REVISED: Tassafaronga Hope Vl Proposal Threatens Oakland's Poor : Indybay

Tassafaronga Hope Vl Proposal Threatens Oakland's Poor

By Lynda Carson

June 5, 2007

Oakland -- During a recent March 28, Oakland Housing Authority (OHA) board meeting, OHA's Phil Neville announced that the OHA intends to file another Hope VI application, for the 87 unit Tassafaronga Village public housing complex, despite being turned down twice already by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in recent years.

The Hope Vl program is the nations most notorious housing demolition program that intentionally displaces low-income communities, as a way to replace them with higher income communities. If the Tassafaronga Hope Vl application is granted, 87 families will face eviction from their East Oakland low-income housing.

Tassafaronga Village is located at 929 - 85th Avenue and is one of the OHA's twelve largest public housing sites. The OHA wants to demolish the existing 87 units of low-income housing, and replace them with 191 units of mixed use housing, which includes 77 rental townhomes, 22 home ownership affordable townhomes, 60 rental apartments, and 32 rental lofts.

According to Ann Clegg from the OHA's executive office, "We still have families residing at Tassafaronga Village, though I can't exactly say how many are still residing there, and I believe that the Hope Vl application has been filed already."

During March 2006, the City of Oakland awarded $3 million from its annual affordable housing NOFA process to the OHA to be used for the termination of Tassafaronga Village, and an additional $1.8 million has been awarded to the OHA's partner, East Bay Habitat for Humanity for the proposed Hope Vl project.

Documents dated as recent February 13, 2007 reveal that an additional $3.5 million in local Section 8 reserves, have been made available to fund the architectural and engineering services involved in the Tassafaronga Hope Vl venture.

Currently theres enough documentation existing to reveal that the OHA has turned it's local Section 8 reserve fund, and it's local Section 8 administrative reserve fund into a huge slush fund thats being used to finance Oakland's privatized Hope Vl projects.

On Feb. 24, 2003, at the request of OHA's Executive Director Jon Gresley, OHA's board members authorized the use of $2,254,000 in local Section 8 reserves to purchase property for the Coliseum Gardens Hope Vl project. In addition, during that same meeting the board also authorized the use of $7,000,000 in local Section 8 administrative reserve funds to be committed to the Coliseum Gardens HOPE VI project.

According to OHA's own documants, during FY 2006 the year began with 11,324 (98.9 percent) of authorized Section 8 vouchers in use, while the year ended with only 10,699 (93.4 percent) of authorized vouchers in use.

This means that 615 authorized Section 8 vouchers have not been in use recently in Oakland, and other documentation shows that the Section 8 funding reserves (from unused vouchers) are being siphoned off for other purposes than what was originally intended.

Section 8 tenant Corrine James of Oakland is shocked to learn that local Section 8 reserves are being used for a project that intends to displace the 87 families from Tassafaronga Village. "It's really sick that someone would use funds that were originally meant to house poor people, for a project that intends to displace poor people and demolish their housing. This is flat out wrong, and must be stopped," she said.

Since 1994, Oakland officials and the Federal Government have targeted Oakland's poor with nearly $84 million in federal funding through the Hope Vl 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 Vl program.

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

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 Vl project.

As working partners involved in the scheme to displace Oakland's poor from Tassafaronga Village, the OHA is partnered on the project with East Bay Habitat for Humanity which plans to build 22 homes after the poor are displaced by their project.

Further documentation for the project, reveals that Habitat for Humanity is to be charged only 1$ (ONE DOLLAR), for their piece of the action (.875 of an acre) in this land grab from the poor, and they have already been awarded more than $1.8 million by the City of Oakland to participate in this dubious venture.

The architectectural firm hired to design the proposed Hope Vl project at Tassafaronga, is called David Baker and Partners, who had little to say when asked what will happen to the 87 families being displaced by the project if it goes through. "We do not know what will happen to the families at Tassafaronga, and we do not have that kind of information," said Sherry Shannon.

For a look at who may be displaced from 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 accussed it of being a slumlord.

As a further result of the funding cuts to Oakland's public housing program, documentation shows that the local Section 8 reserves are also being looted on a regular basis to provide funds to Oakland's public housing program.

According to OHA FY 2006 documents;
[[[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 Vl 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.

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