Elaine Brown is a former leader of the Black Panther Party—Minister of Information and Chairman. Now she’s a property developer and millions of dollars are pouring into the nonprofit for her apartment building and commercial hub under construction on 7th Street in West Oakland. The businesses will be run as cooperatives, with every worker offered an ownership interest and with jobs reserved for poor or formerly incarcerated people. California’s prisons disproportionately lock up African Americans: 29% of male prisoners are Black, while they make up only 6% of the state’s adult male population. “One of the reasons people are in prison is because they are poor; they are there for economic crimes,” Brown said. “The only way to stop them going back into prison after release is to get them some money and a job.” The other focus of the Black Panther will be 79 units of affordable housing that will fill the upper stories. Studios and one-and two-bedroom apartments will be offered to very low and extremely low-income people, with a maximum limit on their earnings set at 30% of the area’s median income (about $30,000 a year). With support from the city of Oakland and California, all 79 apartments will be offered at low or extremely low rents. “Nobody else in West Oakland or anywhere else in this city has 100% affordable housing, can you believe that?” Amazing.
enemies too.