As expensive as it is to live and work in the Bay Area, one city in the East Bay is seeing a significant drop in rents.
India Rose Carter-Bolick just moved from San Francisco to an apartment in Oakland with her partner.
“I can’t afford to live in San Francisco anymore, so this felt like the only option that was relatively close to home,” Carter-Bolick said.
India says they visited dozens of apartments during their search and noticed the lower prices in Oakland.
“We were aiming for two bedrooms, hoping we would have room for an office,” says Carter-Bolick.
They could get that here. They ended up in a modern two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit near Lake Merritt.
“We’re going to have a desk and we’re going to move that little blue couch over here so we have a little lounge area to work in,” Carter-Bolick said.
Local rental experts say Oakland is one of the few cities in the Bay Area where rents are currently falling. They say the main contributing factor is the volume of vacant rental properties in the city.
Before the pandemic, many new apartment buildings were springing up. Now with remote work and the issues the city has seen with crime and safety, not as many people are choosing to live in Oakland. That means some landlords have lowered their rents to attract new residents.
But even with the price drop, the cost of renting an apartment in Oakland remains high compared to other cities in the country, and is still more expensive for many long-time residents.
That’s something Carter-Bolick said she thinks about a lot.
“I don’t really know if the apartments that are more accessible to lower-income earners are seeing the same change. I don’t know if they’ve decreased as much as these apartments in downtown Oakland have changed,” Carter-Bolik said.
India told me she hopes the city can be a place where anyone who wants to live here can find an affordable and comfortable place to live.
She and her partner are already excited to call this city their new home.
“Every morning I wake up and I’m so excited to be here. And I’m really excited to get to know this community and create more connections with the different community groups within Oakland,” said Carter-Bolick.
