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Here's how AWFUL Oakland, California is Today. Is it Unfixable?

Ajouté le dim. 28 nov. 2021 Éducation Rectangular HD

Some say Oakland is Hell on Earth.

Of all the bad places I’ve been to in the United States, I don’t know if I’ve ever been to a city that’s as vastly rundown, abandoned and out of control as Oakland, California. It’s a very ugly, rough, littered, dangerous place where the laws aren’t enforced and the crime is staggering. I drove around Oakland for an entire day in late October of 2021 to see what it was like these days. And I don’t recall seeing any part of this city that was welcoming, safe or clean. It was really quite an experience.

Oakland has had trouble for decades now. In the 1990s, it was home to an explosion of gangs and drug use, though a lot of the gang activity here isn’t nearly as bad as it was 30 years ago. Then, following the Bay Area tech boom came a spike in the cost of living, which priced out the lower class. Over the last 5 years, the cost to rent or own a home is pushing even more people out into the streets.

Oakland is drug filled. It’s a graffiti covered shell of its former self where you can’t let your guard down for a minute, or risk being robbed, assaulted or shot at.

At least in the greater downtown area. Here’s a map of the area I covered in my car on this day. Oakland can be broken up into many different regions, but we’ll keep it simple and split it in two - west and east Oakland. That’s usually how it’s divided anyways.

Here in west Oakland, you have the greater downtown area. Downtown itself doesn’t look that bad at all, but just a few blocks west of downtown and you find all sorts of abandoned warehouses and people lining the streets in their RVs and cars, clearly victims of homelessness. This is also the side of town where most of the homeless camps are located. Some look like something you’d see in Haiti - lean to shacks made of recovered junk that serve as four walls and a roof, but that’s just about it.

Other large areas just outside of downtown are home to hundreds of people camped out in makeshift shanties among piles of trash with rats. Parts of West Oakland don’t even look like the United States. And in between the litter and the gutted buildings are neighborhoods. Can you imagine being surrounded by this? I mean paying $3,000 a month for a crummy apartment? It’s an expensive ghetto. And that’s not a good combination, people.

I walked around downtown and within 30 seconds, I saw a mentally ill woman hanging on the wiper blades of a city bus, clearly out of her mind. This was just a block from the hotel I was staying in. It’s like this all over the place. I can only imagine the things that a city bus driver in Oakland California has to deal with on an hourly basis.

Just down the block, I saw a woman get punched by a man. He just socked her in the head right in the middle of the street during an argument. And everyone that saw just shrugged it off. It’s Oakland. Never a dull moment I guess.

There’s no law and order in Oakland anymore. The police are underfunded, or de-funded. Their morale is low, and they’ve been asked to direct their efforts to only the most dire needs. If someone isn’t bleeding, it might take a long time for help to arrive. People run lights and speed around town, and clearly littering and vandalism isn’t going to get you in trouble here.

Here in East Oakland is where it’s really dangerous. Like west Oakland is mostly just ugly and rundown, but this is where a lot of the poor people live and this is where a lot of the gangs are. Shootings happen down here every day, sometimes many times a day. It’s as gritty and grimy as the west side, just on a far larger scale. To me, it seemed like East Oakland has been handed over to the dregs of society, to do with it as they wish. And this is what they’ve done.

Oakland is hell on earth. It's lawless, it's rundown, it's ugly it's dangerous, it's woke. No wonder the warriors and raiders left. The As are next. They’re gonna move to Vegas soon. Look at the place - would you want to play here?

Oakland’s problems don’t just go block after block. it's mile after mile. And very few people I talked to who live here think there’s a chance it can be saved. I think Oakland, California is beyond repair. Forever.

#california #moving

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