By Brian Anderson
Valley Times

April 22, 2001

OAKLAND -- As the birthplace of the Black Panthers, flashpoint for national debates over Ebonics and home to a tradition of black politicians, Oakland has long held a reputation as one of the country's leading black cities.

But blacks are leaving their socially and politically powerful epicenter here for the first time since the U.S. Census began tallying Oakland's population data in 1860.

More than 13,000 people who identified themselves as all or part black have left the East Bay's largest city since 1990, according to the 2000 census; an even more dramatic loss of 20,875, or 12 percent, occurred in the past decade among those identifying themselves only as black.

Magnifying the trend is the plummeting percentage of the group's slice of the overall population pie, which has declined since 1980 when 46.9 percent of Oaklanders identified themselves as black. Now, little more than a third of the city's residents consider themselves part of that group, figures showed.

While the black community shrank, the city's total population increased more than 7 percent to 399,484 residents in the past 10 years.

"This is a trend where the underclass and the working-class people are being driven out of this community because of the high cost of living," said David Hilliard, a former Black Panther who operates the Huey P. Newton foundation in Oakland. "Gentrification has become the No. 1 problem not only in Oakland but in most other cities in America."

The concern is one community activists and advocates for the poor have rallied around as Oakland's previously punished economy has taken flight. The city's relatively inexpensive houses and apartments have been beacons to financially weary Bay Area residents priced out of San Francisco and the Silicon Valley.

But while new residents helped lift the veil of Oakland's depressed economy, they also blew the lid off the local housing market, real estate figures showed.

By January, the median home price in Oakland had jumped to $216,500, up 27 percent from the same month last year, according to the California Association of Realtors.

Moreover, apartment costs in Oakland, a city where 60 percent of the population rents, leaped by as much as 25 percent in the past year, according to market watchers.

"Affordability is a real issue," said Denise Smith, an Oakland Realtor who operates a real estate show on Soulbeat, an Oakland-based cable network geared toward blacks. "We're in a crisis right now. People just can't afford these high rents and high mortgages that they have to pay right now."

The escalating market has led some black homeowners to cash in on the good times. Like some of their white counterparts, black Oaklanders are selling their homes for hefty profits and moving east into the suburbs where new housing developments feature big yards, better schools and are more quiet than the city.

Lifelong Oakland resident Janice Henry, 54, is selling her three-bedroom East Oakland house and moving into something that better suits her two growing daughters.

She hopes to at least double the roughly $65,000 she paid for her house in the mid-1980s and find a new, five-bedroom house in Manteca, Tracy, Brentwood or possibly Antioch.

"I could buy in Oakland but I'd be buying a house that was probably 15 or 20 years old, it probably wouldn't have very much land and I would probably end up spending as much or even more than on a house that isn't even built," said Henry, who is black. "And Oakland schools are so poor."

Schools are a big concern for parents and Oakland's schools consistently rank in the doldrums. State statistics indicate more parents like Henry are pulling their students and packing up to head to more educationally successful areas.

But as blacks leave the district, which was more than 60 percent black not long ago, Latinos and Asians are quick to take their seats. The district that sparked the 1996 national Ebonics debate has lost about 13 percent of its black population since the late 1980s, state figures show. At the same time, the Latino student population more than doubled.

Though Oakland's black community has contracted, some community leaders note that for the first time in a long time blacks have been included in the economic boom.

Blacks are not destined for a life in decaying urban areas and are choosing to move further into suburbia as their prosperity rises, said Shannon Reeves, president of the NAACP's Oakland chapter.

"African-Americans are getting more education, are participating in employment in various industries in this market and they're exercising choices," said Reeves, who lives in East Oakland. "Blacks are now exercising new options."