Economy
The City of Oakland approved a new experimental short-term housing solution, called The Village. After a year of negotiations, they’ve been granted land by the city, and are building houses for the homeless.
On Tuesday evening, about 120 people gathered at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center to attend a “neighborhood design session” held by the city. The session was a public meeting to discuss challenges in Oakland’s Chinatown and to generate ideas for the city’s “Downtown Oakland Specific Plan,” which will lay out a long-term vision for the area. “There are three big ideas that we are working with as part of this plan,” said Gregory Hodge, a social change entrepreneur at Khepera…
2017 brought a new group of student reporters to Oakland North from across the country and the globe. They covered a city in flux: a housing and homelessness crisis that shows no sign of abating, a school district facing millions in budget cuts, a citywide crackdown on warehouse spaces in the wake of the Ghost Ship fire, and local reactions to the new immigration and sanctuary city polices coming out of Washington under the new Donald Trump administration. But they also dug…
Community members and city officials struggle to confront the the epidemic of hundreds of Oakland residents–most of them black, many of them elders–sleeping on the streets due to to skyrocketing rents and a lack of affordable housing.
In a six to one vote, the Oakland Unified School District school board voted to cut $9 million from the district’s budget on Wednesday night. Earlier in the afternoon, members of the Oakland Education Association assembled at Lake Merritt to protest the proposed cuts, then marched down the streets toward La Escuelita Elementary School, where the board meeting would take place. Olivia Udovic, a parent and teacher at Oakland Montessori School in the Fruitvale neighborhood, marched proudly in the front…
Fresh bread is baking in the oven. Feet shuffle swiftly along the kitchen floors. Chefs begin bagging and packing food to go. Two deliverers place big black boxes on carts to wheel to their vehicle. Inside each one are several neatly packaged white boxes filled with lunch orders. About seven people dance around the kitchen to assist them with the deliveries. Smooth 90’s R&B plays in the background while the staff works in unison. The chefs in this kitchen aren’t…
Every month, a group of technology enthusiasts meet in an Oakland warehouse to build tiny self-driving cars. “DIY Robocars” was organized by Chris Anderson, who also runs drone company 3DR. While these cheap, disposable cars aren’t as sophisticated as the ones being developed by Tesla or Google, Anderson says that the advantage of using these “Robocars” is that there is lots of room to fail.
Artist Favianna Rodriguez is busy designing political posters and preparing to produce a large glass mural. A printmaker by trade, the mural will be the first time Rodriguez works wth glass. Ten minutes away, in a gallery in downtown Oakland, Natalia Mount spends her days guiding visitors through the current exhibition, which includes sculptures that move and emit loud sounds. The executive director of Pro Arts Gallery, Mount is eagerly planning new shows that toy with accepted notions of what is…
This article is part of “Birthing Inequity,” an Oakland North project on maternal and infant health disparities in Oakland. See the full multimedia report here. In 2003, while she was carrying her third child, Tanisha Fuller had to convince her hospital caretakers that something was really wrong. Six months pregnant, and unsure of what was happening to her, she’d rushed to the emergency room with pain in her back, feeling like she couldn’t breathe. At the hospital, she was told that…