We envision that everyone in Oakland and the East Bay can live in a safe and affordable home, and that every neighborhood provides opportunities that enable people to live long, healthy lives, regardless of income or ethnic background.
Healthy Neighborhoods Approach
Our work is strengthening the community fabric so all of our loved ones and neighbors belong and thrive in Oakland and the East Bay.
Creating Community
We are committed to addressing the most pressing needs of our community, anchoring stability and providing opportunities for collaboration and empowerment.
EBALDC values the role artistic expression plays in creating community and building healthy neighborhoods." - Kev Choice, Musician, Educator and Oakland Native
Creative Community Development
Arts and culture continue to be an integral tool across the three Neighborhood Collaboratives, serving as a creative way to strengthen resident leadership and engage residents to envision, plan, and construct their own cultural expressions in public spaces to advance neighborhood health. Highlights from the year include: Resident co-created murals at the San Pablo Hotel and Hand Market, hosting racial equity sessions centering AAPI and Black communities, reimagining the Coliseum Stadium with Castlemont High design students, and designing the Community Connections Coloring Book!
45 Stories for 45 Years
To mark the milestone of our 45th year, we launched 45 Stories for 45 Years, a storytelling initiative to honor EBALDC’s past, celebrate our present and help shape our vision for the future. We collected 45 stories from EBALDC friends, family, community members, partners and stakeholders that made our impact possible. Now, in our 46th year, stories like Yuri's are archived on our website.
SPARC-it-Place
SPARC-it-Place, a community marketplace and future affordable housing site, served as a place for social connections and to lift up local businesses along the corridor. Fantastic Negrito, our 3-time Grammy winning commercial tenant, launched Storefront Records’ “Storefront Market” which is now held at SPARC-it-Place the last Saturday of every month.
Investing in Community
As a community anchor, we invest deeply into the health and sustainability of our residents, businesses and nonprofits, and partnerships to ensure a healthy, safe, and vibrant East Bay.
SparkPoint Oakland
SparkPoint Oakland builds financial health and increases access to good jobs for all Oakland residents. EBALDC serves as the lead agency for SparkPoint Oakland, the first of now 23 centers across the regional initiative started by United Way of the Bay Area. While the center usually focuses on four areas: managing credit, reducing debt, increasing income, and building assets, the pandemic shifted efforts to also prioritize emergency financial support.
SparkPoint Oakland staff were re-trained to also address emergency financial needs, including applying to benefits and other needs
Preserving affordable housing and commercial spaces for small businesses and nonprofits
EBALDC’s COVID Commercial Tenant Resilience Program (CCTRP) provides small grants, technical assistance, technology support, promotion, and a rent subsidies program to our commercial tenants
114 small businesses and nonprofits
95% of commercial tenants are still in operation
89% of small business tenants remain open
Building Community
From affordable housing buildings to strong partnerships networks, we have been building community since 1975. Our mission to build healthy, vibrant and safe neighborhoods through community development has evolved to respond to the East Bay’s needs, but it has not changed.
Building and anchoring spaces for Healthy Neighborhoods
1,100 units across 13 buildings in the pipeline
Preserving Housing, Stabilizing Communities
119 Units Under Renovation at Frank G. Mar Apartments
Frank G. Mar Community Housing is a mixed-use development completed in 1990. Built as a response to the need for affordable homes in Chinatown and Downtown Oakland, it also helped to revitalize the downtown commercial district by adding 12,500 sq ft of neighborhood-serving retail, child care space and public parking. Similar to San Pablo Hotel and Madison Park Apts, we are underway on major improvements for residents and tenants.
Prioritizing transit-oriented development with properties at six of nine BART stations
Casa Arabella, a 94-unit affordable housing building in the heart of Oakland’s Fruitvale Transit Village, was honored as a national model for public-private partnerships and transit-oriented development
30 Formerly Homeless | 20 Formerly Homeless, Veterans | 3 Veterans | 1 Formerly Homeless, Transit-Aged Youth (young adults who aged out of foster care)
EBALDC and The Unity Council welcomed Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge to Casa Arabella
(L to R: Andy Madeira, CEO, EBALDC; Chris Iglesias, CEO, The Unity Council; Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf; U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge; Congresswoman Barbara Lee; and Oakland City Councilmember Noel Gallo)
The coming together of all these people here should be studied and should be an example." - Wilma Chan, Board of Supervisors, Alameda County
In Remembrance
EBALDC will remember Supervisor Wilma Chan as a true public servant, a leader who worked passionately, consistently, and humbly to improve the lives of Alameda County’s most vulnerable communities. She was a staunch advocate for children, for culturally and economically accessible health care, and for healthy and affordable neighborhoods. Her leadership in the campaign for and passage of the Measure A1 affordable housing bond in 2016 directly supported EBALDC and The Unity Council’s successful completion of the Casa Arabella apartments in Oakland. We will miss Wilma dearly.
Thanks to the amazing team that built Casa Arabella!
Neighborhood Partnership Networks
Informed by the Healthy Neighborhoods approach, EBALDC forges meaningful partnerships across industries to address neighborhood-specific needs. By aligning resources and goals, we have had great success across our three Neighborhood Collaborations. The collaborative infrastructure allowed partners to quickly adapt to meet the emergency needs of the residents during the pandemic.
“You really build community by having people who stay for long periods of time in a place so they get to know their neighbors, local officials..." - Ener Chiu, EVP of Community Building & Long-time Oakland Resident
Oakland Chinatown Coalition
EBALDC has been a long-time member of the Oakland Chinatown Coalition (OCC), which began working together to advocate for issues related to healthy, clean, and safe neighborhoods; land-use; anti-displacement of residents and businesses; art, public space; and civic engagement. OCC supports projects, programs, and cultural and social institutions that make Oakland Chinatown a vibrant, economically diverse neighborhood, as well as help to preserve its cultural and economic legacy in Oakland.
Oakland Chinatown Coalition Highlights
Good Good Eatz, a community-based organization working towards pivoting restaurants and districts for resilience, was a massive initiative that provided digital marketing and technical assistance to help keep businesses afloat and mass distribution of meals during the pandemic. Since it's inception, they've worked across five districts to achieve:
111K meals distributed | 50+ businesses served | $2M to local businesses
From the Bay to Atlanta Vigil, a nationwide demonstration honoring victims of AAPI violence, was one of a series of community healing activations and sessions held in response to the killing of six Asian women in the Atlanta spa shootings and ongoing violence against the Asian American & Pacific Islander community.
Chinatown Ambassador Program (CAP), a community-centered public safety program responding to the surge in AAPI hate crimes and violence, ramped up advocacy for a permanent City-supported program.
San Pablo Area Revitalization Collaborative
San Pablo Area Revitalization Collaborative (SPARC) is the first collaborative officially launched under the Healthy Neighborhoods approach. SPARC is dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of residents living along and around the San Pablo Avenue Corridor in West Oakland. Rather than replicating efforts, the SPARC formed in 2014 to build upon neighborhood assets, align efforts, and pool resources to better achieve common outcomes. Guided by community-informed priorities, much has been accomplished.
SPARC Highlights
175 small businesses, home-based businesses, and artists received CARES funding from the City of Oakland
18,247 meals, bags, and computers were distributed
55 phone screens and assessments conducted through St. Mary’s Center’s Mobile Unit Program
2,067 residents of the California Hotel engaged by Lifelong Medical Care
5 BIPOC-owned local businesses supported along the San Pablo Corridor, including Magnolia Street Wine Lounge, which managed to open its doors in June 2020 at the height of the pandemic
In 2020-21, SPARC also re-evaluated the collaborative’s action plan and governance structure, moving to to a shared leadership model. SPARC’s new Action Plan focuses on the following priorities: (1) community wealth-building through the preservation, production, and sustaining of spaces for small businesses and housing (2) COVID recovery efforts and (3) strengthening resident leadership and engagement.
Black Liberation Walking Tour (BLWT), a project of the West Oakland Cultural Action Network (WOCAN), is a community-led cultural asset map and tour celebrating Hoover-Foster’s multi-generational Black history and culture. It asserts resident voices and documents sites of cultural and historical significance in our neighborhood. BLWT celebrates belonging through the 100-year narrative ribbon leading from the early West Coast civil rights movement through the second wave of the Great Migration to the Black Liberation actions of the present day.
Healthy Havenscourt Collaborative
Informed by the community’s priorities, the Healthy Havenscourt Collaborative (HHC) formed in 2015 to improve factors such as education, workforce development, housing, local business development, community leadership, and stress that will lead to better long-term health outcomes for residents of the Havenscourt neighborhood in East Oakland. This year, our partners prioritized providing emergency relief and aid to Havenscourt residents during the pandemic.
Healthy Havenscourt Highlights
142,141 residents supported, including meal distributions by the Martin Luther King Jr. library
41 Havenscourt residents received $112,000 in emergency rental assistance through a Rental and Emergency Assistance program collaboration by EBALDC, Keep Oakland Housed, Season of Sharing, & United Way Bay Area
286 residents received financial stability supports through SparkPoint Oakland and EBALDC’s VITA program, of which 12% (33 residents) increased their income by 5%
3X increase in birth-5 year old children served, including 342 children and 290 parents/caregivers through Havenscourt Cub House, a birth-5 resource navigation hub at Lion Creek Crossings that provided basic needs and virtual playgroups to promote children’s health development and social connection/community for families
82 youth and young adults served through the Havenscourt Youth Job Initiative, of which 17 young adults were placed in jobs or internships
68% of Havenscourt Youth Job Initiative participants completed 3+ career exploration activities (i.e, job-readiness training, individual career coaching supports, and Bay Area career exploration shadowing or expos
Healthy Housing Champions Pilot launched with a team of four Havenscourt residents who met weekly and have been trained on: the link between health and housing, the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), resident’s role in policy change, building leadership capacity, and FINDconnect, a social determinants of health tool developed by UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. Thus far, they have:
Informed Havenscourt residents of asthma resources and pandemic emergency tenant protections
Began implementing FINDconnect in La Clinica de La Raza’s, two pediatric clinics in the neighborhood. As a result, HHC is building a better understanding of residents and families SDOH needs (i.e, housing, food insecurity) and residents are getting connected to relevant community resources
Transformative Heroes: Ten youth from Lion Creek Crossings youth afterschool program participated in a Transformative Superheroes project. Each youth reflected on their experience of COVID through the eyes of a superhero, resulting in a large-scale art piece, which was displayed at the local library. Youth shared that the program gave them a sense of pride, knowing their voice was being heard during a time of social isolation and that there was an opportunity to share their art with the broader community.
What Healthy Neighborhoods Mean
During our 46th Annual Gala Celebration, we engaged in a great discussion on Healthy Neighborhoods and what it means, facilitated by EBALDC Board Member Dave Peters in conversation with EBALDC CEO Andy Madeira and Former EBALDC COO & EVP of Community Building Charise Fong. In recognition of her many years of service and soon departure, we honored Charise, who was also named 100 Most Influential Women of the Bay Area.
STRATEGIC REFRESH 2021-2022
In 2017, we released our Strategic Plan, in which we introduced the four pillars of our Healthy Neighborhoods approach to community development. These pillars have served us well, especially through these turbulent times, reinforcing our essential role as a community anchor. Informed by our Healthy Neighborhoods approach and our community of residents, tenants, partners, and neighbors, we developed our Strategic Refresh set to guide us until our next Strategic Plan.
SUPPORTING STAFF TO SUPPORT THE COMMUNITY
Throughout the pandemic, our committed staff demonstrated immense care for our residents, tenants, and community. Their daily efforts were truly inspiring and reassuring that together we will build resilient communities and healthy neighborhoods. In support, EBALDC sought to meet the needs of our staff, as we were all navigating the challenges of the pandemic.
Pictured: Staff receiving their meal distributions for their hard work in rapidly responding to community needs.
Staff Support Highlights
EBALDC named The NonProfit Times’ 2020 Best Nonprofit to Work For
Wellness Days provided each month as an extra day off since 2015
Premium pay of up to $2.00 per hour to staff required to work on site
Leadership offered a one-time $500 stipend for add’l COVID-related supplies and expenses
EBALDC instituted a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, in which 97% of staff are already vaccinated
Paid time off cap increased from 225 to 300 hours
Paid 100% of employee premiums for staff earning under $58K
EBALDC LEADERSHIP
BOARD OF DIRECTORS | Board Chair Sean Sullivan, Board Vice Chair Kelly Drumm, Board Secretary James (Jim) Govert, Board Treasurer Leslie Francis, Beth Rosales, Chris Ferreira, Christine B. Carr, David Peters, Dr. Dianne Rush Woods, Klein Lieu, K.M. Tan, M.D., Korin Crawford, Margaret Huang, Minming Wu Morri, Richard Quach, Rosalyn Tonai, Co-Founder Ted Dang, Thái-ân Ngô
EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP TEAM | Chief Executive Officer Andy Madeira, Chief Operating Officer Karim Sultan, Chief Financial Officer Amy Chan, Executive VP of Community Building Ener Chiu, Executive VP of Resource Development & Communications Elle Fersan, Executive VP of Property Operations Felicia Scruggs-Wright, Executive VP of Real Estate Development Jason Vargas, Executive VP of Internal Operations Lanetha Oliver
THANK YOU TO OUR DONORS
Between 2020–2021, nearly $9M was raised to support EBALDC’s role as an essential community anchor:
Over 700 total individual donors
Over 600 NEW individual donors
135 institutional donors
STAY CONNECTED
Stay up-to-date on all things EBALDC by choosing "Subscribe" below or following @EBALDC across social media networks:
Facebook || Instagram || Twitter || LinkedIn || Vimeo || YouTube
Photo credits: Alain McLaughlin, Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group, Andrew Pau, Bob Hsiang, Curtis Jermany, East Bay Yesterday, Terry Lorant, Stephen Texeria