Economics

Perils of Probate

Published

9 years ago

March 21, 2016

In the early 1900s in the Bay Area, African-American lawyers were unwelcome and faced hostile opposition in the legal community.

It was not until 1943 that the American Bar Association allowed Black Attorneys into their organization, and although local bar associations admitted Blacks, their practice was restricted.

In 1955, the first African-American Bar Association, the Charles Houston Law Club, was formed in the Bay Area by 32 African American lawyers. Many went on to become judges, ambassadors, mayors, county supervisors and successful businessmen.

One of those founders was attorney Hiawatha T. Roberts, an advocate and champion of civil rights causes during the 62 years of his career.

Known for his “solo guerrilla lawyering” tactics, Roberts, guided by G.B. Gipson, of the East Bay Democratic Club and Assemblyman Byron Rumford, fought for the integration of the drug store at 13th and Broadway in Oakland that for years had refused service to Blacks.

Roberts served as general counsel for the United Auto Worker (UAW), obtaining integrated housing for minorities near the Ford plant in Milpitas.

He integrated the realtor organization so that Blacks could become members, assisting Ray Collins’ appointment as president to the Alameda County Board. To assure a fair price for homes, Roberts represented Russell City African American’s facing annexation to the City of Hayward, who previously were offered pennies on the dollar in order to use the property to build houses for white folks.

In 1958, Roberts turned from criminal to civil court practice. From 1956 to the present, he has practiced probate law where he discovered discriminatory practices and a “white male only” policy that has denied him fees of approximately $1 million.

Racial discrimination against him began in 2008 while representing Milburn Fort, who died with a $200,000 Deed of Trust on his condo on Lake Merritt.

Upon Fort’s death, the $200,000 dollar lien was on the property, with no written document it secured. This made transfer of the property or the closing of the estate impossible.

It took 17 years of litigation to find the secret judgment regarding the note on the property.

Judge Marshall Whitley, an African-American seated in Probate court, encouraged Roberts to proceed to litigate the matter to conclusion although the estate had run out of money.

Roberts invested $65,000 of his personal money and incurred fees exceeding $235,000. On the eve of closing the estate, Judge Whitley removed Fort’s son as executor, denying the son access to the property even though his nephew had offered $400,000.

The judge appointed attorney Dwayne Leonard as special administrator, who sold the property for $300,000. He then paid off liens and inferior claims to creditors with the exception of Roberts, who he allowed $11,000 on his claim of over $300,000, a priority claim by law.

“When Black lawyers in Alameda County are representing clients, the judge inevitably appoints a court representative for the estate,” said Roberts.

“ There is a 25 court appointed attorney (on a) list – all white males – and those white administrators often make no effort to represent the desires of family members desiring to keep their property.

“They request exorbitant fees while cutting Black attorney fees 40 percent to 50 percent, which only covers overhead. The end result is a denial of profit.

“I’ve made no money, and this has happened to me at least six times, rendering me insolvent. This is a gross violation of the judge’s discretion to the point that it is illegal.

“At age 89, I am now insolvent, leaving my wife and I to live solely on social security at $2,600 a month, while the court has denied me close to a million dollars in fees over the past 10 years.

“I have sought an audience with probate judges for years regarding this racial injustice to no avail.”

Oakland Post

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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.”

Published

3 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

UC Berkeley photo.

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.

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.

Oakland Post

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Alameda County

Trump Order Slashes Federal Agencies Supporting Minority Business and Neighborhood Development

The latest executive order targeted several federal agencies, including the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, ordering that their programs and staff be reduced “to the minimum presence and function required by law.” The executive order targeted more agencies that Trump “has determined are unnecessary,” the order stated.

Published

3 days ago

March 24, 2025

Oakland Post

iStock.

By Brandon Patterson

On March 14, President Trump signed an executive order slashing the operations of two federal agencies supporting growth in minority business and neighborhoods as he continued his attacks on programs supporting people of color and on the size of the federal bureaucracy.

The MBDA’s mission is to “promote the growth and global competitiveness” of minority business enterprises, or MBEs. In 2023, according to its website, the agency helped MBEs access $1.5 billion in capital and facilitated nearly $3.8 billion in contracts awarded to minority business enterprises. It also helped MBEs create or sustain more than 19,000 jobs nationwide. Similarly, the CDFI Fund supports economic growth in under-invested communities by providing funding and technical assistance to local CDFIs, including banks, loan funds, and credit unions, that support community development projects in cities across the country. In 2023, the fund supported more than 1,400 local CDFIs across the country, including more than 80 in California — among the highest number for any state in the country.

The MBDA has local satellite business centers operated by organizations that support minority clients with services such as business consulting, contract bid preparation, loan packaging, and accessing capital funding. The San Francisco Bay Area business center is San Jose, operated by San Francisco-based organization Asian, Inc. Meanwhile, local Oakland CDFIs supported by the federal CDFI fund since 2021 include Habitat Community Capital, TMC Community Capital, Gateway Bank Federal Savings Bank, Beneficial State Bancorp, Inc., and Main Street Launch.

“It is clear that the hollowing out of the CDFI Fund and MBDA is not being ordered because those programs have failed in their mission,” the CEO of Small Business Majority John Arensmeyer, a national organization that advocates for small businesses, said in a statement on Saturday. “Instead, it is yet another case of President Trump using DEI as a club to eviscerate programs that seek to level our economic playing field.”

Congresswoman Lateefah Simon also slammed the decision in a statement to the Oakland Post. “As a member of the House Small Business Committee who represents multiple CDFIs in CA-12, I believe Trump’s gutting of operations at the Minority Business Development Agency and at the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund is a direct attack on small businesses, communities of color and other underserved communities,” Rep. Simon said. “Both the MBDA and the CDFI Fund were created with bipartisan support to help historically underserved communities and small businesses — and both programs have helped to dramatically change the material realities of people and bolster entrepreneurship in the U.S. There is no logic to this decision. The point is discrimination and cruelty.”