It was briefly touched upon in the article, but would a current Oakland resident care to shed some light on the crime that does occur? Is it mainly focused to a few bad areas, or do you always have to be extra careful when out in public after dark?
Lots of people on the other side of the hills (Concord, Moraga, Walnut Creek) have this idea that Oakland is a really scary place. I think it's partly racial (because of the higher percentage of African Americans here) and partly a PR issue (the 24/7 news cycle only presents sensational items).
I've lived in the area since 2001. I lived in Berkeley for the 13 years prior. I had more problems with crime there, and I was fairly close to campus. People don't normally think of Berkeley as a high crime place, either.
The most dangerous thing I deal with on a daily basis? Cars and bikes. I always cross the street legally, but both cars and bicycles have issues when it comes to respecting pedestrians. I've even seen a police car not yield for a pregnant woman pushing a stroller in a cross walk! He cruised by her within inches. I was dumbfounded. She was in the middle of a 4 lane (2 each way) road.
Those may each be part of the issue, but I think that a big part of the issue is the actual crime statistics that show that, indeed, Oakland is, in fact, a dangerous place by comparison to those other places.
I mean, there's something about Oakland having a little over 3 times the population but a little under 20 times the number of violent crimes as Concord in 2012 [1].
[1] http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Crime-up-in-Oakland-much...
So, do you avoid Oakland or avoid the bad parts of Oakland? I, personally, just avoid the bad parts.
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Oakland-sees...
I hear that Concord's gotten worse since, as well, but I don't have a good source for that.
Speaking of which, when I get around to running for mayor of Oakland, I'm going to have only 2 planks:
1) Charging the people of Piedmont $50 to drive out of Piedmont.
2) Divesting "Oakland" of almost all of its real estate, while retaining all of its civic debts, then letting the remnant entity of "Oakland" just go bankrupt.
I think this is going to be a very popular platform!
Because of the correlation between crime and demographics, it might be tempting to publicly call out concerns about high crime neighborhoods as examples of racism, but I still wouldn't check your iPhone on the street at night in Oakland.
~~an Oakland resident
The other night I saw a young woman walking by the lake at 10 PM while talking on her iPhone -- and that seems normal for me as a newcomer, but my wife grew up in Oakland and tells stories from the 90's when it wasn't smart to park your car by Lake Merritt in the middle of the day on a weekend, let alone go for a walk by yourself at night with your phone out.
What I don't understand is given the skyrocketing real estate prices in San Francisco, versus the much cheaper and undeveloped density that the BART corridor could support in Oakland, why more high-density residential isn't springing up on this side of the bay.
Oakland, for reasons unique to Oakland, did not benefit from the move-back-to-downtown movement of the 90s-on that turned around city cores like Chicago. Still, Oakland's downtown is so small and geographically special that another strong wave of residential building will turn it around quicker than other cities. I'd argue we are already witnessing the run...
That said, there are other parts of the city that are much more dangerous. I generally put these in two categories: (1) neighborhoods with a high concentration of crimes like robberies and (2) neighborhoods where gang-related violence occurs. (2) is very often a subset of (1).
I'm not an expert, but from my understanding, (2) areas are heavily concentrated in East Oakland (east of Park Blvd), so if you generally don't traverse that part of the city, you avoid much of that danger.
But you can say the same thing about SF. I doubt for example that when people talk about the hot SF real estate market they are referring to the Excelsior. If you center yourself on the SoMA area in SF, many parts of Oakland are closer to it, in terms of travel time, than most of SF. It could take you an hour to get to 1st and Folsom from 48th Ave & Noriega in SF. But you can get there in ten minutes from West Oakland.
However, I personally have never been the victim of a crime.