Housing
Oakland residents converged Tuesday on an East Oakland street that has been blighted by foreclosures, calling for a freeze on foreclosures until the Homeowners Bill of Rights comes into effect in January, 2013. California Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law on July 2, which and will prevent banks from forcing families their homes while they are still negotiating mortgages settlements.
St. Mary’s Center in West Oakland helps some of the 71,000 seniors in Alameda County who do not have enough money to meet their basic needs; that is half of the people in Alameda County who are 65 and over. But the center is just one node in the complex and incomplete web of aid for seniors who do not have enough money to live on. “Forget the issue of any kind of dementia, long-term chronic mental health issues, substance abuse issues—just be homeless and experience the trauma of that and then figure this out,” said Carol Johnson, the director of St. Mary’s.
The Institute of Urban Homesteading, which offers classes that focus on living in an urban environment and in “rescuing” the lost arts of gardening, work in the kitchen and other work performed by hand, will host its second annual Urban Farm Tours day on Saturday, June 9 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Seven homes will be featured in guided tours through small medium and large lots in Glenview, Montclair, Oakland and North and West Berkeley.
Community advocates came together to participate in a panel discussion focused on the link between healthy and affordable housing in downtown Oakland on Friday. East Bay Housing Organizations’ 16th Annual Affordable Housing Week began last Friday with a kick-off celebration at Uptown Body and Fender. This year’s event, entitled “Affordable Housing: Building A Movement,” offered a weeklong series of more than 16 presentations, tours and discussions about the benefits and successes of affordable housing in the East Bay area. As…
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.
The city of Oakland has a program that charges fines for banks that fail to maintain blighted homes that have been foreclosed upon that the bank now owns. On Tuesday night, the city council voted unanimously to expand those controls to include homes going through the default process.
The dissolution of the redevelopment agencies in California forced the city to eliminate much-needed programs for first-time homebuyers. Now hope rests with a California Assembly bill currently in revision that, if passed, would allow the allocation of new funding for moderate to low income housing programs run by California cities.
In an effort to prevent the Oakland A’s, Oakland Raiders and Golden State Warriors from being lured away to places like San Jose, Los Angeles and San Francisco, a group of city officials, business leaders and developers rolled out an ambitious “public-private” partnership plan on Wednesday morning that would transform the Coliseum site and bring up to 32,000 jobs to the area, Mayor Jean Quan said. The City of Oakland is in a “position of strength” to keep its three…
Writer and home renovation expert Jane Powell is fighting to save her historic Oakland home, dubbed the Bunga-Mansion, from foreclosure.