Gentrification erodes spirit in longtime Black district

Transformation sparks tension in once-bustling Oakland neighborhood

“Families that spent generations in that area can no longer afford to. They can’t afford to move there, and they can’t afford to even shop there.”

Fredrika Newton, widow of former Black Panther Party leader Huey P. Newton

For nearly 70 years, Carol Lee Tolbert has watched changes unfold in Oakland’s Longfellow neighborhood — some welcome, others not.

Growing up, she said most of the neighborhood’s residents were Black families like hers living in single-family homes. Kids played in the street. Neighbors looked out for one another. Black businesses thrived.

In the late 1960s, the neighborhood — bordered by Adeline Street to the west, Highway 24 to the east and Interstate 580 to the south — became the headquarters of the Black Panther Party, cementing its place in the city’s African American history.

But over the decades, Tolbert has witnessed Black families moving out and Black businesses shuttering as rents and home prices soared. And she

thinks about what’s been lost. She grew up going to the same schools as her neighbors, who were mostly Black. They attended the same churches. Teachers lived in the neighborhood. But over time, the neighborhood became more transient, Tolbert said.

Tolbert’s experience of the neighborhood’s transformation is reflected in the data. While the neighborhood was majority Black from 1970 to 2000, more white people started to move in during the 1960s. By 2010, the neighborhood was a little over 51% Black, but that share had dropped to about 30% in 2020.

The census tract that makes up Longfellow is one of two U.S. census-defined neighborhoods of about 3,000 to 8,000 people in Oakland where the Black population dropped more than 20 percentage points.

The share of white residents grew from 22% in 2010 to 36% in 2020, while the share of Asian residents jumped from 7.4% to 9.3% and Latino residents increased from 14.2% to 16%. Of the 118 census tracts in Oakland, the Longfellow tract had the secondlargest overall change in demographics, as measured by the sum of the absolute changes of each race/ethnicity group.

While there’s been plenty of discussion about gentrification in Temescal, a popular foodie mecca next to Longfellow, Tolbert’s neighborhood has had less of a spotlight.

The changes have brought tension at times to Longfellow. That friction isn’t uncommon in many gentrifying areas throughout Oakland, a city whose identity has been transformed from a place where Black culture and business flourished — African Americans made up nearly half the city’s population in 1980 — to a city that continues to see Black residents leave.

Activists and politicians wonder if the flight can be halted or slowed and what it would take.

In some ways, the story of Longfellow reflects wider trends in Oakland: As housing prices spiked in San Francisco and other parts of the Bay Area, residents moved to the East Bay city for more affordable homes and apartments and robust public transportation that allowed easy access to job centers. But rising rents and home prices in Oakland have in turn shut out many longtime residents.

Erin La Ninfa first arrived in the neighborhood in 2015 and lived there for two years before moving to Fruitvale, but she returned to Longfellow in 2020 because she missed the feeling that neighbors knew each other well and cared about each other.

The 35-year-old nonprofit worker, who is white, said the neighborhood had changed dramatically in the five years she was gone. Her corner of the neighborhood is whiter, La Ninfa said.

La Ninfa said she felt lucky to find an apartment with relatively affordable rent. She pays about $1,900 a month for a onebedroom apartment near 40th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

What La Ninfa pays closely mirrors the nearly $2,000 average rent for a one-bedroom apartment currently available in Longfellow. While that’s 11% more than last year, according to rental website Zumper, it’s still less than the approximately $2,800 average rent for units on the market citywide.

Longfellow has lower rental prices in part because there are more multi-unit buildings, many of them with two to four units. But the area has become more and more attractive to home buyers. In 2002, the typical home value in Longfellow was $300,000, a bit lower than the $360,000 for Oakland overall, according to data from Zillow. In 2022, the number for Longfellow is over $1.1 million, higher than the median of $1 million.

Longfellow has seen less development of major apartment high-rises than its neighbors. The city’s planning department said 446 units have been built in two city ZIP codes, 94608 and 94609, that include Longfellow. But one of those ZIP codes also includes parts of Temescal, where the MacArthur Transit Village was built. That project — just outside Longfellow’s borders — has 877 homes, including 90 units of affordable housing.

City officials, recognizing a need for more affordable housing in the neighborhood, recently allocated $7 million to help pay for 77 affordable units at 38013829 Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

There’s also a mostly marketrate development in the works. The owner of the building that was once home to the former Black Panther headquarters on MLK Way wants to build 20 units, two of them affordable. The owner, who is Black, has pledged to commemorate the party’s legacy on the site.

Fredrika Newton, the widow of former party leader Huey P. Newton, supports the plan. She spent part of her youth in Longfellow and feels wistful about the neighborhood, recalling how most of the businesses on MLK Way, known then as Grove Street, were Black-owned.

“It was a working-class Black enclave, almost entirely,” said Newton. But now much of that culture has been lost, she said.

Grove Street had a thriving commercial district with businesses run by Black shopkeepers through the 1960s, but the creation of the Grove Shafter freeway in 1970, which runs between Interstate 880 and the Caldecott Tunnel, moved traffic away from the district as people opted to drive to shopping centers further away, said Mitchell Schwarzer, the author of “Hella Town,” a book about development in Oakland.

“The freeway had a very deleterious effect on the neighborhood,” Schwarzer said.

Newton, who’s frustrated with neighborhood changes, worries that the Black population will fall further. She said elderly Black people on fixed incomes in Longfellow, who often can’t afford to maintain their homes, will likely end up selling them.

“Families that spent generations in that area can no longer afford to. They can’t afford to move there, and they can’t afford

to even shop there,” Newton said.

Newton said her best friend and her aunt, who lived near her in Longfellow when she was growing up, have both been priced out. She has a cousin who remains in the area and is now the only Black resident on the block. Newton herself now lives in West Oakland.

She said Black culture has almost entirely disappeared from the neighborhood.

“It has such a rich history, and there is nothing in that area that reflects anything that ever happened there,” she said.

She noted, though, that two Black-owned businesses are still thriving there: MLK Cafe and Marcus Books.

Amid all the changes in the neighborhood, owners of some new businesses say they are conscious of gentrification and try to appeal to longtime residents and newcomers.

Five years ago, Joel DiGiorgio planned to open a restaurant selling $14 veggie burgers, but changed to a more affordable concept. Now, he sells $4 pizza by the slice at Arthur Mac’s Tap and Snack, near La Ninfa’s apartment, while giving out 200

free slices every Sunday.

“We have to pay respect to the community we’re in,” DiGiorgio said. “We have to think about the demographic that’s here and maybe the demographic that’s coming.”

Down the block from Arthur Mac’s, Scott Wintner lives in a two-bedroom apartment above MLK Cafe that costs $2,500 a month. He’s among the newcomers drawn to the area for its convenient transit and freeway access. Wintner, who is white and has lived in Longfellow since 2013, loves hopping on BART to explore other parts of Oakland and said the drive to his job in San Jose is made easier by the quick freeway link.

“Location, location, location,” the 39-year-old said.

Wintner wants to get to know the neighborhood’s older residents and its history. He’s hopeful that the Longfellow Community Association, where he’s the secretary, can connect more recent arrivals with longtime residents.

But he said it’s not always easy.

While nearly all residents share the same concerns — crime, homelessness and property

values — Wintner said some longtime residents understandably have “bitterness or resentment” about changes in the neighborhood and the flight of Black families.

Lena Robinson, a Black resident who purchased her home in 2003, has seen the changes up close. But she stayed as her Black neighbors moved elsewhere, often selling to younger, white couples. Robinson is also a member of the Longfellow Community Association.

Robinson bought her “real fixer-upper” from an older African American woman who had renovated the house to make it handicap accessible. That had turned off a lot of potential buyers, Robinson said.

“It was hard to just find a house that was affordable for me as a single woman in Oakland at that time,” she said. “I think that has continued to happen.”

City Council Member Dan Kalb, who’s white and has seen the changes in the area, said he would love for community land trusts to buy up some Longfellow homes and retain them for affordable housing, a strategy that happened with a house in West Oakland.

He wants to expand first-time home-buyer assistance programs so people with moderate incomes can afford down payments. And in the meantime, he wants the city to support building more affordable housing in general.

Last year, an affordable housing project opened on Martin Luther King Jr. Way and MacArthur Boulevard on the site of a defunct car wash. Dubbed the Aurora, it offers 44 units of permanent supportive housing to people who make up to about $19,000 per year for a single person and up to about $25,000 per year for a three-person household.

Kalb said that adding more housing units of all kinds — including market-rate — is crucial. He acknowledged that more market-rate housing will add to gentrification. But, he said, it also reduces displacement.

“Gentrification and displacement don’t always go hand-inhand. Sometimes doing one helps curb the other,” Kalb said.

Regardless, Longfellow has changed. Still, Tolbert said she’s not going anywhere, and that her neighbors, though different, are fantastic.

“I love my home,” she said.

Photos by Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle A Black community that once flourished in Oakland’s Longfellow neighborhood is being displaced as housing costs soar.

Carol Tolbert, who has lived in the Longfellow neighborhood for nearly 70 years, has seen many friends and family members move and businesses close as demographics have shifted.

Chart: Yuri Avila / The Chronicle • Source: Census Tract 4010

Brontë Wittpenn / The Chronicle Photos, left, hang on the wall of the home of longtime Longfellow resident Lena Robinson, right, who serves Easter dinner at her home. Robinson is struggling to keep her home as gentrification and rising prices have forced many Black families to move.

Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle Erin La Ninfa kisses her cat, Bernie. La Ninfa moved to the Longfellow neighborhood in 2015, then to Fruitvale in 2017, but returned to Longfellow in 2020 because she loves the district.

Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle Tyrese Johnson (left) celebrates his birthday with his partner, Holly Wilson (right), and friends at Arthur Mac’s Tap and Snack.

Photos by Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle Longtime Longfellow resident Carol Tolbert collects plums from her tree. She has seen a dramatic shift as African Americans leave the neighborhood.

Scott Wintner, who moved to Oakland’s Longfellow neighborhood from Detroit nine years ago, likes the neighborhood so much he didn’t relocate when his job shifted to San Jose.