That’s the headline in yesterday’s Chronicle. The neighborhood is the 94612 zip code, which includes most of downtown to 11th Street, up to 27th Street, and east to Lakeside Avenue. My own home and zip code, 94610, are just one block away.
The information presented in the analysis is stunning and scary. Residential rents have dropped so much in the area that “All you had to do to save $400 a month on a downtown Oakland apartment was wait.” Rents have plunged by hundreds of dollars a month; “in the past year alone, Oakland’s asking rents fell by 10%, by far the most of any of the 100 largest U.S. cities.”
We can debate the reasons for this historic drop in rents, but what is not debatable is the simple fact that people don’t want to live in Oakland. They consider it too dangerous and unpleasant. And who can blame them? The people who run our government, like Sheng Thao, are constantly telling us that Oakland suffers from a “perception” problem. Well, perception is reality. The dangers and dysfunction of this city are not perceptions but realities—which Thao and her City Council are unwilling to address, and have deliberately created.
Which gets us back to the drop in rents. I will tell you flat-out that a massive collapse of residential real estate values has always been the goal of the woke progressives who, unfortunately, have run this town for too long. They have a single constituency—poor people of color—and their single aim has been to drastically lower the cost of housing so that more poor people can afford to live in Oakland. The progressives have been unable to accomplish this legally, because the forces of gentrification (which always are at work in every American city) are too powerful to halt. Therefore, the City Council’s thinking has been along these lines: If we can make Oakland so dangerous and dirty, so undesirable that no one wants to live here, then rents will collapse on their own, and our poor people of color will be able to live here.”
As a strategy, it possesses a certain soundness. But how does the City Council make Oakland dirty and dangerous? Simple. Start by defunding the police. That will lead to more crime. Then hobble what’s left of the Police Department so they’re unable to arrest criminals. Then elect a District Attorney who will let criminals go free, if she even bothers to indict them in the first place. The end result: exactly what we have.
I guarantee you that Carroll Fife is celebrating this catastrophic rent plunge. This is the best news she’s had since her friend Pamela Price got elected. And Fife & Co. aren’t finished with their crusade to make Oakland even worse than it is now. Downtown rents may have crashed, but they’re still relatively expensive for people with no jobs, or low-paying jobs. Therefore, the demolition derby must continue. Like a knee on someone’s neck, Fife & Co. must keep up the pressure, until the victim stops breathing and dies. More crime, fewer cops, more encampments, more filth, more degradation, until Oakland ceases to be a city and becomes a steaming pile of rubble, despair and violence. Imagine downtown a year or two from now: a one-bedroom in, say, The Uptown building complex, which now rents for $1,920 a month, will have fallen to $700 a month. Repeat that through Downtown, Uptown, Temescal, Grand Lake, West Oakland, the Dimond District, and everyplace else where people rent. A total collapse of value, of tax dollars, of customers to support neighborhood shops. A total collapse of the vital signs that keep a city alive. Carroll Fife will love it.
Steve Heimoff