The Initiative leverages our resources and strengthens our partnership with other housing and legal advocates in Oakland. We strive to prevent the wrongful displacement of families over the next few years and enforce every Oaklander’s right to safe, healthy, and dignified housing.

Renters make up the majority of Oakland residents, yet one in every four Oakland households is housing insecure. Those households are forced to pay a high amount of their income to rent and endure poor conditions, overcrowding, or homelessness. Unscrupulous landlords take advantage of their tenants’ vulnerability by using harassment, unlawful evictions, failure to make necessary repairs, and other tactics to force them out.

While this crisis is felt by all Oakland tenants, it has hit low-income tenants and communities of color the hardest. People of color in Oakland disproportionately rent, are rent burdened, live in overcrowded conditions, are homeless, and receive eviction notices. African American residents are three times overrepresented among Oakland’s unhoused. Families, the elderly, disabled, and immigrants are especially vulnerable.

The diversity that sets Oakland apart is under existential threat because of this housing crisis.