By Nino Parker, introduction by Zack Haber

Since Nov. 16, Black Oakland residents Nino Parker and Assata Olugbala have been protesting outside The Lakeview Village, a tiny home community sitting along East 12th Street near Lake Merritt that Oakland has been using to shelter homeless people. Parker and Olugbala call it a racially segregated community.

One portion of the community is made up of people who used to live in tents, self-made homes, and vehicles at Union Point Park. Before living in the park, many of these people were evicted from homes in Alameda. After protests and negotiations with Oakland in March 2021, these people were able to secure a degree of self-governance in exchange for them agreeing to move from Union Point Park to a portion of The Lakeview Village called a “co-governed encampment.” During the site’s setup, the City of Oakland rented out hotel rooms for them. While they currently live in the same small pallet shelters as others onsite, this crew is in the process of building additional infrastructure for themselves and provides some of their own security.

People living in the other portion of Lakeview Village don’t live in a “co-governed encampment” and aren’t allowed the same degree of self-governance. They can’t build their own infrastructure and don’t have access to some of the services that those who live in the “co-governed encampment” have. The following are Parker’s words edited for readability and brevity:

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My name is Nino Parker, homeless Black advocate, Bay Area. Recently, a lot of people have heard there’s been an issue at the Lakeview tiny homes. The problem is there are two neighboring communities, with a fence that separates them. One community is made of almost entirely of white people who used to live in Alameda. Of the 15 people that live there, only two are Black. That side got an advantage of having not only hotels that added up to $66,000 in bills, but they also got $350,000 in funding. On the other side of the fence, the community is mainly Black and mixed-race people from Oakland.

It’s unfair to take up spaces that should be for people at the lake and give them to folks from Alameda. I’ve called into City Council many times, and I’ve also addressed Mayor Schaaf on this issue. We can’t have the administration formulate pilot programs that separate whites and Blacks. It’s also important that we take a look and make sure that there’s equality when it comes to finances that are going to each side of this community.

What we need at this point, I think, is to take the fence down. That way we can work on a lot of the other issues in the near future here when it comes to allowing everyone access to whatever is in the tiny home community. If one portion has a kitchen, everyone should have access to a kitchen or any structures that are built there. We need to make sure that there’s equality in this program.

Our protest has been very hard. We’ve been here for over three months. The head of the LLC that had formerly been helping run the co-governed encampment assaulted me, which has damaged my hip, causing me great pain. One white resident has repeatedly stolen my signs. Some other residents, but not all of them, have verbally assaulted me and Assata. The city has stood by and done nothing. But we’re committed to make sure that this city is fair and equitable in its own services to Blacks and whites.

We don’t want programs separating two communities. That’s what this is about. I understand some of the young people here don’t understand what Jim Crow was. Jim Crow was when we had people, Black people, that sat on the back of the bus or sat in the balcony of the theater or had to go in the back door or the colored door. This reminds me of Jim Crow, but in this case it’s OakCrow.

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