“Oakland is answering to this crisis with a sense of urgency and innovation,” Mayor Libby Schaaf said during a press conference about the numbers. But to Joe DeVries, assistant to the city administrator and Moms For Housing, those calls go unanswered. “In the county, we need 6,000 more shelter beds. In Oakland we probably need about 2,000 more even after the efforts the mayor talked about that we’ve been working hard on opening,” DeVries said about Schaaf’s comments. In November of 2019, two mothers Dominique Walker and Sameerah Karim, without shelter, born and raised in Oakland, retook possession of a vacant investor-owned property in West Oakland on Magnolia Street. The mothers, the founding members of Moms For Housing, stood their ground to address the extreme challenges working mothers face in finding safe and affordable housing for themselves and their children. Moms For Housing announced their intention to remain in the home until it was returned to the Oakland community. Their supporters surrounded the home, and remained in place until the transfer of the home to community control has been negotiated. The home was foreclosed upon and then purchased by Wedgewood Properties, a self-described “leading acquirer of distressed residential real estate” which also “manages bulk quantities of non-performing and re‑performing residential whole loans purchased from banks.” Since 2017, Wedgewood has kept the renovated property vacant. On December 3rd, Moms For Housing received an eviction notice from Wedgewood Inc, the eviction notice named the previous owner of the house, not the Moms For Housing. “There are four times as many empty homes in Oakland as there are homeless people,” said Karim in a statement about the eviction notice. “Why should anyone—especially children—sleep on the street while perfectly good homes sit empty?”
Wedgewood did not respond to Bob Cut’s request for comment. But after the company prevailed in court against the mothers, spokesperson Sam Singer issued a statement celebrating the ruling. Singer also chastised three Oakland City Council members who tried to negotiate a deal to sell the home to an affordable housing land trust, thereby allowing the mothers to stay. “The solution to Oakland’s housing crisis is not the redistribution of citizens’ homes through illegal break-ins and seizures by squatters,” said Singer, adding that the three council members “must take real steps to address Oakland’s drug abuse, mental illness, and homeless issues.” “Wedgewood wants to pretend we don’t exist, that their actions don’t have real-life consequences for Oaklanders,” said Walker, in a press release sent to local media. “We’ve had hundreds of our supporters calling and emailing them. We’ve sent letters from ourselves and supporting organizations. But Wedgewood has refused to sit down with us to talk. Instead of negotiating with us in good faith, they hired a ‘crisis communications’ firm and sent an eviction notice to someone who doesn’t even live here.” “Wedgewood is sympathetic to the plight of the homeless and is a major contributor to shelter programs, inner-city youth, and the disadvantaged,” Singer said in an emailed statement to VICE. “The company hears and respects what the individuals illegally occupying the Magnolia Street home are saying, but it does not respect nor does it condone the theft of property.” Singer added that the company, which purchased the Oakland home in late July and gained possession in November, planned to quickly rehabilitate and upgrade the property and put it back on the marketplace. But the mothers moved in illegally shortly after Wedgewood took control officially, according to Singer said, and the company didn’t receive communication from them. In the Bay Area as a whole, an investigation by the local NBC affiliate found 98 active LLCs linked to Wedgewood. Through them, it’s been involved in thousands of property transactions and more than 300 court cases, mostly evictions, since 2015. A monopoly board renamed “Wedgewood” is affixed to the wall of the company’s Redondo Beach headquarters. California housing activists first faced off against Wedgewood in 2016, when they supported an immigrant couple attempting to buy their home of 10 years back from Wedgewood. The couple said their lender sold the home at auction while they were attempting to negotiate a loan modification, a practice known as dual-tracking. The couple was ultimately evicted. “A lot of these children on the streets, a lot of the people that’s on the streets, are black and brown children—just like me, just like my babies,” Karim said. “The first thing I notice is when we got this place, Dom’s baby wasn’t even walking. And now since we’ve been here the baby is starting to walk. I’m starting to see kids play.” Karim went onto say “we want speculators out of our community, they’re coming in, they’re profiting off harm that’s done in our community, and we want them out.” But tensions escalated when a SWAT team was sent in the brink of morning to forcefully evict the Moms from the property. The operation began just after 5:30 a.m., as the Mercury News reports. Though it appeared that some fore-warning of the eviction operation must have been given, because not all of the women were at home at the time of the raid, and the children who had been living there were missing as well—the group assured supporters and the media that they were someplace safe. The scene was something out of a World War movie, with a battering ram at the door and guns drawn, as KTVU reports. The eviction had been expected following a court order that came down on the group. “Ya’ll got SWAT out here?” cried one person in the assembled crowd, per KTVU. And Walker spoke to reporters saying, “They came in like an Army for mothers and babies. We have the right to housing. This is just the beginning.” Two of the mothers, Misty Cross and Tolani King, were arrested and put in zip-tie restraints, along with supporter Jesse Turner. All three are Oakland residents and had apparently been sitting at the home peacefully protesting the eviction and refusing to leave. As of reporting, the mothers and the supporter were released from police custody quickly on bail. And when everything seemed bleak for the mothers—a deal was stuck. In a statement, Moms For Housing said they had reached an agreement with Wedgewood Properties to buy the Magnolia Street home through the Oakland Community Land Trust. A “good faith” agreement has been reached to sell the vacant Oakland house that several homeless mothers used as a residence for nearly two months before being evicted in a contentious dispute with law enforcement, the mayor’s office said Monday, January 20th. In addition to agreeing to work with the Oakland Community Land Trust, Wedgewood will also negotiate a right of first refusal program for all of its Oakland properties, according to a joint statement from Mayor Schaaf’s office, Moms 4 Housing and Wedgewood. Since the mothers occupied the home, several City Council members, including council President Rebecca Kaplan and Councilwoman Nikki Fortunato Bas have called on Wedgewood to negotiate with the land trust. The mayor’s office said it will work to create a “Right of First Refusal Policy” and “Tenant Opportunity Purchase Act” on vacant properties owned by banks and corporate speculators to offer incentives to transfer ownership to either the city or the land trust. “This is what happens when we organize, when people come together to build the beloved community,” said Dominique Walker with Moms 4 Housing. “Today we honor Dr. King’s radical legacy by taking Oakland back from the big banks and corporations. Thank you to our supporters, who stood by us every step of the way. We can’t wait to get back to Moms’ House and keep building this movement with you.” // Feature photography courtesy of Getty Images; inline photography by Daniel Lee. *Oakland homelessness numbers have been widely contested and reported, this number is a common denominator across a variety of reports. Have something to add and/or correct in this piece, please email us here and we will update accordingly.
