Last week, Uber announced that it purchased the boarded-up former Sears building in Oakland’s Uptown. Immediately following this announcement came a torrent of ominous Tweets predicting that the tech company’s arrival would have dire consequences for the people who make up the less tangible aspects of the city’s soul:
“hide me while oakland rents skyrocket like WHOA” —@leechrissyd
“… really sucky for a lot of people” —@gwachob
“RIP Oakland” —@susie_c
Generally speaking, the fear is that Uber—like a ship full of ride-sharing pilgrims sailing across the bay—will bring with it the same diseases of displacement and gentrification that have so gutted San Francisco. The fear is understandable (gentrification aside, if one were to imagine the tech community as one big, hyperconnected high school, Uber would be the tall, symmetrically featured, misogynistic douchebag who represents the antithesis of everything that makes Oakland, Oakland).But I think that that fear is ultimately misguided. Or at least the energy behind it could be better spent. If, in two years, an even larger percentage of the people and families who’ve cultivated Oakland’s ethos are at risk of being forced out of their homes—and being replaced by zip-ups and luxury condos—it will not be Uber that is to blame. Rather, it will be mayor Libby Schaaf and the City of Oakland itself.
The truth is, Oakland has been feeling the more negative effects of gentrification for a long time—way before Uber announced it was coming to town. From November 2013 to November 2014, rent prices for new listings in the city jumped by 9.1 percent, giving Oakland the highest rent growth in the country. (For context, San Francisco rents increased by 7.4 percent.) Over the past decade, Oakland’s African American population has declined by 24 percent. Families have been hit hard too—particularly those in the flatlands. Between 2000 and 2010, the Oakland Unified School District lost more than 10,000 students (meaning that families with children can no longer afford to be in the area), and home ownership in East Oakland declined by more than 25%.
The situation is so serious that earlier this year, the city released the 107-page A Roadmap toward Equity, in which the potential perils of allowing these trends to continue are outlined in detail. The language mirrors the tone of the Tweets:
“Facing a rising loss of families with children and a dramatic loss of African American households, Oakland risks following in San Francisco’s footsteps and losing the intergenerational treasures of our community.”
It’s safe to say that Uber has had nothing to do with any of this. It’s not because of Uber, for instance, that from 2007 to 2014, Oakland’s housing production met only 25 percent of its Regional Need Housing Allocation (RHNA) production goals.
This isn’t to say that Uber’s arrival won’t have an impact. It will. As will the arrival of the tech companies likely to follow in its surge-priced path. But whether or not that impact betters only a segment of the city or all of it is, ultimately, up to the city. Which brings us to consider the potential for Uber to genuinely improve Oakland.
I’m writing this from inside the Tierra Mia Coffee cafe, across the street from the giant dead tooth that is the Sears building. A massive gray block that’s the color of dirty dishwater, the building gives off the vibe of a tombstone on steroids. The rest of the surrounding area doesn’t look much nicer. Almost each of the neighboring storefronts on both Telegraph and Broadway has either wooden boards or black tarps covering the windows. The area needs revitalizing.
It isn’t difficult to imagine revitalization happening once Uber moves in. In fact, it’s pretty much certain that it will happen. New businesses, shops and restaurants will create jobs and—hopefully—bolster community spirit. In Uptown Station itself, Newberry Market & Deli has already committed to taking over 20,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.
Uber’s presence should also ignite calls for more altruistic behavior. We’ve seen the positive impact that companies led by thoughtful leaders, like Marc Benioff of Salesforce (who, since 2010, has donated more than $200 million to the recently renamed UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital), can have on the communities they call home. There’s no guarantee that Uber will invest in the people of Oakland so heavily, but with a $50 billion valuation, and with the eyes of the entire Bay Area upon them, it’s certainly possible. Also possible is Uber partnering with local organizations like Black Girls Code and Hack the Hood to prepare and equip local residents with the skills needed to compete for the high-paying tech jobs that will soon be much more widely available in the East Bay.
None of this matters, however—not for reasonably anxious longtime residents, at least—unless Oakland learns from San Francisco’s mistakes and prioritizes the preservation of its people and culture so that everyone can benefit from Uber’s arrival.
The good news is, it can.
In its Roadmap, the city fleshes out nine strategies it can reasonably take to stop and prevent future displacement, including the following: 1) the creation of policies that will stop bad-faith evictions and adjust tenant-relocation requirements; and 2) the passing of initiatives aimed at preventing and reducing homelessness, such as assembly speaker Toni Atkins’s recently proposed plan to add $500 million annually to the California Housing Trust Fund. Additionally, Oakland actually does have the resources and opportunity sites to build the critical housing needed for people of all income levels, partially because Oakland possesses none of San Francisco’s exclusionary housing policies, which have made it impossible for San Francisco to meet its housing demands.
It’s important that Oakland figures out a way to act and utilize its resources; at stake here is the idea that a city can improve and grow and benefit from something like the arrival of an Uber in ways that don’t disregard any community members or components of it. Albrey Brown, a native Oaklander and the founder of Telegraph Academy, recently said in an article published on TechCrunch, “This is a very big chance for us to step up to the plate for everything we’ve been talking about … about creating a different kind of tech scene in Oakland. We could make a blueprint for all the other cities that want to keep themselves more socioeconomically diverse.”
But again, this is up to Oakland—not Uber. Uber’s moving to Oakland can and should be a very good thing for the city—the Town.
At this point, it seems to me that Oakland should view gentrification—or rather the impending proliferation of tech within its city limits—as something of an accelerated iteration of global warming. Whether or not it’s happening or will happen is not the question. The question is, what will the city ultimately do about it? Those nine strategies outlined in the city’s Roadmap to Equity? Those don’t mean a thing if Mayor Schaaf and the City of Oakland don’t follow through on the commitment to ensuring that all of Oakland benefits from the increased prosperity that’s likely to come to Broadway Avenue in 2017.
Here’s to hoping they do.