Improving Oakland Neighborhoods, One House at a Time

KCBS News (February 22, 2010)

OAKLAND, Calif. (KCBS) -- An Oakland community group is working erase blight in neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosures, and they began the process today.

The Oakland Community Land Trust was established in April, 2009 and given $5 million in seed money to start buying homes, fixing them up, and selling them to low and moderate income people.

"We are working as a community, not as separate entities, to rebuild our community, to reintegrate the idea that this is where you live, and is this what you really want to see, or is there something else you want to see? That's just revitalizing the whole area," she said.

Williams told KCBS something needed to be done, to keep the neighborhoods from a downward spiral.

"Houses like this were being taken over by drug dealers and prostitutes, and it was destroying our neighborhoods," she said. "My passion for this is that we can revitalize our area by possessing the houses in our community and keeping it affordable, so they won't wall into the same trap."

The first house undergoing renovation is at 80th and Olive in East Oakland. The house had been foreclosed on, the owners no longer live there, and the yard is now overgrown with weeds and overrun with trash.

The Trust hopes to renovate 100 to 200 homes over the course of the project.