Residents Resist Councilmember's
Social Program Invasion

Laurel Heights residents are not pleased with councilmember Jean Quan's scheme to take over land zoned residential and open a center for social programs appealing to "young men of (crime-plagued MacArthur) boulevard."

Crime in the Laurel commercial strip on MacArthur Blvd. from 35th Ave. to High Street has been high and increasing for several years. One of the first restaurant takeover robberies in Oakland hit a Chinese restaurant there. Assaults along the boulevard, robberies, and forcible burglaries of businesses are common. Like most of Oakland, the area needs a reversal of the de-policing of Oakland – the fifth most dangerous city in the country yet staffed with only half a police department.

Instead of addressing the public safety crisis, councilmember Jean Quan proposed a so-called Laurel Youth Center at 3915 Redding St. Quan's operation would:

• target males aged 16 to 25, contrary to the "youth center" name

• be open seven days a week

• serve meals

• offer a host of social programs, including legal advice on how to clear warrants
  (Quan staff person speaking at Allendale NCPC meeting, Jan. 21, 2009)

The land is zoned residential. A center at 3915 Redding St. would violate the strict boundary between the Laurel commercial strip and the residential neighborhoods immediately behind either side of MacArthur Blvd.

Would you like this operation to start in the home next to yours? Would councilmember Quan like it on the Braemar Street block in the Oakland hills where she lives?

Residents at a meeting asked a Quan staff person why programs were not added instead to existing operations at the nearby Allendale Recreation Center, the High St. Boys and Girls Club, and the Brookdale Recreation Center. The aide replied that the men who loiter on MacArthur Blvd. are not comfortable going a few blocks away! There are several vacant storefronts on MacArthur Blvd.

Quan does not want to build up existing social program centers. She arranged to use a residential lot owned by Cornerstone Missionary Baptist Church, which owns two more houses on Redding Street and eleven other parcels around east Oakland in addition to the land under its church. Do Quan and Cornerstone have an undisclosed agreement about program funding down the road?

The proposal is typical of politics-driven social programs in Oakland – fragmented (so a councilmember can add another donkey to her stable of patronage deals), lacking evidence of likely success at increasing public safety, and hatched with disdain for neighborhoods.

By Jan. 21 Quan's office had applied for operating grants, rushing to open the center at 3915 Redding St. in the next couple of months. She also moved to get a slice of Community Development funds in the 2009-10 budget starting July 1. Yet when neighbor Dennis Evanosky inquired by email to Quan's chief of staff Richard Cowan a few days later, he claimed the proposal was still in the "talking stages."

Cowan called the project a "teen center," to which Evanosky replied, "This is not going to be a teen center. It's going to be a hangout for the teens [and older men] who are now using MacArthur Boulevard as a hangout." Quan's chief of staff later conceded that the center targets "young men of the boulevard."

Program operators appealed for $100,000 from the district four Community Development Block Grant board at its Feb. 2, 2009 meeting. The presenters were contradictory about where the center would be located. At first they said it would be at 5319 Fairfax Ave. because a "previous facility" lacks the necessary conditional use permits. Later, when someone pointed out that Fairfax was not near the targeted males along the Laurel shopping strip, they said they were looking for a closer location.

It appears that Quan is promoting confusion on this point while she figures out whether she can ram a deal through in the face of growing opposition from neighbors. They oppose violation of the residential zoning – by City Hall no less. Residents refuse to take on another burden just because a councilmember hatches a political scheme that runs against sensible location policy and zoning law, uses public funds and grant money to create a problem for residents, and evades the need to confront head-on the culture of disrespect that dominates Oakland streets.

Social program center at 3915 Redding St. would violate zoning of an all-residential area