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History of West Oakland as a Food Desert

The turn of the twentieth century saw rapid urbanization in California’s port cities, a result of growing populations paired with increasing industrialization. Oakland’s proximity to San Francisco made it a desirable location for both industry and residency. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 and the construction of its terminus in Oakland, industry began expanding from San Francisco to the East Bay. Worker housing became increasingly concentrated in Oakland because of its proximity to the railway terminus, shipping ports, and the city center.

WWI saw a massive influx of military capital into Oakland and the promise of employment in expanding industries drew in thousands of new workers to the area, many of them immigrants and African Americans. Industrial, residential, and agricultural development continued in the area through the 1920’s. City planning at the time was characterized by what McClintock, an assistant professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State College, calls the “industrial garden” paradigm: the dispersal of industry away from the downtown area yet close and accessible to nearby residential neighborhoods, where the majority of residents had substantial yards and gardens. These semi-suburban neighborhoods expanded during the New Deal, when a series of highly subsidized low-interest loans where distributed by the Federal Housing Administration. Because developers consolidated land purchases, subdivision and construction, the East Bay saw a prevalence of vast tracts of small, single-family homes. This suburbanization was highly racialized however, as African Americans and other racial minorities were typically denied access to such loans.

When a new flood of workers migrated to Oakland during WWII, limited housing and mounting racial tensions prompted the Oakland Housing Authority to designate blacks-only housing projects in West Oakland, and corresponding whites-only projects in East Oakland. Racist housing covenants continued to concentrate the growing African American population to the West Oakland neighborhood throughout the 1950’s and 60’s.

Historical bank redlining and discriminatory lending practices during the mid-century helped to further delineate wealthy populations from low-income communities and segregate white populations from populations of color and minority communities. Redlining also stopped the flow of capital into low-income communities of color, which paired with the deindustrialization of Oakland in the late 20th century, increased rates of local unemployment and poverty, and resulted in the decay of public infrastructure and facilities. This divestment lowered real estate values and property taxes in the flatlands of Oakland which, combined with the growing demand for food retail in wealthier suburban neighborhoods, discouraged supermarkets and other full-service food retailers from developing in the West Oakland neighborhood. Zoning restrictions, and land parcel sizes also restricted their development. While many commercial parcels in the area where too small to accommodate a grocery store, they were adequately sized for corner stores, convenience stores, and liquor stores. "The number of grocery stores in West Oakland declined from 137 in 1960 to 22 in 1980... a drop from nearly 25 percent of all of the city’s stores to just above 10 percent. By the 1990s, many of these same supermarkets that had pushed out the small grocers in the flatlands had also closed their doors in response to falling profits." This historical paradigm of “supermarket redlining” is widely considered an extremely influential factor in the occurrence of food deserts.