Oakland's Tassafaronga Hope VI Proposal
Threatens The Poor

Oakland To Give Up Low-Income Housing In The
Name Of Mixed Use Affordable Housing!

City Spends Millions On Scheme To Privatize
It's Public Housing And Displace The Poor!

LYNDA CARSON / Mindfully.org 3jun2007

Oakland — During a recent March 2007, Oakland Housing Authority (OHA) board meeting, OHA's Phil Neville announced that the OHA intends to file another Hope VI application, in an effort to demolish the Tassafaronga Village low-income public housing units, despite having already being turned down twice by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the project.

As of March 2006, the City of Oakland has already awarded $3 million from its annual affordable housing NOFA process to the OHA towards the process to demolish the low-income public housing units, and to displace it's public housing tenants from Tassafaronga Village. An additional $1.8 million has been awarded to the OHA's partner, East Bay Habitat for Humanity for the proposed Hope VI project.

The Hope VI program is the nations most notorious housing demolition program that intentionally displaces low-income communities, and replaces them with higher income communities.

On national average, less that 12% of the tenants being displaced by a Hope VI program ever manage to move into the newly rebuilt Hope VI housing community.

Since 1994, Oakland officials and the Federal Government have targeted Oakland's poor with nearly $84 million in federal funding through the Hope VI program, in an effort to displace the low-income communities from such housing projects known as Lockwood Gardens, Chestnut Court, Westwood Gardens, and the Coliseum Gardens. The above mentioned funds do not include all the other funding sources that have been used to dump the poor from their public housing units, in the name of the Hope VI program.

Recently, Oakland's Coliseum Gardens public housing property was turned into a Hope VI project, now known as Lion Creek Crossings, and out of the 178 families that were displaced, only 4 families managed to move back into the new mixed use housing project.

When public housing tenants have been told that a Hope VI project is meant to enhance their lives, past experience has shown that the developers always make out like fat rats, while those being displaced do not benefit at all, and some even become homeless as a result.

Activist's across the nation are urging public housing tenants to put up a fight, and demand the right of return, so that they too may benefit from the so-called promises of a Hope VI project.

Tassafaronga Village is located at 929 - 85th Avenue and is one of the OHA's twelve largest public housing sites, in the City of Oakland.

The OHA plans to demolish the existing 87 units of low-income housing at Tassafaronga Village, even though there already exists a huge crisis surrounding the lack of low-income housing in Oakland.

In replacement of the low-income housing units, 191 units of mixed use housing are being proposed as a means to displace the current 87 low-income families of Tassafaronga.

The 87 low-income housing units are being proposed to be displaced by 77 rental townhomes, 22 home ownership affordable townhomes, 60 rental apartments, and 32 rental lofts.

Further exasperating Oakland's low-income housing crisis, funding that could have been used to assist low-income renters of Oakland, have instead been diverted to the Tassafaronga project. Documents show that $3.5 million in local Section 8 funding reserves, have been made available to fund the architectural and engineering services involved in the Tassafaronga venture. ( See, http://tinyurl.com/33mntz )

As working partners involved in the scheme to displace Oakland's poor from Tassafaronga Village, the OHA is partnered on the project with Habitat for Humanity which plans to build 22 homes after the poor are displaced by their project. (See, Habitat for Humanity; Oakland, Tassafaronga, 85th Avenue - 22 Homes http://www.habitateb.org/where_we_build/ )

Oakland is set on spending additional millions in the scheme to privatize the Tassafaronga Village public housing units, and during 2006 Habitat for Humanity even submitted an application to the City of Oakland CEDA requesting $1,868,000 for this displacement scheme. ( Click on link for details http://tinyurl.com/22f7sc )

Further details of the land grab scheme, reveals that Habitat for Humanity was to be charged only 1$ (ONE DOLLAR), for their piece of the action in this land grab from the poor.

According to a January 31, 2006 OHA Memorandum; [[[OHA would transfer approximately .875 of an acre of the Tassafaronga Development Site to Habitat for $1.00 (the Homeownership Parcel). In exchange, Habitat will: develop and build 22 affordable homeownership units (two accessible units) for families making between 40-100% of Area Median Income on the Homeownership Parcel(s);

• contribute $1.1 million from the following sources: Habitat’s Fund for Humanity (mortgage revenues from previously completed homes), donated materials, donations from corporations, individuals and foundations, support services by staff and volunteers to select and prepare families to participate in Habitat’s Homeownership Program as “Partner Families”.]]]

In addition, the architect firm caught up into this displacement scheme, is known as David Baker and Partners, and the following link provides more information for the proposal meant to displace the poor from Tassafaronga Village. http://www.dbarchitect.com/work/ontheboards/www-20517/20517.html 

For a look at who may be displaced from the Tassafaronga Village, a recent 2006 public housing tenant profile sheds some light on the subject.

During FY 2006, according to the OHA, the head of house holds in Oakland's public housing units included the following; White 159, Black 2,221, Native American 5, Asian 428, Pacific Islanders 0.

Federal cutbacks to Oakland's public housing program have caused a back log of repairs to be made to their public housing units, and as recent as February 15, 2007 the City of Oakland sued the OHA and accused it of being a slumlord.

As a further result of the funding cuts to Oakland's public housing, Oakland's Section 8 housing voucher program is being looted on a regular basis to provide funds to Oakland's public housing program, according to OHA documents.

According to OHA 2006 documents; ( See, http://tinyurl.com/3dzzc2  ) [[[As the Authority’s housing stock continues to age (the scattered sites were all built between 1968 and 1973, the larger sites even earlier), and more and more maintenance is deferred, residents are forced to live in less appealing conditions. Thus while the city of Oakland has enjoyed a surge in residential development, renovation and private investment, the public housing stock lags behind, creating an increasingly apparent discrepancy.

OHA has responded to this situation by regularly spending Section 8 reserves on the Public Housing program. ]]]

Oakland's Public Housing Problems

As of 2007, OHA documents reveal that the authority owns and operates 3,308 units of Conventional Public Housing within Oakland's city limits.

However, records also show that only 2,813 units were actually occupied during FY 2006, leaving 495 units vacant that year.

In addition a deeper look reveals that out of the 3,308 public housing units in Oakland, 307 units have been privatized, and are operated by private management under Hope VI funding. As an example, Coliseum Gardens tenants (Now Called Lion Creek Crossings), send their monthly rent checks to a firm owned by a billionaire in New York City.

Furthermore, funding cuts to Oakland's public housing program are further aggravated by the lack of collection of rents that are owed at many of their properties in Oakland.

Reports show that during the beginning of FY 2006, 3.5 percent of rents owed to the OHA were going uncollected, according to OHA documents.

For more on how millions are spent to privatize Oakland's public housing and other Hope VI projects in Oakland, click onto the links to the two articles below...

• Hope VI Project Double-Crosses Oakland Renters
• Oakland renters displaced by Hope VI program
  Lynda Carson October 25, 2006

Lynda Carson may be reached at; tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com