The knocks on Maria Espinoza’s front door became a nightly occurrence.
If the 60-year-old Oakland woman wasn’t home, her frightened partner would turn off the lights and TV and remain silent. On evenings Espinoza did answer the door, her new landlord would be outside with the same question: when are you moving out?
Espinoza, who used to run a restaurant in Oakland, has lived in the building in the Eastlake neighborhood for decades. But last year, the property got a new owner, Thao Le, who has tried to push out the building’s tenants ever since, Espinoza said.
One of the official eviction notices accused the family of “theft of electricity”, Espinoza thinks because they had put up a light to illuminate a dark hallway.
“She’s trying to find something to kick us out,” said Espinoza. “It is really stressful.”
Huechi Wong, a lawyer for Le, disputed Espinoza’s account, denied that Le had knocked on Espinoza’s door on a nightly basis, and argued Espinoza had created a fire hazard by connecting speaker wires to a common area in the building. Sarah McCracken, Espinoza’s attorney, said that allegation was false.
Espinoza and her partner fear the landlord wants to see them leave in order to charge the next tenant a higher rent. That fear is increasingly common among lower-paying residents in this northern California city as a massive real estate deal in the city’s downtown neighborhood may accelerate the gentrification of Oakland to rates unseen.
Housing advocates and tenants’ rights groups warn that the threat that has loomed large for years is now close to becoming an irreversible reality: the tech industry is coming for The Town.
‘The new ground zero’
In December 2018, Square, the payments processor corporation run by Jack Dorsey, the Twitter CEO, signed a lease for a 356,000-square-foot building in downtown.
Square’s lease of the 1920s-era property known as Uptown Station, which was once proposed as a headquarters for Uber, marked one of the biggest real estate deals in Oakland’s history.
Square plans to start moving in employees later this year, and the building has capacity for up to 2,000 workers.
But housing advocates fear Square’s arrival will also invite other startups and tech companies to invade the East Bay city, and advocates say the real estate industry’s anticipation of the project is already impacting Oakland’s housing market.
“Oakland is the new ground zero in terms of the housing affordability crisis,” said Camilo Sol Zamora, an organizer with Causa Justa, a local tenants’ rights group. “It’s a shrinking, shrinking working class.”
A crisis long in the making
Big tech has transformed the communities and the culture of northern California’s Bay Area in the past decade, and Oakland has been feeling the impact of that transformation for years. Modern condos have appeared left and right, many working-class residents have left for suburbs further inland, housing prices have spiked.
Inequality in Oakland has escalated as neighboring San Francisco lured tech companies with major tax breaks and became too expensive a place to live – even for tech workers. Oakland neighborhoods, many of them just a short drive or train ride away, became an affordable alternative for San Francisco residents fleeing the city’s price tag.
Oakland experienced some of the most rapid rent increases in the US. The area’s monthly median rent for a one-bedroom has risen to more than $2,300, requiring workers to earn $50 an hour to stay afloat. Last year, US federal housing officials classified a six-figure salary as low-income in the region. When Oakland recently opened the doors to a new affordable housing development, 4,000 people competed for just 28 spots. More than 2,700 people in the city are estimated to be homeless.
The price hikes have already changed the character of many of the city’s neighborhoods. Forty years ago, nearly half of Oakland’s population was African American. The city was the birthplace of the Black Panther movement and home to a bustling “Harlem of the West” corridor. Now, black residents are on pace to make up just 16% of the population.
In the traditionally black neighborhood of West Oakland, historic Victorian houses would sell for $25,000 20years ago. Now, some go on the market for more than $1m, noted James Vann, a longtime tenant advocate.
“There’s no way to stop this,” he said.
“I’m saddened that we’re allowing the landscape of Oakland to change,” added EmilyRose Johns, an Oakland-based housing rights attorney. “We saw what happened in San Francisco, and it can and will happen here.”
Square’s ‘worrying’ record on homelessness
Exacerbating advocates’ fears is the history of Square’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, when it comes to the Bay Area’s housing crisis. Dorsey has made his position on homelessness and social services known: his companies should not have to pay.
Last year, Dorsey publicly opposed Proposition C, a tax on high-earning businesses that would redirect millions of dollars to help people living on the streets of San Francisco, including those languishing in the footprint of Twitter’s HQ. Square donated $25,000 to the campaign opposing the homeless funding, and Dorsey personally contributed $75,000.
Twitter has saved millions benefiting from city tax breaks, but Dorsey felt Prop C would unfairly affect Square and other financial tech companies. Dorsey supported “addressing homelessness long-term in a scalable way, with accountability” he said, not through Prop C.
A Square spokesperson declined to comment on its advocacy against Prop C, and referred to Dorsey’s comments last year.
Shanti Singh, a tenant organizer and former tech worker, said that not funding “harmful policies” was the bare minimum a company could do to be a decent neighbor, and that Square had already failed.
Zamora, the Causa Justa organizer, said it was troubling that the company set to transform Oakland had a documented record of opposing a tax that would help those most in need: “I’m really worried. They need to do better … Square is going to make Oakland great for a few people, but not for everybody.”
A tug-of-war
Residents who are already struggling to survive fear the incoming tech workers and other newcomers are going to make their already dire situation worse. In the neighborhoods surrounding Square’s new home, hundreds of people are living in street encampments and cars – many of them locals who lost homes through evictions and unaffordable rent increases.
“It’s a tug-of-war between those who live out here and those who don’t,” said Nicole Burns, a 35-year-old homeless woman, who lives out of an RV at an encampment site by a park a few miles from the new Square building. “There’s a line drawn. We’re on one side and they’re on the other.”
Burns, who grew up in Oakland not far from the park where she is currently sleeping, became homeless after losing a not-for-profit job and going through a divorce. Living out of a vehicle with her dog and fiancee is the only option that works for her right now – and one of the hardest parts is dealing with officials trying to move her along. Often, she said, citizen complaints seem to drive this pressure.
“The situation is hard enough with the daily struggles of trying to live this way,” she said. “Anyone who is in a position to uplift the situation or provide some kind of relief is trying to push us out, or put us under this umbrella of being dirty and bad.”
Last December, when the city moved to clear the homeless from the area, Burns said a cleanup crew ended up tossing many of her belongings, including Christmas presents she had bought for family: “They look at it as junk and crap. But it’s everything we have.”
Oakland has already been the site of internationally viral stories about people unjustly calling authorities on longtime residents, most famously the woman known as “BBQ Becky” who complained to police about a group of black Oaklanders barbecuing in a park. In 2015, a white man called police on a drum circle.
“People don’t even bother to try to fit into the present culture,” said Vann, noting that new developments in West Oakland are often gated and uninviting.
“People call all the time to report everything just to get it out of their view, to get it out of their way,” said Johns, the local attorney, who is currently representing Burns in a lawsuit against the city trying to stop authorities from forcing the homeless out of the park.
“They’re evicting us from point A to point B,” said Burns. “How is this helping anybody?”
‘More tech firms are coming’
There are ways Square could try to partially mitigate the company’s role in widening inequality in Oakland, and community activists say it’s important to establish a precedent with Square given that it’s likely that other companies will follow.
Since its Oakland deal, Square has established a formal contract with the TechEquity Collaborative, a group that formed in the wake of Uber’s initial plans to take over the Sears building four years ago. TechEquity leaders said they were working with Square on workforce development efforts to encourage local hiring and finding ways to get the company to support small businesses and arts and culture.
“Square has been showing a willingness to have conversations,” said Catherine Bracy, TechEquity co-founder, adding that her organization would have an announcement in the coming weeks about specific commitments and plans . “I’m cautiously optimistic.”
But providing substantial financial support to the community should only be a starting point, activists say. “A community benefits agreement is step zero,” said Singh, the tenant organizer.
Some critics said they want to see Square actively lobby for housing policies that help protect the people most likely to be displaced from their homes – laws that expand rent control and close loopholes landlords exploit to remove longtime tenants.
Square declined to offer details about specific benefits it plans to provide to Oakland. A representative said a significant number of its employees already live in the East Bay, but did not provide numbers.
“For the last several months we’ve been in conversation with a wide range of local community groups to identify ways that we can collaborate and be good neighbors. Incorporating all the feedback we’ve received, we’re in the process of developing plans to hire locally and provide support to Oakland-based entrepreneurs and small businesses,” the representative said in an email, adding that residents who want to reach out to the company can email squareoaklandupdates@squareup.com.
Without stronger protections, people such as Maria Espinoza will pay the price. If she loses the battle with her landlord, Espinoza said, she would probably have to move into one of her children’s homes. When she got her first notice from the owner, she used a whole tank of gas driving around Oakland looking at available apartments. None were affordable.
Espinoza said the threats from the new landlord already scared one family in her building into moving out. But Espinoza is determined to keep fighting.
“We actually do have rights,” she said. “We shouldn’t just shut up and be fearful.”
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