Homelessness
The women sat in a circle, pressing their folding chairs closely together as they laughed, clapped and listened to each other’s stories.
Judge Gordon Baranco donned his robes at the last minute, putting them on over a grey suit and a tie on which a reindeer tugged Santa in a sled. Baranco normally hears cases in the Alameda County Superior Court, but today he was presiding over a ragtag crowd in a well-used community center, where the homeless and formerly homeless defendants had gathered to have the fines associated with minor offenses waived. Baranco stood in front his makeshift bench, a rectangular…
The Oakland Housing Authority opened the first phase of a lottery for public housing and voucher program waitlists this week, receiving more than 10,000 applications in the first two days.
Mike and John Manente stand proudly together as they look up at their recent creation: Sheila, a dignified woman with a gentle face blended from yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, and earth tones. The setting sun gives her an amber hue. She’s the subject of the “The Gardener,” the latest in an ongoing series of murals entitled “The People of Oakland” by the father and son team. Last year the two men, both professional artists, created the “People of Oakland” to…
On the morning of Saturday, May 19, Oaklanders will participate in the 7th Annual Walk to End Poverty. The event is hosted by the Alameda County-Oakland Community Action Partnership (AC-OCAP), and is one of many initiatives in Oakland and nearby communities that the partnership is spearheading to combat hunger, staggering unemployment rates, and homelessness.
As the number of homeless and illegal boat dwellers has increased, they say, so has a chronic wave of thefts that has kept marinas on both sides of the Oakland estuary under siege. Meanwhile, they complain, the illegal estuary dwellers are causing a host of environmental problems by disposing of sewage in the water or abandoning their boats, which can leach toxic substances as they disintegrate.
In the Tuesday afternoon sunshine, a line of people formed on 10th Street outside Oakland’s downtown Marriott Hotel while inside, hundreds of volunteers—including Mayor Jean Quan—bustled back and forth in the banquet hall, preparing to serve over 2,000 people at the city’s 20th annual Thanksgiving dinner.
Every Saturday morning, volunteers from North Oakland’s Lighthouse Mosque come to the Rainbow Recreation center on 59th and East 14th Street in East Oakland to give hot food and groceries to people in need.
A small group of Oakland homeowners led by the housing rights group Causa Justa, Just Cause (CJCC), gathered outside of Wells Fargo’s main branch in downtown Oakland Thursday afternoon to publicly propose solutions to the city’s foreclosure crisis.