City Government
Explosive Growth Coming to Oakland, Say Developers
Local business people packed into the grand ballroom in Oakland Marriott City Center last Friday to hear Mayor Jean Quan, Mayor-elect Libby Schaaf and a panel of five major Bay Area developers talk about the development free-for-all that is beginning to unfold in Oakland.
The event, called “Oakland Structures,” was sponsored by the San Francisco Business Times at a cost of $70 a head and was billed as offering insight on the big changes that are coming to the city.
“Investors are converging on Oakland in unprecedented numbers, and it’s a pivotal time for the city. Oakland can no longer be considered to be on the ‘verge,’” according to the announcement for the event.
Remarkably for Oakland, African Americans and Latinos were absent from the speakers’ platform and few in number in the ballroom.
Beside the present and future mayors, speakers included Michael Ghielmetti, president of Signature Development Group, which along with a major Beijing investor, is building 3,100 units of market-rate housing on the Embarcadero in Oakland; and Floyd Kephart, chairman of the Renaissance Companies, Inc., who hopes to build the massive Coliseum City project near the Oakland Airport.
Other Bay Area developers who shared their views on Oakland’s future and their projects were Michael Cohen, co-founder and principal of the Strada Investment Group; Phil Kerr, president of the Northern California City Ventures; and Scott Smithers, managing principal of Lane Partners LLC.
“We are hungry for development after winning the Nov. 4 election,” said Mayor-elect Schaaf, in an interview with the SF Business Times a few days after the election.
“However, we also have tremendous needs. We are an old city, and we have incredible deferred maintenance,” she said, emphasizing developers have to expect to pay city fees.
She told the developers at the Business Times event that her goal is to create “predictability and clarity” for development projects in the city, hire “kick-ass (staff) who get things done” and make the City of Oakland “the least irritating government possible.”
Floyd Kephart said that he represented a number of investors who want to build the Coliseum City project, which has been proposed but not yet approved by the city.
The project has already stirred concerns among city residents – some who want to assure that jobs and housing go to local people and others who say that the project as proposed would create a destructive, not constructive, presence in the city.
“I don’t know what the future will bring, but I know it’s coming,” said Kephart, who said that he and the financiers he represents would like to go ahead with the full project that has been proposed by city staff and consultants.
“We don’t know exactly what form it will take,” he said, but the city has created a great proposal. “We’re not trying to change that. We’re trying to implement that.”
As proposed, the huge complex would contain new stadiums for up to three teams, 1.9 million-square-feet of retail and office space, several hotels and restaurants and entertainment.
“All of us (financiers) live on demographics” who base their decisions looking at the trends, Kephart said. “I represent 40 private equity hedge funds. Private capital goes where the opportunities are.”
“There is no doubt that capital is coming here,” he said. ”The question is whether it will build the future “ that Oaklanders want.
This development is going to take time, Kephart said. “It’s a process, and it never comes out the way” people expected it would be at the beginning of the process.
Activism
Oakland Post: Week of March 28 – April 1, 2025
The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 28 – April 1, 2025

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Bay Area
Five Years After COVID-19 Began, a Struggling Child Care Workforce Faces New Threats
Five years ago, as COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures began, most early educators continued to work in person, risking their own health and that of their families. “Early educators were called essential, but they weren’t provided with the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe,” said CSCCE Executive Director Lea Austin. “There were no special shopping hours or ways for them to access safety materials in those early and scary months of the pandemic, leaving them to compete with other shoppers. One state even advised them to wear trash bags if they couldn’t find PPE.”

UC Berkeley News
In the first eight months of the COVID-19 pandemic alone, 166,000 childcare jobs were lost across the nation. Significant recovery didn’t begin until the advent of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Child Care Stabilization funds in April 2021.
Today, child care employment is back to slightly above pre-pandemic levels, but job growth has remained sluggish at 1.4% since ARPA funding allocations ended in October 2023, according to analysis by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment (CSCCE) at UC Berkeley. In the last six months, childcare employment has hovered around 1.1 million.
Yet more than two million American parents report job changes due to problems accessing child care. Why does the childcare sector continue to face a workforce crisis that has predated the pandemic? Inadequate compensation drives high turnover rates and workforce shortages that predate the pandemic. Early childhood educators are skilled professionals; many have more than 15 years of experience and a college degree, but their compensation does not reflect their expertise. The national median hourly wage is $13.07, and only a small proportion of early educators receive benefits.
And now a new round of challenges is about to hit childcare. The low wages paid in early care and education result in 43% of early educator families depending on at least one public support program, such as Medicaid or food stamps, both of which are threatened by potential federal funding cuts. Job numbers will likely fall as many early childhood educators need to find jobs with healthcare benefits or better pay.
In addition, one in five child care workers are immigrants, and executive orders driving deportation and ICE raids will further devastate the entire early care and education system. These stresses are part of the historical lack of respect the workforce faces, despite all they contribute to children, families, and the economy.
Five years ago, as COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures began, most early educators continued to work in person, risking their own health and that of their families. “Early educators were called essential, but they weren’t provided with the personal protective equipment they needed to stay safe,” said CSCCE Executive Director Lea Austin. “There were no special shopping hours or ways for them to access safety materials in those early and scary months of the pandemic, leaving them to compete with other shoppers. One state even advised them to wear trash bags if they couldn’t find PPE.”
The economic impact was equally dire. Even as many providers tried to remain open to ensure their financial security, the combination of higher costs to meet safety protocols and lower revenue from fewer children enrolled led to job losses, increased debt, and program closures.
Eventually, the federal government responded with historic short-term investments through ARPA, which stabilized childcare programs. These funds provided money to increase pay or provide financial relief to early educators to improve their income and well-being. The childcare sector began to slowly recover. Larger job gains were made in 2022 and 2023, and as of November 2023, national job numbers had slightly surpassed pre-pandemic levels, though state and metro areas continued to fluctuate.
Many states have continued to support the workforce after ARPA funding expired in late 2024. In Maine, a salary supplement initiative has provided monthly stipends of $240-$540 to educators working in licensed home- or center-based care, based on education and experience, making it one of the nation’s leaders in its support of early educators. Early educators say the program has enabled them to raise wages, which has improved staff retention. Yet now, Governor Janet Mills is considering cutting the stipend program in half.
“History shows that once an emergency is perceived to have passed, public funding that supports the early care and education workforce is pulled,” says Austin. “You can’t build a stable childcare workforce and system without consistent public investment and respect for all that early educators contribute.”
The Center for the Study of Childcare Employment is the source of this story.
Activism
We Fought on Opposite Sides of the Sheng Thao Recall. Here’s Why We’re Uniting Behind Barbara Lee for Oakland Mayor
Today, we are coming together to do all we can to make sure Barbara Lee is elected Mayor in the April 15 Oakland special election. Here’s why. Now more than ever, Oakland needs a respected, hands-on leader who will unite residents behind a clear vision for change. The next mayor will have to hit the ground running with leaders and stakeholders across our political divide to get to work solving the problems standing in the way of Oakland’s progress. Job No. 1: improving public safety. Everyone agrees that all Oaklanders deserve to feel safe in their neighborhoods. But sadly, too many of us do not.

By Robert Harris and Richard Fuentes
Special to The Post
The City of Oakland is facing a number of urgent challenges, from housing and public safety to a pressing need for jobs and economic development. One of us, Robert Harris, supported the November recall vote that removed Mayor Sheng Thao from office. Meanwhile, Richard Fuentes believed the recall was the wrong strategy to tackle Oakland’s challenges.
Today, we are coming together to do all we can to make sure Barbara Lee is elected Mayor in the April 15 Oakland special election. Here’s why.
Now more than ever, Oakland needs a respected, hands-on leader who will unite residents behind a clear vision for change.
The next mayor will have to hit the ground running with leaders and stakeholders across our political divide to get to work solving the problems standing in the way of Oakland’s progress.
Job No. 1: improving public safety. Everyone agrees that all Oaklanders deserve to feel safe in their neighborhoods. But sadly, too many of us do not.
During her three decades in the state Legislature and Congress, Lee made public safety a priority, securing funding for police and firefighters in Oakland, delivering $15.8 million in community safety funding, and more. Today, she has a plan for making Oakland safer. It starts with making sure police are resourced, ready, and on patrol to stop the most dangerous criminals on our streets.
Oakland residents and business owners are feeling the impact of too many assaults, smash/grabs, retail thefts, and home robberies. Lee will increase the number of police on the streets, make sure they are focused on the biggest threats, and invest in violence prevention and proven alternatives that prevent crime and violence in the first place.
In addition, on day one, Barbara Lee will focus on Oakland’s business community, creating an advisory cabinet of business owners and pushing to ensure Oakland can attract and keep businesses of all sizes.
The other top issue facing Oakland is housing and homelessness. As of May 2024, over 5,500 people were unhoused in the city. Oaklanders are just 25% of the population of Alameda County, but the city has 57% of the unhoused population.
Unhoused people include seniors, veterans, single women, women with children, people who suffer physical and mental illness, unemployed and undereducated people, and individuals addicted to drugs. Some are students under 18 living on the streets without their parents or a guardian. Research shows that 53% of Oakland’s homeless population is Black.
Starting on her first day in office, Lee will use her national profile and experience to bring new resources to the city to reduce homelessness and expand affordable housing. And she will forge new public/private partnerships and collaboration between the City, Alameda County, other public agencies, and local nonprofits to ensure that Oakland gets its fair share of resources for everything from supportive services to affordable housing.
Besides a public safety and housing crisis, Oakland has a reputational crisis at hand. Too many people locally and nationally believe Oakland does not have the ability to tackle its problems.
Lee has the national reputation and the relationships she can use to assert a new narrative about our beloved Oakland – a vibrant, diverse, and culturally rich city with a deep history of activism and innovation.
Everyone remembers how Lee stood up for Oakland values as the only member of Congress not to authorize the disastrous Iraq War in 2001. She has led the fight in Congress for ethics reform and changes to the nation’s pay-to-play campaign finance laws.
Lee stands alone among the candidates for mayor as a longtime champion of honest, transparent, and accountable government—and she has the reputation and the skills to lead an Oakland transformation that puts people first.
The past few years have been a trying period for our hometown.
Robert Harris supported the recall because of Thao’s decision to fire LeRonne Armstrong; her refusal to meet with certain organizations, such as the Oakland Branch of the NAACP; and the city missing the deadline for filing for a state grant to deal with serious retail thefts in Oakland.
Richard Fuentes opposed the recall, believing that Oakland was making progress in reducing crime. The voters have had their say; now, it is time for us to move forward together and turn the page to a new era.
The two of us don’t agree on everything, but we agree on this: the next few years will be safer, stronger, and more prosperous if Oaklanders elect Barbara Lee as our next mayor on April 15.
Robert Harris is a retired attorney at PG&E and former legal counsel for NAACP.
Richard Fuentes is co-owner of FLUID510 and chair of the Political Action Committee, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 57.
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