Billionaires to celebrate the displacement of Oakland's poor public housing tenants

Billionaires to celebrate the displacement of Oakland's poor public housing tenants

By Lynda Carson -- May 15, 2012

Oakland -- On Wednesday May 16, billionaire's Stephen M. Ross and Jorge M. Perez, of the Related Companies of California, will be holding an event with their partners from the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC), and the Oakland Housing Authority (OHA), to celebrate the completion of phase 4 of their housing project, known as Lion Creek Crossings.

The celebration of a project that demolished and privatized Oakland's former Coliseum Gardens, 178 public housing units, built in 1964. A gentrification project that displaced 178 poor mostly black public housing families, in the process.

Lion Creek Crossings is the direct result of the notorious Weed and Seed Program that targets mostly black low-income families for displacement from their communities in East Oakland, after Oakland officials decided to integrate the Weed and Seed Program with the Oakland Renewal and Empowerment Project. Click here: http://tinyurl.com/8xd4g76

The event to celebrate the privatization and loss of Oakland's public housing to some out of state billionaires and EBALDC is akin to celebrating ethnic cleansing, and is to occur in the park near the corner of 69th Avenue and Snell Street, across the street from 6818 Lion Way.

The event is expected to include Bill Witte, Related California President, Councilmember's Larry Reed and Desley Brooks, Mayor Jean Quan, Eric Johnson of the Oakland Housing Authority, Jeremy Liu of the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, Ophelia Basgal of HUD, Robert Rayburn of BART, Gabe Speyer of Bank of America, and Wendy Jackson of the East Oakland Community Project.

According to the press release from Related, it appears that none of the 178 poor public housing families that were originally displaced by the project that demolished their long-time public housing units, have been invited to be guest speakers at the billionaires event, being organized by the Related Companies of California, and EBALDC.

Local reporters are being urged to ask, "What happened to the 178 poor mostly black Coliseum Gardens public housing families, that were originally displaced by the Lion Creek Crossings project? How did the 178 displaced public housing families benefit from this project?"

Currently, billionaire's Stephen M. Ross and Jorge M. Perez of the Related Companies, are also involved in a nortorious project to take-over and privatize Berkeley's 75 public housing town-homes. A project expected to displace all of Berkeley's long-time mostly black public housing families, from their housing.

Jorge M. Perez, is known as the billionaire "Condo King" of Miami, Florida, because he has developed and owns so many condominiums in that region, through The Related Companies/Related Group. He is also known as a billionaire Cuban American real estate developer.

Perez is also the majority owner of The Related Companies, which is also the parent company of The Related Companies of California, LLC, another wealthy housing development corporation.

With political connections directly to the White House, Perez a co-founder of The Related Companies has been a major political fundraiser for President Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and was an advisor to ex-President Bill Clinton during his term in office.

In 2010, it was reported that Perez owned 75% of The Related Companies, and that billionaire Stephen M. Ross a 95% owner of the Miami Dolphins football franchise, owned 25% of the billion dollar development company.


Displacing Oakland's Poor Public Housing Families


Between 2006 and 1994, Oakland city officials and the Federal Government targeted Oakland's poor with nearly $84 million in federal funding through the Hope VI Program, to demolish and privatize Oakland's public housing units, in the effort to displace Oakland's poor low-income black communities.

It was all part of a plan to get back at and remove the East Oakland communities that supported Oakland's drug-lord Felix Mitchell, who also generously operated a children's breakfast program and provided small subsidies to elderly people and families having hard times in East Oakland, before he was killed in prison during the mid 1980s.

Phase 1 of the Lion Creek Crossings 22 acre mixed income housing project to demolish public housing and displace Oakland's poor, was completed during June of 2006, with phase 4 expected to be completed by December of 2011.

The Lion Creek Crossings project to demolish the Coliseum Gardens Public Housing Complex is the result of the notorious Weed and Seed program which targeted mostly low-income black public housing communities in Oakland, by city officials, the federal government, and their willing partners in the project including EBALDC, and Related.

With funding mostly from HUD's Hope VI Program, during the mid 1990s the Lockwood-Coliseum Gardens area of East Oakland became the target area of the Weed and Seed program, and the public housing tenants were targeted for displacement from the community.

Once the Oakland Housing Authority and the Mayor's Office received notification from HUD that the Oakland Renewal and Empowerment Project had been selected to receive a $25.5 million Hope VI grant, the poor black communities of East Oakland were targeted for displacement, plans to demolish the Lockwood/Coliseum public housing units were soon underway, and EBALDC joined forces with the out of state billionaires of the Related Companies of California, to make a fortune from their displacement project known as Lion Creek Crossings.

During 2006, six months after phase 1 was completed at Lion Creek Crossings, Twima Early of the Related Companies of California stated that out of the 178 poor public housing families that were displaced by the project, only four families managed to move back in. Twima Early also stated that the Oakland Housing Authority sent them a list of only 13 families that were eligible to move in at Lion Creek Crossings once completed, out of the 178 families that were originally displaced.

Celebration of phase 4, on May 16 -- Phase 4 of Lion Creek Crossings total project cost for 72 units was around $35,569,697, or per unit cost it was $494,024, or put another way, it cost around $340 a square foot to build.

Most of the 72 rental units are being rented out at between $826 per month, to $1,060 per month, costing way more than many poor people on a fixed income can possibly afford.

In Alameda County, the maximum cash grant allowable for low-income tenants on welfare per month (General Assistance) is only $336.00, or annually that would amount to only $4,032 per year.

Other low-income tenants on disability (SSI) only receive $830 a month in payments due to California's state budget cuts, amounting to a small income of only $9,960 per year to live on.

Additionally as another example of low-income tenants, in 2008 the average Social Security payment was only $1,015 for retirees in California, amounting to only $12,180 per year to exist on.

It's expected that when all 5 phases of Lion Creek Crossings are complete that the project will have used a total of $34.5 million in Hope VI funds to leverage more than $223 million in total debt and equity, to displace the original 178 low-income mostly black families from their Coliseum Garden's Public Housing Complex.

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