Alameda County Sells Black Housing Developers Abandoned East Oakland Lot for $10
For 30 years, an empty, blighted lot in East Oakland has been home to weeds, dumped trash, a billboard and a debt so large no buyer would come near it.
On Tuesday, Alameda County leaders voted to hand the tax-defaulted property at 8215 MacArthur Blvd. to a Black community initiative and nonprofit housing developer for only $10.
The county hopes the sale of the 15,000-square-foot parcel — a quarter of a football field — can become a model by which blighted city-owned properties can be transformed into affordable housing and serve as part of a broader effort to keep Black residents in East Oakland.
“Today is historic,” Treasurer-Tax Collector Henry Levy told the Board of Supervisors, noting it was the county’s first transfer of its kind in about a decade.
The parcel had been “stuck,” county officials said.
After going into tax default in 1995, the county sold it a decade later to a nonprofit that was supposed to build affordable housing on it, but which dissolved in 2013 without ever doing so. Because the taxes are owed by an entity that no longer exists, the debt kept compounding into nothing: as of June 30 of this year, back taxes, penalties and city liens totaled roughly $1.7 million.
In April, an appraiser valued the land at $900,000, meaning the debt now exceeds what the dirt is worth. That is the legal hinge of the deal. Because a sale could not cover the debt, the county is free, under Chapter 8 of the state tax code, to set whatever price it sees fit.
“It’s hard to describe it as giving up,” said Casey Farmer, the county’s Chapter 8 program manager. “The only way to get that property really back to paying taxes or back to good public use is to find a new owner to take on that property.”
Nobody, she said, would take it. The county tried to auction it off in 2013, starting at $634,255, and it did not sell, nor did it sell again in 2023. Several lots within half a mile also sit empty.
“It’s just not a very attractive property,” she said.
Meanwhile, Oakland has continued spending to clear weeds and debris under its nuisance abatement program, and neighbors have asked both the city and county to address the blight.
Farmer said her office approached several organizations in the neighborhood to take over the lot, and each declined — some could not afford the lot, some considered it too small, and many did not want to contend with the Clear Channel billboard, which stands directly on the property.
Finally, the county found a partner in the Black Cultural Zone Community Development Corporation. According to Regina Davis, BCZ’s deputy CEO of real estate, two neighbors brought the lot to the nonprofit’s attention.
“They also made the county aware of us, and that’s how we started working together,” Davis said. “People bring things to us because they believe that we can make something happen that is both fair, equitable, and innovative.”
The parcel is BCZ’s sixth acquisition along MacArthur, she said. The zone spans 60 by 60 blocks — stretching from the Oakland hills to the baywater, and High Street to the city’s border with San Leandro. Divided into 12 districts, the zone is anchored by hubs of cultural, commercial and community spaces.
A $10 price tag, she said, is not the same as a cheap project.
“If you think, ‘You’re getting the property for $10’ — yeah, but still we have to raise $40 million in order to build it,” Davis said. “That’s a process. That’s the other long part of putting together the financial stack, so that it’s also affordable.”
To compete for the tax credits that finance affordable housing, she said, a project generally needs to be around 100 units. The housing plan for the site has not been determined, and the first step will not be a rendering, she said.
In the meantime, BCZ will clear and activate the lot, as it did at Liberation Park, a “so-called hub for community empowerment” the nonprofit turned into an outdoor market, community roller rink and future affordable housing site. Davis said BCZ hosted roughly a hundred events a year there before a single building went up.
The sale still needs sign-off from the California State Controller, a review the county expects to take a month or more.
The county is eyeing about 10 more abandoned, tax-defaulted parcels — mostly vacant land — for the same treatment. Some are small enough for infill housing; state law also permits transfers for open space, such as a park or community garden. Farmer said the office hopes to move them over the next year.
Supervisor Nate Miley, whose district includes the lot, said he hopes it becomes a template for turning the county’s stuck, tax-defaulted lots into affordable housing.
He said at the hearing that “these things take time, but anything worth having is worth pursuing.”