The other day I strolled the length of Center Street, a kilometer of pure classic century-old West Oakland residences. Along the way I passed Cypress Freeway Memorial Park, the park at Mandela and 14th that commemorates the 1989 earthquake. This is the back end―that is, at Center and 13th Streets.
I was stopped in my tracks by this scene. The undulations in the ground, representing the seismic surface waves that shook down the freeway, extend all the way to this end. The uneven land nevertheless has space for a well-organized community of unhoused people, augmented by a row of RVs on 13th Street. The church across the way offers support for them. This is not an unusual sight in Oakland these days.
A man circulating on a bicycle challenged me: why was I taking pictures of homeless people? A fair question, and I was telling him why—I feel bad for those people, and I remember the earthquake, and the two thoughts together—when I suddenly came to tears. He nodded. We both remembered Loma Prieta, we both recognized the present agony too, and it was one of those Oakland moments.
But I didn’t really get to the point I want to share with you: This is exactly how the aftermath of the next big earthquake will look. We’ll be these people: camping out wherever we can, stuck, just watching out for each other, hour by hour, while the machinations of recovery lurch along month after month.
It will be nearly intolerable, and some of us will be broken. Others of us will be that lookout on a bicycle, doing what we can.
And this scene, too, is the aftermath of a great disruption. What slow-motion catastrophe has brought it about? We can’t seem to figure out how to deal with the housing crisis that underlies it. We have ideas, but little consensus. Whatever the solution is, it will require more money, more heart and more soul than we’ve given so far.
But whatever the solution is, once we find it we’ll be better prepared for the next Big One.
Oakland Geology 
13 November 2023 at 10:30 am
Very thoughtful and poignant piece. I loved living in West Oakland for some years. It is an amazing community of resilient and caring people, who refuse to give up on the neighborhood despite the decades of environmental abuse and overall neglect. We were forced to leave a home and garden we’d put much work into when gunfire (aimed at a drug dealer) came too close to my grandchildren.
13 November 2023 at 11:58 am
We don’t have a housing crisis, we have a responsibility crisis. Until we can become responsible enough to ourselves and each other, we’ll never solve the crisis.
For the most part, houses don’t go away. For the most part, we have a falling population. This simple math is: with a fixed number of houses, and a falling population: houses should be becoming more available. We legally immigrate about a million people a year from outside. We also illegally immigrate another two million people per year. We’re not adding the million or so additional houses these additional people need. California has neither the water nor power required to support additional people.
We could take water away from farms, but then; California with favorable climate and soils; thus being the sole source for many food stuffs—food shortages would prevail.
13 November 2023 at 3:14 pm
We should not passively wait for the next big earthquake. Presently Oakland has a surprisingly competent staff working on training local folks prepare for the next quake. Called “Community Emergency Response Teams” (CERT) it combines classroom work with realistic hands-on simulations at the Oakland Fire Department Training Center. Consider taking this free training and prepare to be impressed with the level of training you can receive:
https://www.oaklandca.gov/topics/oaklandcert
If you can join the CERTs you may find many Oakland residents who have gone through the training and continue to organize and prepare. I live in Maxwell Park and there is an active group of neighbors who are one of the many neighborhood teams of CERT folks in Oakland neighborhoods.