Why we fight for housing justice

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. 

Black Oaklanders are 24% of Oakland’s population but represent 70% of Oakland’s unhoused.

Source: City of Oakland 2019 Homeless Census & Survey

“The 2018 City of Oakland Budget Priorities Survey found that 75% of respondents considered homelessness or housing one of the top two issues they wanted the City to address in the
2019–2021 budget.”

—City of Oakland Budget Priorities Survey

Barbara Parker, Oakland City Attorney

City Attorney Parker is the elected City Attorney of Oakland, CA. In an award-winning legal career spanning more than four decades, City Attorney Parker has developed extensive expertise as an attorney at all levels of government—federal, state and local—including more than 10 years as Chief Assistant of the Oakland City Attorney’s Office and more than five years as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of California. She is the recipient of the 2015 Public Lawyer of the Year award from the State Bar of California. In July 2011, the Oakland City Council appointed Parker to complete the term of the prior City Attorney, and in November 2012, Oakland voters overwhelmingly elected her to serve her first full four-year term. Voters elected Parker to a second four-year term in November 2016. She ran unopposed.

City Attorney Parker has worked to secure equal opportunity and justice for all Oaklanders.

City Attorney Parker is the first and only African American woman elected to citywide office in Oakland. Learn more about City Attorney Parker’s background here.

Education

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
B.S. Economics, 1971

HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
Juris Doctor, 1974

Maria Bee, Chief Assistant City Attorney

Maria Bee is head of the City Attorney's Affirmative Litigation, Innovation & Enforcement Division and a member of the office's Executive Team. She has more than twenty years of experience in the legal community, both as a practicing attorney and a fighter for justice for vulnerable populations. Ms. Bee has 25 years of experience in the legal community, both as a practicing attorney and as a fighter for justice for the most vulnerable populations. Ms. Bee first worked in the City Attorney's Office from 2000 to 2006 as a Deputy City Attorney prosecuting civil hate crimes lawsuits and handling various litigation matters including dangerous conditions of public property, breach of contract and alleged constitutional violations. Learn more about Maria Bee’s background here.

Education

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
BERKELEY SCHOOL OF LAW
Juris Doctor

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
B.A. French History