Reflections at the End of the Eviction Moratorium

Dear Friends,

As the City of Oakland’s eviction moratorium ends, we are reflecting on the critical role our staff and key partnerships played in keeping thousands of Oaklanders housed and providing vital resources for residents.

Our vision for healthy and inclusive communities started nearly 50 years ago, when community activists founded East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) to ensure Chinatown residents and those displaced by massive 1960s and 70s infrastructure projects retained access to health care and other social service resources in the neighborhood. We developed our first affordable housing communities in Chinatown to ensure that residents would have safe, stable, and service enriched housing. Over the decades, as our organization has grown to serve other neighborhoods, we have continued to leverage the resources that affordable housing development generates to support other community needs.

Today, as Oakland’s largest affordable housing provider, EBALDC serves 6000 people annually, providing affordable housing with community at its center.

EBALDC residents picking up necessities at food distribution in Oakland’s Chinatown.

So when the pandemic hit over 3 years ago, we listened to our residents to learn what they needed, worked with our community partners, and reorganized our programming to double down on our commitment to meet those needs swiftly:

• We packed and distributed 20,000+ meals to residents in 24 EBALDC buildings and the surrounding neighborhoods. Today, thanks to our continued partnership with Alameda County Community Food Bank and Mercy Brown Bag, we continue to provide fresh food delivery twice a week to over 370 households per month.
• Our Youth Programs at Lion Creek Crossings immediately reoriented to remote/hybrid/outdoor curriculum in order to continue to support parents and children with safe and welcoming after school and summer programming. Our longtime program partner, Destiny Arts Center, engaged our youth in self-esteem building creative and expressive activities supporting social-emotional learning. In addition to creative nourishment, starting in Summer 2020 and throughout the pandemic, we distributed fresh food twice a week directly to families participating in our youth programs.
  

  VITA Volunteers

• We know that cash-in-hand is essential to those Oaklanders who lost their jobs, worked reduced hours, and/or experienced higher expenses, so we continued to provide free tax preparation through our Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, and refunded over $4.5 million back to our communities over the course of the pandemic (2020-2022).
• We supported our small business commercial tenants, majority BIPOC- and woman-owned, with a range of tailored technical assistance. Despite significant challenges, 85% of our small business tenants are still in operation.
• Because of our community anchor role, the City of Oakland and the County of Alameda selected EBALDC to help distribute over $2MM in emergency rental assistance to over 440 households throughout the City.
  

  Agnes Ubalde, EBALDC Board Member, addresses volunteers at the “1000 Blankets” giveaway prep.

For many, it felt like the world stopped when the pandemic hit. For us, it sped up. We knew the pandemic would magnify our region’s existing housing crisis and amplify the effects of economic inequality. We are grateful for our community partners and our EBALDC family of nearly 150 staff, many of whom reside in Oakland, who met the pandemic with increased urgency to support the resilience of our residents and the greater Oakland community.

We know so much more work needs to be done to help residents, small businesses, and communities recover from three years of pandemic. We look forward to working with our residents, policymakers, program and funding partners, and you to ensure thousands of Oaklanders remain housed, have the resources to thrive, and to preserve Oakland’s special culture .

In community,

The EBALDC Family