City Government

Will Army Base Workers and Businesses Get a Helping Hand or the Axe?

Published

13 years ago

August 23, 2013

“Nobody knows what’s going to happen. The anxiety level is high. This is no way to run a business.”

This is the way Bill Aboudi of Oakland Maritime Support Services (OMSS) sums up how he and others are feeling as they await the fate of their jobs and businesses at the city’s old Army Base property.

On one hand, city staff is working feverishly to help them to move to an alternative site on city land at the North Gateway of the Army Base, located by the East Bay Municipal Utility District plant.

Assistant City Administrator Fred Blackwell and Councilmember Lynette McElhaney are working to make the move happen, as is the master developer of the base project, Phil Tagami of CCIG.

On the other hand, the workers and business people would not be surprised to be met in the next few weeks by sheriffs ready to throw them into the street.

The city already has sent out evictions notices to 18 small businesses and hundreds of independent truckers who are based at OMSS. They could be evicted by Alameda County Sheriffs by Sept. 3,when the city plans to clear the property to start its long awaited Army Base development project.

Officials involved in the project has failed to return repeated calls and emails from the Post asking about what they are doing to save the jobs and businesses.

Tagami’s office referred the Post’s questions to the city. Neither Mayor Jean Quan, Assistant City Administrator Blackwell nor the City Administrator’s Office returned requests for interviews.

“I continue to be positive that something will be worked out, “said McElhaney in an interview Thursday.

“In the past few months, we’ve started seeing trucks returning to West Oakland neighborhoods in part due to the uncertainly about what will happen to the Army Base,” she said.

With the increase of trucks on the streets, “We are seeing human excrement and public urination in the neighborhoods again,” said McElhaney.

The city is trying to find an alternative place for OMSS after Port officials and the Port Commission blocked the temporary move of OMSS to its land, despite an initial agreement worked out with the city, according to McElhaney.

The port claims that it has the capacity to provide all the truck parking and support services that are presently offered by OMSS.

What the port is doing is “absolutely leading to the harm of West Oakland residents,” McElhaney said. “City staff has told us there is no alternative to truck parking and the trucking services that OMSS provides.”

When the council member attempted to discuss the need to support OMSS before the Port Commission made a decision, commissioners did not return her calls, she said.

While the city is trying now to find a home for OMSS, it has ignored for many years the need to develop ways to support trucking and minimize the environmental impacts of the big rigs on which the port depends, according to the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP) and other community groups.

Only last month, the city finally agreed it will develop a plan to deal with the trucking, sometime in the next two years.

“The city and the port have not made arrangements to handle truck parking and trucking services. We can demonstrate that the city ‘s inaction, lack of planning, has caused trucks to move back into West Oakland,” said Brian Beveridge of WOEIP.

“It means that this project increases negative impacts on the community, which jeopardizes federal funding,” he said.

Dr. Randy Hicks hold up the 4 eviction notices he received.

Dr. Randy Hicks operates one of the small businesses at OMSS where for the past 10 years he has been running a clinic six days a week. His office does physicals and the drug and urine testing required of drivers by the federal Department of Transportation.

“We have received four different eviction notices since Monday,” said Hicks. “My employees are freaking out. They don’t know if they are going to have a job, if they need to start looking.”

He said he believes his practice is the only one that serves truckers in Oakland though there are a couple in Hayward. He says he does about 50 or 60 drug tests a week and the same number of physicals.

“The drivers can come here on their lunch breaks. They can just do their physicals and get back to work,” said Aboudi. In the past they used to go to a doctor’s office in Jack London Square, which would cause them to lose about a half day of work, he said.

“I ask the city, ‘What do I tell the people here at the base?’ They say, ‘Tell them they have to move,” Aboudi said.

“I ask them, ‘Where are they going to move?’ They say, ‘We’re working on that.’”

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Activism

Marin City Public Housing Residents Demand a Voice in County’s Renovation Plans

Representation has been a continuous struggle for the Residents Council, she said in an interview with the Post News Group. In 2014, the tenants took the county to federal court over this issue, and prevailed, resulting in an MOU that was in effect from 2014 to 2024, said McLemore. “Now, they are not responding to our rightful requests to participate. They are not giving us a legal justification for their position.”

Published

4 days ago

May 10, 2026

Oakland Post

The largest housing complex in Marin County, Golden Gate Village residents are for predominantly Black and low-income. Courtesy image.

Tenants say the County of Marin is ignoring federal law requiring resident council participation

By Ken Epstein

Marin City public housing residents say the County is illegally depriving them of their rights to participate in renovation decisions that affect the future of their housing, raising deep concerns over whether the county ultimately will find a way to displace them.

According to regulations established by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Marin City public housing residents have the right to organize, elect resident councils, and hold public housing agencies accountable for involving them in management decisions.

Without resident participation, the Board of Housing Commissioners, made up of the five Marin County Board of Supervisors and two resident comissioners, has approved a $226 million project. The plan calls for renovation of the 296 units in Golden Gate Village (GGV) and focuses on interior improvements. The project is scheduled to start in July.

Residents’ concerns have a long history, said Royce McLemore, president of the Golden Gate Village Residents Council and a 50-year resident of Marin City,

With no current MOU mandating training and participation of residents, the legal basis for all the redevelopment decisions made by the county since 2024 is questionable, said Terrie Green, executive director of Marin City Climate Resilience. “We are experiencing voicelessness. If residents had a voice, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” she said.

County decisions include a plan, in line with federal regulations, to convert GGV from public housing to a public-private enterprise that allows for private investment. The Marin Housing Authority has created a limited partnership that includes Burbank Housing – which will renovate the units and manage the property – and Wells Fargo Bank, the investor.

This change in federal policy regarding public housing, which includes a shift to a Section-8 voucher system, has resulted in gentrification across the country, particularly affecting African Americans in cities such as San Francisco.

Shifts in criteria of what is considered affordable could also end up pricing residents out of their living units. At present, low income in Marin County is officially considered $156,000. But the median household income in Marin City is significantly lower at $68,846.

Damian Morgan, a community advocate with Marin City Climate Resilience, questioned why the county is renovating apartments without fixing toxic infrastructure that is impacting the lives of people in GGV.

Morgan said tenants have filed a class action lawsuit because of unsafe conditions at Golden Gate Village.

Residents are also concerned that the County still does not have an adequate family plan for temporary displacement while their apartments are being renovated. Although the County has suggested other community apartments as alternatives, nothing concrete has developed except vacant public housing units that have the same toxic conditions, such as mold and mildew.

Green said it doesn’t make sense. “…Why are we moving people around into temporary housing that’s uninhabitable, when you should be dealing first with the infrastructure, the foundational work, replacing old and rusted water pipes and new sewers.”

Morgan questions the County’s motivation for neglecting infrastructure repairs. “They’re remodeling the units but leaving the decayed infrastructure in place. I feel like they’re just setting this up for it to fail.”

“What slowed it down a little is that GGV is a historic preservation district, but I think what they’re striving for is demolition by neglect,” he said. “The neglect has always been on their part.”

Architect Ora Hatheway said her concern is about cutting corners. “You have to deal with the land issues. You have to deal with grading and drainage, and that’s being brushed under the rug.”

In an interview with KGO TV, Marin County Supervisor Stephanie Moulton-Peters responded to some of these concerns. She said residents are guaranteed the right to return to their homes.

“This is a concern that we take seriously,” she said. “Every resident will move back into their own unit, and we’ve given this to them in writing. Before they leave their unit, we will sign a document together that guarantees their right to return.”

In response to residents who feel left out of the planning process, she said community input has focused on those affected by the first phase of the project. “So other residents may not have heard quite as much or felt like they had as much contact. But if there are residents who have concerns, we’re happy to hear from them. You can contact my office or the housing authority directly,” she said.

While County leaders may be giving some updates to some tenants, they are not sitting at the table with the Residents Council nor giving residents a voice in decision-making, said McLemore.

Without a voice in decisions, tenants are worried that Black people may be forced out of public housing, resulting in gentrification, she said in an interview with ABC 7. It’s still paternalistic, she said. “It’s still that ‘We know what’s best for you.’’’

Several years ago, the Residents Council proposed a land trust plan that would give tenants homeownership rights. Though the plan had broad support throughout the county, it was rejected by the Board of Supervisors

In the final analysis, Green said, for Marin City tenants the fight is not just for decent housing but to maintain their community with dignity under conditions of mutual respect.

“We’re talking about people who came here to work in the shipyards during World War II to bring about peace and safety to this country,” she said. “Look at the discrimination we’ve faced down through the years. Look at the life-span issue of Marin City folks – almost 20 years less than the rest of the County.”

“We want educational equity so our children will have decent schools. We need a land trust, property ownership, so we can have wealth creation. Marin City needs the same quality of life as other communities in Marin County.”