OAKLAND, Calif. – When Charlene Wang visited Oakland’s Chinatown recently, she was greeted with a racial epithet and then chased by a vehicle that forced her to leap out of harm’s way. “Oakland is at the epicenter of anti-Asian hate,” she said.
Kanitha Matoury has been robbed four times and is struggling to keep her small business in the area insured due to the high crime rate. “Nothing is working here.”
The pair are among six candidates vying to represent District 2—which includes Chinatown—on the Oakland City Council in a special election slated for April 15. The winner will represent one of the nation’s most diverse communities and one desperate to turn the page on the past few years.
“It’s very sad,” said Matoury, an Air Force veteran, restauranteur and small business owner who came to the US at the age of 13 from her native Cambodia. Gesturing to the neighborhood outside, she noted, “Everything closes at 4PM… without safety, we don’t have a town.”
Matoury and Wang spoke during a March 4 candidate’s forum organized by the Oakland Chinatown Coalition, a network of Community Based Organizations, businesses and churches serving Chinatown’s 4,000+ residents.
The area, one of the nation’s oldest Chinatowns—established in the 1850s—is today home to sizable Asian and Latino communities as well as significant Black and white populations. Poverty rates remain high and are especially concentrated among elderly API residents and children.
Businesses, meanwhile, continue to struggle with persistent crime, as well as rising costs. The neighborhood has seen some 15%-20% of its small businesses shutter permanently since the Covid 19 pandemic, further eroding the city’s tax base.
Oakland, whose last mayor was recalled in November and later indicted on corruption charges, is staring down a $130 million budget deficit, prompting sweeping cuts to a wide swath of services, including housing, mental health and law enforcement.
“We want a pre-Covid level of business and safety,” said Alfred Lee, board member with the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, one of the groups that organized Tuesday’s forum. “It’s a big puzzle. How do you bring all these resources without raising taxes on the struggling businesses that we have?”
He added, “We’re going to have to come up with some very creative ideas to keep the city going.”
Harold Lowe—an Oakland native, like most of the candidates—is a financial planner. He told the audience, many of them elderly Chinatown residents, that he has a 10pt. plan for how to revive the district that includes investments in things like improved street lighting, slowing down traffic, and increasing access to affordable housing.
Oakland is required by the state to create over 10,000 units of affordable housing by 2030. Voters approved Measure U in 2022 creating an $850 million pool to fund construction, including a 91-unit development for low-income residents that broke ground late last year. The city, however, remains well behind its targeted goal.
“The Chinese population in Chinatown is declining,” said Lowe, who is African American. “We need to build Chinatown again.” He then cited grim statistics, including the fact that 20% of residents in the neighborhood lack internet access in their homes.
“There used to be 500 Chinatowns across California,” Lowe noted. “I worry about Chinatown 100 years from now.”
Oakland Chinatown’s challenges are not unique. Nationwide, these historic enclaves—communities that reflect the ongoing struggle of immigrants working to gain a foothold in the US—have been battered by social, political and economic headwinds.
Tourist traffic to New York’s Chinatown has fallen by some 50% since the Covid 19 pandemic, even as the city squares off with residents over the construction of a massive new prison facility there. In Philadelphia, Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco, community members are similarly seeking ways to preserve their neighborhoods’ cultural integrity without sacrificing economic growth.
Lee noted that for the first time in recent memory there is no API representation on Oakland’s City Council in a city where Asian Americans account for one-third of the population. But he said when it comes to representing Chinatown, “It doesn’t matter the color of your skin… it’s the policy that is more important.”
Aside from Wang and Matoury, all four of the other candidates are African American.
Paul Seto, 78, is a retired chef from Hong Kong who has lived in Oakland Chinatown for the past 15 years.
“My main concern is safety,” he said, speaking in Cantonese. “I would like to see less burglary and make sure people feel safe when they walk the streets.” He added, “Right now, in Oakland, there is a lot of violence. I hope maybe the candidates tonight will take care of that.”
All the candidates on stage acknowledged the challenges around public safety and appeared to agree over the need for more and better policing, though the city’s financial constraints would make it hard to hire new officers, explained Kara Murray-Badal.
Touting her record working around issues of public safety in cities including Baltimore, Boston and New York, Murray-Badal—who grew up in District 2—suggested Oakland needs to look to the hiring of more District Attorneys and closer coordination with Alameda County.
She also noted that efforts to keep people who are struggling to stay housed in their homes would be a more cost-efficient way of combating homelessness in the area. “The city has a big role to play in promoting stability to keep people housed,” she said.
Other candidates include Paula Thomas, who built a successful media business in Sacramento before returning to her native Oakland, and Reverend Kenneth Anderson, pastor at the Williams Chapel Baptist Church.
The winner will have just two years to accomplish their goals, a tight timeline even under the best of circumstances, as they finish out the term for former District 2 Representative Nikki Fortunato Bas, who vacated her seat after being elected to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.
“I see sparks of hope,” said Murray-Badal, offering a note of optimism. Addressing the audience, she praised the community’s efforts to care for one another and to fight for the neighborhood.
Calling Chinatown a “true hub of culture and identity,” she continued, “I want those sparks to grow.”
