Housing
Oakland voters began mailing in ballots this week to decide the fate of a controversial $80 parcel tax that is being promoted as vital to help Oakland’s budget crisis and assailed as an unnecessary burden on homeowners, with no binding resolution to determine where it would be spent. Measure I would raise $60 million for the city over a five-year period.
The 1991 wildfire, which shot out of control on October 20 and lasted almost 72 hours, was so large and fast-moving that it challenged the capacity of Northern California’s fire departments and wreaked havoc on the hills community. OaklandNorth.net remembers the fire and examines what has changed in the past 20 years.
On a normal day in Oakland, most passing drivers probably wouldn’t pause to think about the pairs of stone pillars marking the entrances of four streets in the Fairview Park neighborhood. The worn, 100-year-old pillars have long been a visual anchor in the area. But yesterday it was hard to miss them: two of the monuments were decked in huge, lime green bows.
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.
During a tense city council committee meeting on Tuesday, the deputy director of Oakland’s Community and Economic Development Agency (CEDA) presented the agency’s response to a grand jury report on building inspection malpractice.
The Oakland History Room’s exhibit will display items related to the fire on the second floor of Oakland’s Main Library from September 1 to November 30. The exhibit includes aerial maps of Oakland before and after the fire and public records related to the firestorm.
Holding banners and large withdrawal request forms, about 30 customers gathered on Wednesday in front of Wells Fargo’s main branch in downtown Oakland to announce that they would close their Wells Fargo bank accounts to protest the bank’s foreclosure practices.
Opened in 1912 at 16th Street and Wood Street, the Southern Pacific Train Station in West Oakland used to be one of the three original train stations serving Oakland at the beginning of the 20th Century, bringing goods and people—from coastal workers to jazz musicians—to the region from all over the country.
Oakland Mayor Jean Quan and a group of East Bay mayors gave their support to a lawsuit that seeks to overturn a bill by Governor Jerry Brown that axes the agencies.