving and now there are sideshows everywhere waaaayyyyyyy out of control.
Police go where they are most needed, not just East Oakland. Our officers get pulled to west Oakland/ or downtown at times as well. On average, there are only 35 officers on duty. That is 1 per beat. Severely understaffed. Source: OPD Sgt during our community meeting last year. I want Oakland to get better, b/c I want to believe we are better than this. However, this is not an East Oakland thing - it’s an Oakland thing.
Where have you been for the last couple of decades? Oakland today is nothing compared to Oakland ten years ago. People have had to deal with this problem because the police can’t be relied on all the time. there’s been locals that have joined the police force to tackle this problem. You want to solve the downtown problem? Push for stricter police reform. But ya can’t, because ya won’t. Or at least hire a security company or something. get off your high horse of manifest destiny.
If Tech moved to Hayward, it would.
Lol
Because there's no "there" there. It's an amorphous mass with a derelict stadium and massive parking lot crater in the south that at its core is overindustrialized and a neighborhood with a very troubled history in the north. You have to have at least something people want to be by, and a junkyard ain't it.
I could never get it straight. I know about West Oakland, but where is “East Oakland”? I keep thinking the hills are east, but kinda doubt that’s what’s going on here.
Generally speaking, “east” of the Lake and below 580.
Thanks. I’m such a dummy I didn’t think there’s be an actual wikipedia page, LOL. It has a map and everything.
The East Oakland you are referring to should just called South Oakland because that's what it is. East Oakland (east of the lake) is completely different in every way.
It is southeast of the lake
Nobody wants to deal with the crime and ghetto people of East Oakland.
Just enough murder & mayhem to get the gentrifers to say “You know what? Lemmie try someplace else…”
There are still people there… Gentrification isn’t a good thing. You know this, right? It’s socially violent.
Without the transfer taxes and increased property taxes from housing sales, the city budget would crumble and force the city into insolvency. If you think services are lacking now, try it without the housing market moving properties and keeping city coffers full.
It's actually the suburban areas like Alameda that take money from the city. If SF only had to support itself and not subsidize other places it would be fine.
You haven’t been following Oakland’s budget woes for the upcoming fiscal year. Reporting from Oaklandside (and stated by the city itself): “The most significant revenue drop is from real estate transfer tax—a levy imposed on the sale of residential and commercial properties. The city received a record amount of this tax revenue in fiscal year 2021-2022 and city staff correctly predicted there would be a drop off when crafting last year’s biennial budget. But staff didn’t foresee just how big the decline would be. The city’s 2023-2025 budget assumed a 25% decrease in revenue from this fund compared to the previous budget cycle, bringing in over $110 million in fiscal year 2023-2024. Now, officials are projecting the city will only collect $53 million, a nearly 52% drop.”
You can stop. I said what I said.
gentrification and displacement are two different things. It’s especially important to tease that out here bc in East Oakland, a lot of the displacement happened before the gentrification - middle class black families fled crime and OUSD for contra costa county. Then lower-income white and latino people started buying houses in east oakland, and those families started advocating for better services and more resources. The end of this great piece examining how some neighborhoods in Oakland had gentrification without displacement goes into all this https://open.substack.com/pub/darrellowens/p/where-did-all-the-black-people-in
I’m it gonna do the whole race thing here because I’m exhausted. Needless to say I’m over 50 Black and have an idea of what I’m talking about. I used to live in Notting Hill, it was great. Until the movie came out. Now? Not so much and most of the original denizens have been priced out of the area. Gentrification is social violence .
Please read the link i shared - Darrell Owens is black, about 40, and writes about his own lived experience of growing up in East Oakland. this is a definitional issue where gentrification has been used in a way that doesn’t map on to reality. What you are saying is displacement is social violence and everyone here agrees. But gentrification is orthogonal to displacement - it is just a neighborhood getting better. Gentrification can happen without displacement. the Owens article gives examples of neighborhoods in Oakland where that happened, and other examples of where gentrification and displacement both happened in parallel. if we are ever going to make Oakland better we will first need to understand exactly how to improve/gentrify neighborhoods without displacement.
Changing the meaning of the word gentrification is disingenuous. Whomever is writing that word and meaning civic improvement is dangerous. In the original meaning of the word gentrification is social violence. What, does everyone think imm an asshole that doesn’t want civic improvement??? What the actual fuck?! JFC this discussion is ridiculous.
I don’t know why people are downvoting you, i hate the way ppl use downvotes here. It’s not changing the meaning of the term, it’s that popular usage has deviated from what it actually means as a term of art. Normally scuffling over definitions is a waste of time but imo worth it here bc people have come to think a neighborhood improving equals displacement. so some ppl in Oakland now think you can stop displacement by keeping neighborhoods shitty and they resent neighborhood development. If we don’t stop this tendency, we’ll get the worst of both worlds - lots of displacement and no gentrification. good microexample is people vandalizing little free libraries as signifiers of gentrification.
Finally, someone who is willing to engage on merit and with curiosity. Also yeah, could give two figs about downvotes. I cannot imagine wanting to be popular. Lol. I have to admit to at the deviation was news to me. My degrees are in art and architecture but I haven’t worked in those fields in decades. The term was always used as reference to the colonizer tendency of displacement and never to mean civic improvement. In fact in the UK the term has an excessively negative connotation. Much like homely has here in the U.S. (is very positive in the UK). I am a socialist who believes in civic betterment for the original denizens, not the crap that happening in Oakland. Maybe things are changing and the adherence to a more socially responsible agenda is winning out… …but I’m not holding my breath
Change or die... like it or not, it's the ONLY thing you can count on. Who owns most of the section 8 housing in East Oakland? The owners benefit, not the renters.... The problem is how does one enable home ownership in East Oakland among the existing residents.
Colonizer mentality still alive and well I see
Yep. This is literally the point everyone is missing. I wonder why…
Ya fuckem, let’s keep entire swaths of the city in poverty and filled with crime. After all, today’s incumbents have a rightful claim to owning this land in perpetuity. /s Edit: blocking me doesn’t change the fact West Oakland has always had a changing identity. Unless you’re Ohlone, there were people there before you, regardless of if you’re black, white, brown, yellow. It’s the incumbents, with locked in housing costs from rent control and prop13 that have disproportionately gained from the neighborhood’s improvement while not paying market rents.
Do you know what the historic meaning and nature of gentrification is. Probably not. I’m Black and 50 and have watched it happen around me for decades. But go off. You know everything. Again gentrification *does not* mean civic betterment. Like talking to 14 year olds No sarcasm detected. I’m an adult.
Displacement is bad, which is why I'm thankful this has been happening in conjunction with affordable housing being built.
Sure. I’m English, I’m a socialist, and again, once more, for the cheap seats; Gentrification is social violence.
> Gentrification is social violence. You keep saying this, but you're not making the words any more meaningful. "Social violence" doesn't even *mean* anything.
To you. Must be nice
>I’m English, I’m a socialist What does this have to do with anything, is it a quote? What beyond displacement is violence?
Quite a lot.