Mandela House Porch Chat Notes — The Village in Oakland

Porch Chats are a series small community conversations the Deeply Rooted Collaborative are having around Oakland with community members who keep getting left out of the decision making process. We believe that our deep rooted families with history in Oakland and our experiences as Oakland residents make us the “experts” of what Oakland needs. The wisdom is with us. On September 18, 2025, The Village invited residents on Oakland’s new 100 bed shelter in West Oakland to have a Porch Chat to make sure our community’s needs, dreams, and desires for the future are represented in the blueprint for Oakland’s future

Residents living in Mandela House are originally from neighborhoods across Oakland. The participants who chose to be part of the Porch Chat represented these neighborhoods, represented Oakland’s Black, Raza, immigrant, refugee, senior, formerly incarcerated and disabled communities.

Participants of the Porch Chat were: Anthony Martel, Deneero Reece, Kongmay Sengvongdevane, Robert Vargas, Laandre Red, Sonia Dogens, Lee Yusi, Maia Grimes, Dorthy Owens, Keyone Wilson, Kenny Hampton, Jeffrey Booker, DeAntee Paige, Curtis Turner, Maria Torres, Brendon Newton, Jackie Walker, Sasha Hicks, Gina G, Dwayne Hodges, Asia Smith, Song K., David Vargas, and Michael C.

The following are notes from the Porch Chat. The notes have been shared with The City of Oakland to help the City guide their decisions about housing, transportation, jobs, parks, community centers, research and development campuses, and the environment over the next 20 to 30. We are so thankful for the participants taking time to circle up to represent and leave their mark in the making of Oakland’s future!

What does it mean to stabilize Oakland’s flatlands, particularly Black and Brown poor and working class communities?

It’s scary that for 20 years there has been a plan in place to erase us so they can build for wealthy white people to take over our communities. We are from here, my family has been here since 1930’s what gives them the right to erase us like that? How do we know they will listen to us and not keep on erasing us over the next 20 years?
Stabilizing us means making sure we have the same opportunities that they would give to wealthy and white people. Stabilizing us means making sure we have the support we need after all the years of discrimination, neglect, and unfairness.
Stabilizing us means making sure with AI being the new thing, how does AI work for the hood to improve our lives, give us the truth we need and the knowledge we need to elevate us. It means giving us the opportunity to create our own AI.
They gonna use AI to surveillance us if we got get control of AI working for us in the hood. They gonna use AI to make the police even more on us. That will be sure to make sure we are not stable, but erased and locked up or under a police state. But they won’t do that to the rich, white people. Rich white people get away with crime all the time, breathing is a crime for us.
We need to heal, so we aren’t hating each other so much. We need a change of attitude. Too many people don’t want to see others succeed, it’s that crabs in the barrel mentality.
We need to heal so we don’t get in our own way. The system already has so much in place to make sure we don’t get ahead.
We need way more community based programs to help us with that are culturally relevant: restorative justice, cultural and community centers, parenting classes, programs for seniors, programs for youth, more mental health programs
– they spent decade flooding our neighborhoods with drugs and guns and then locked us up for it. But they have zero programs to help us get off drugs and end the violence. Now all the music and movies are pushing violence and drugs and crashing out. Stabalizing that means having programs and institutions specific to reversing that manufactured program of self-destruction.
Our kids need something to do to occupy their minds, to keep them being kids instead of trying to grow up too fast.
Our kids need pathways to success, need programs to learn the old school values that kept out communities together, it takes a village. A village kept us stable even thru the worse of times
They destroyed the village and never give us the opportunity to rebuild it
We need community events to bring everyone together in unity and peace and just enjoy life for a second
We all need to be part of and accountable to make change happen. It’s like they take advantage of us being so broken and un-unified to get rid of us and build a whole new oakland that has nothing to do with us. They really need to make sure everyone is really involved in creating the future of oakland and really listen to us, not just check off a box saying they listened to us
We need stadiums and sports teams. Has did we loose all out sports teams? Sports brings people together and give people a thing to be proud of and be unified about.
The rich have been coming here but they don’t invest their money in us, they invest their money in what they want and then exclude us. That needs to change. If the rich keep coming into our communities, they need to invest their money into our communities to join us, not invest their money to push us out and leave us out. That’s so disrespectful.
They need to realize our youth are geniuses who need support and opportunities. The youth are our future. If they invest in our youth and give them the same opportunities and quality of education and chances for careers our youth will be able to stabilize us. Rich people and white people stay stable cuz their youth get plenty of opportunities and access to careers and things to do
Go stabilize oakland is to make sure the kids are good. Make sure they learn their history, career programs, fashion programs
Fix the potholes!
Instead of taking over peoples homes cuz they get slapped with blight, create a grant program to help families that been here for generations fix up their homes. So many people lost Big Mama’s and PawPaw’s home over blight.
We need a Black District – like China town but for Black folks and keep it working class
Stabilize oakland by preventing homelessness with tenants rights/education; rent control; permanently house the unhoused in the neighborhoods we are from
Help the unhoused get jobs and housing

How can housing, transportation, pubic land, jobs, parks, cultural centers, research and development campuses, and taking care of the environment all be used to stabilize Oakland’s flatlands?

Housing

We need extremely affordable permanent housing
They need housing for the mentally ill, for people who are trying to get off drugs like rehab and recovery. None of that exists
They need more extremely affordable family housing
They need more extremely affordable multigenerational housing like we had when big mama owned the house
They need shelters that are run by people who actually care about us and who know how to do their jobs. where do they find the people they hired for these shelters, they are all bullies or stay on their phone all day and act like you bothering them if you ask a question
How come they don’t have any programs in the shelters that will help up elevate our lives and get out and stay out of homelessness
We need more shelters for seniors with good programs in there so they can live their lives
We need shelters and deeply affordable housing for people with disabilites or chronic illness
Why do they permanent housing matches they have for unhoused folks moves us out of Oakland. Like they really don’t want us here anymore. If I lost my housing and decided to stay in oakland even if it meant I was unhoused why would you move me to Fairfield or Fremont?
They hella racists in Fairfield and Freemont. Why they want to give us permanent housing is a city that has no Black people?
The blueprint for Oakland needs to have deeply affordable housing for people born and raise here, for people whose grandparents and great grandparents have been here
We helped build up oakland, our parents and grandparents built up Oakland but now they don’t want us here? They need to protect the families that have been here and do everything they can to make sure our families and our neighborhoods are protected from loosing family homes and protected from illegal evictions and protected from rents getting so high.
Create grant programs for legacy Black and Latino families who have owned their homes for generations to fix up their homes so they don’t loose them over blight or other issues
Create programs so when you inherit your family’s home you know exactly everything you are responsible for – property taxes, mortgages etc etc. alot of people inherit a home but have no idea what they need to do to keep it and end up loosing the home.

Transportation

Fix the potholes
What did they do to Telegraph and E14th? Whose idea was that? They should be fired
Yeah that was a bad idea that just made everything worse. We never had traffic jams. Now there is only one lane for traffic on major streets? Don’t do that again
These bike lanes are dumb. There was one rule for riding your bike: stay out the way of cars and pedestrians. These bike riders really think they are cars now
All these changes got rid of street parking and have caused more accidents
who’se idea was it to not let anyone turn left off e14? Whose idea was it to put up those stupid plastic things on e14 so you cant turn left on e14th. That is such a huge inconvience and a waste of gas
They need to bring back the bus lines that connected one side of oakland to the other side of oakland. Now we stuck or have to take more than one bus to get where we need to go
They need to bring back the bus lines that connected oakland to the rest of the east bay. Now you got to jump on hella buses just to get out of oakland
They really made the traffic worse
Remember when street parking was free

Public lands:

Open up pubic lands for unhoused people to live on so we don’t harassed. We can stay there until there are enough shelters and enough housing we can afford
That would be a win win – it would keep up from getting harassed and illegally dumped on all the time, and then the people who complain about us being on the streets and sidewalks can stop complaining
Where do we go? On city owned land
Why doesn’t the city listen to (The Village) are use the pipeline proposal you created to get us out of homelessness?
We need somewhere to go and towing our Rvs and bulldozing our communities is a waste of money that doesnt solve homelessness
They should open up public lands to create Slab City for the unhoused like they did in Bakersfield or somewhere like that. But make it better.
Use the coliseum parking lot to make sideshows legal and safe like they did for the white kids in the south. Those white kids were illegal speed racing and they didn’t criminalize them or try to stop them, they created NASCAR and now its a billion dollar sport business
If they did that that would create so many jobs
The kids do that cuz there is nothing else to do. Making something out of nothing.
Side shows have been around since my parents were kids. They will never go away. Instead of working with the community they could work with the community
If they do that it could have slam dunking tournament, dancing battles, performers, food trucks, info booths for resources and programs for youth, college recruitment
It could be tied into a mechanic apprentice ship program
We need a state of the art stadium for sport teams and try to bring back sports teams
We have the Oakland ballers and Oakland roots soccer team but yeah they need state of the art venues to play
Use empty lands for mom and pop market places, artisan market places for OUR artists – not artists that just moved here, outdoor concerts, safe events for our youth
They so worried about graffiti, they should have a legal graffiti yard for the artists to do their thing – again there is nothing to do so people make something out of nothing, and those yards can be connected to career pathways in to graphic arts and marketing, we have some of the best graffiti artists in the entire world and the city’s response is to treat them like criminals, thats backwards. How are you gonna criminalize an entire art form made from literally nothing
They have china town, they have little Saigon, they have little Italy, they have little manila – why cant Oakland have a little Africa district or a BlackTown district? They should pick a neighborhood in Deep East and just develop it for Black folks – but not the buggie Black folks who don’t understand The Town. Build a Blacktown District for working class Black folks and have it filled with mom and pop businesses
Use empty public lands for live performances and town halls. Have a public commons/plaza just for this in every neighborhood. Have programs that people from the neighborhood decide on, create, and run

cultural centers:

Each neighborhood should have a cultural center that reflects the community of that neighborhood
There should be live music venues in every neighborhood that reflects our cultures
Remember they love our culture, they love our food, they love our swag, they love how we talk, they love our fashion – but they don’t love us. The culture centers need to be run by us, for us. Not run by rich white people who hate us but love our culture
We need state of the art cultural centers, not dilapidated and under funded centers
We need more centers for our seniors and for people with disabilities
Create a state of the art sports center
Create a state of the art film center
Create a state of the art fashion center

Jobs:

– the only job that has worked for me is working under the table

A lot of us don’t want to work for other people. We want our own businesses to create wealth in our families and community. We need programs that give us the training to start their own businesses or storefronts. So we can work towards being independent
There used to be those kinds of programs. They provided training, created a network with other people who wanted to be enterpenours and gave you a start up grant if you finished the program. There was one for women (W.I.S.E), there was one for youth, one for formerly incarcerated men. But they got rid of all those. Why? Bring those back cuz we need them and they really do help us.
The need to create a career pathway into tech and STEM jobs, restaurant and nightclub ownership, business and neighborhood improvement districts, and development. How come all the developers are white men who aren’t from here? What if there was a career pathway program to that people from the hood could develop for the hood, we know what we need and want to make our quality of life better
How come all the business and neighborhood improvement district are run by white men and women not from here. But they give the Black people jobs picking up trash and security jobs. That’s disrespectful.
They need to give people from Oakland construction jobs. And they need to make sure Black folks get those jobs too. How many Black people do you see working those jobs? At first it was all white men, now it’s all Latinos. That’s not right.
That huge coliseum development is going to be mostly apartments none of us can afford. But they talking about they making jobs for us. So we won’t be able to live in deep east anymore cuz the rents are going to skyrocket, but they want us to commute in from Stockton to work there? Yeah we need jobs, but we want to still stay in Oakland. Why not make sure we have both?
They need to reopen the adult schools that we used to have that were public (free) for vocation and trades, and update them to include the new industries in oakland: tech, stem, AI, restaurant and service management, tourism, etc

Parks:

there really are no parks in certain areas of Oakland.
The parks in San Leandro look totally different than the parks in Oakland, like you want to go to those parks.
The parks in the flatlands look totally different than the parks in the hills – there is a park in Piedmont that has waterfalls, and trails. Why don’t we have that in the flatlands?
We need specialty parks – like a water park. Black cowboys are such a big part of our culture why don’t we have a Black Cowboy park? Why don’t we have a Black food park where it’s an edible park that has Black food growing there for the community to use for free with classes to teach people how to grow food and cook food. These kids don’t know how to cook anymore,
some of these grown ups don’t know how to cook either, they live off the only store in the neighborhood – the liquor store. How old is that lemon and potato they sell in the liquor store?
They can do those kinds of edible garden parks for all the cultures – have one for the Asians, the Mexicans, the Native Americans
They should have edible gardens everywhere
They should have a petting zoo park in the flatlands
Why do parks close at 10pm
They don’t want homeless people in the parks, but they should create it Hubs for the Homeless in the parks. Place were we can use the bathroom, get clean drinking water, have pop up services. They are public spaces but they don’t want us there. Why not use that pubic space to serve us, and then there would be respect and people would feel included and maybe not sleep there since we are included with programs and services
When did they get rid of the drinking fountains in the parks?
There isn’t enough trashcans in the parks
There isnt enough trashcans anywhere in the flatlands.
Concerts in the parks
Bug city wide events to do on holidays – July 4, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Halloween, Christmas, Kwanzaa, valentines day, new years eve at the plaza in city hall or lake Merritt cuz they are central and neutral locations

Research and development campuses:

They need to create a pathway to tech, STEM so our kids have careers in these campuses as the scientists and engineers and techies – not just as the janitors and security guards
That should start in middle school and high school. The programs should be built into the education system in partnership with these campuses
They need the same in adult education – they got rid of alot of the adult education programs, why?
They got rid of all the free adult education programs. They need to bring those back and make a pathway for adults who want careers on those campuses
They should have a an adult education pathway from Santa Rita and san Quintin into careers to those campuses so when people get out of jail or prison they already have a career opportunity lined up so they don’t have to return to crime just to feed themselves
They should have that kind of pathway out one juvenile detention and continuation schools too

The environment

There would be trees planted everywhere and edible gardens planted everywhere
Stop building toxic factories and business in our neighborhoods

What does the city need to invest in to make sure your families, friends, and larger community of working class, poor, unhoused, immigrant and/or refugee residents are still here and thriving in 2045?

Education and career pathways to meaningful jobs, careers , and business ownership for our youth and for adults – including for women, the formerly incarcerated, the formerly unhoused
Make sure that with new and continuing industry we aren’t pigeon holed into entry label or blue collar jobs. Those jobs are given to the middle class folks who aren’t from here and that not okay
Programs and grants/loan programs for legacy residents who want to start their own businesses or non profits
Free programs and services all over Oakland that address healing mental health, generational trauma, systemic oppression and discrimination
Create its own reparations program and fund for Black folks
Rent control and deeply affordable housing
Financial literacy programs for youth, for formerly incarcerated, for the unhoused, for the poor, for new parents
Alternatives to the police or real community based policing
Programs that prevent violence – jobs, restorative justice, free cultural and community events
Regular town hall meetings in our neighborhoods about this very topic where government officials listen to us and agree to work in partnership with us
Regular town hall meetings in our neighborhoods where the rich people moving in learn from those of us who have been here what investing in our neighborhood looks like, like a formal “welcome to the neighborhood” event that happens twice a year so they can understand that they should not be looking at us like the outsiders, or the people who need to be removed; that they can learn how to be part of our community rather than erase our communities
Sport teams and casinos. Its recreational and will create jobs
End gentrification, no more redlining, break all glass ceilings
Do something about the illegal dumping and quit blaming the homeless cuz it ain’t us, it’s being done to us
Stop investing in erasing us, and “changing” us. Invest in us!
Really be dedicated to equity and not just use it as a buzz word or a box to check off. actually make equity happen in real time thru your choices in how development happens and what development looks like and who development is for. either the blueprint for the future oakland actually includes us or it doesnt.