Crime Scene Tape At Lake Merritt in Oakland.
The average rent in Oakland is a whopping $2,651 per month
Landlords are charging Rolls Royce prices for rents in ghetto locations in Oakland
By Lynda Carson – October 27, 2025
According to Rent Cafe.com on October 19, 2025, the average rent in Oakland is a whopping $2,651 per month, in contrast to a year ago when the rent was only a mere $2,600 per month. No wonder there are so many unhoused folks living on the streets.
Despite the fact that the voters in Oakland voted to pass Measure EE, Just Cause Eviction Protections in 2002, the rents have continued to skyrocket to new heights.
HUD’s subsidized housing tenants are presently concerned that the government shutdown may have bad effects on their housing situation, and in recent days a judge/court granted a TRO to stop HUD from withholding grant money from our nation’s 3,300 Public Housing Authorities.
In August 2025, U.S. News & World Report has dubbed Oakland the second most dangerous place in the country, and the convicted felon President Donald J. Trump has been threatening to send the National Guard to Oakland.
Reportedly, according to RentCafe.com, Studio Apartments can be had at the mere asking price of $1,997, and offer the most budget-friendly option with 512 square feet, ideal for single renters prioritizing location over space. Naturally, that does not include utilities or first and last months rent, and security deposits to move in.
Additionally, Zumper.com reported that the average rent in Oakland in 2024 for a one-bedroom apartment was only $2,046 per month.
During April 2022, Zumper reports that the median monthly rent in downtown Oakland is $3,168 per month. Reportedly, this is a 6% increase compared to the year before.
According to Apartment List in April 2022, the average rent for a studio apartment in Oakland is a whopping $2,483 per month.
Reportedly, “In 2018, the average rent in Oakland was $2,740, but between 2018 and 2019, the city has seen a significant rent increase. As of April 2019, the average rent had risen to $3,040, meaning the rent increase in Oakland was a stunning 9.8% year over year.”
Unreasonable landlords have been charging Rolls Royce prices for rents in ghetto locations in Oakland. Despite the Rolls Royce rent costs in ghetto locations in Oakland, according to reports, in 2021 Oakland was ranked as the fifth most dangerous city in the nation.
During 1998, reportedly the median price for a studio apartment in Oakland was $540.00 per month, 1 bedroom rental units were $725.00 per month, and 2 bedroom units averaged out at $875.00 per month, according to Homefinders.
Due to massive rent increases during 1999, the median price for a studio apartment in Oakland was $713.00 per month, 1 bedroom rental units were $850.00 per month, and 2 bedroom units averaged out at $1,050.00 per month. The housing crisis that occurred due to the rent gouging going on by greedy landlords during 1998 through 1999 amounted to a 32% increase in rent for studios, a 17% increase for 1 bedroom units, and a massive 20% increase for 2 bedroom units. The rent gouging by greedy landlords occurred during a period in which the so-called 3% cap on annual rent increases still existed in Oakland.
Additionally, based on figures from Rental Resolutions in that period, during the year 2000 in Oakland, the minimum market rate monthly rents averaged out at $800.00-$900.00 for studio apartments, $850.00-$1,100.00 for 1 bedroom units, and $1200.00-$1500.00 for 2 bedroom units.
The average market rate monthly rent in Oakland during 2001 were $850-$950 for studios, $1,150-$1,300 for 1 bedroom units, and $1,600-$1,800 for 2 bedroom rental units. The above source of figures were from Rental Resolutions in 2001. Indeed, to renters during that same period, these were some alarming figures that resulted in the displacement of many low-income renters in Oakland.
In comparison, during 2004, low-income areas below MacArthur Boulevard had cheaper rents, and the average minimal monthly rents being charged for one-bedroom units were only $650.00 a month in Oakland.
Monthly Average Rents In Oakland’s Low-Income SRO Hotels, That Appear To be Non-Existant At This Point.
During 2004, the Ridge Hotel charged $475 a month for an SRO room: The Old Oakland Hotel charged $480 to $520 a month for an SRO: The Sutter Hotel charged $560 for an SRO: The Lake Hurst Hotel near Lake Merritt offered SRO rooms for as little as $675 per month, and in addition to the room, they offered renters two free meals a day, five days a week, in their dining room.
During that same year in 2004, there was a Section 8 voucher housing crisis because of funding shortfalls. During a July 9 interview, Alameda Housing Authority Director Michael Pucci said, “In the last 20 years, this has been the worst disaster of my career taking place recently. I had to serve notice to over 1,600 renters lately and tell them that we may not have been able to pay their rents for the month of June. HUD has not been responding to our pleas for more assistance. There’s people calling to ask if their vouchers are being funded next month and I don’t know what to tell them, and then there’s been protests going on in the streets of Alameda, at City Hall and in front of my home. If not for the help of my staff, I may not have been able to face this crisis situation on my own.”
“The Alameda Housing Authority has faced a 6 percent loss in administration fees to run the Section 8 program since mid-May, and that does not include the voucher funding shortfalls that also took place since late April,” Pucci said. “I’m really stressed out by what’s been happening, and HUD has already postponed several meetings I set up with them to find out what’s going on. This has never occurred before, and I’m very concerned. I would not wish to ever relive what I have been going through lately, and if we do not get new funding to hand out new vouchers to the 108 families caught up into this mess, they will be at risk of becoming homeless and will see their quality of their life disappear very rapidly.”
In 2007, the same year that Oakland reporter Chauncey Bailey was gunned down in cold blood on the streets Oakland, according to the Mercury news the average rent in the San Francisco/Oakland area then in was $1,459 per month. This was also the same year that famed attorney Tony Serra got out of prison, and sued the federal government over slave labor practices in prison.
During 2006, “on Tuesday, Aug. 2, 43 residential tenants of the historic landmark California Hotel in Oakland filed a lawsuit at the Alameda County Superior Court House against Oakland Community Housing Inc. (OCHI), a nonprofit housing developer.
Most of them elderly disabled African-Americans, the 43 tenants named in the lawsuit were seeking $50,000 each in damages for rat infestations, bed bugs, cockroaches and other health and safety issues.
Backing the horrific claims of the tenants was a July 22, 2005, letter from the Alameda County Health Vector Control Services stating that the procedures being utilized by OCHI to control the bed bugs are inadequate. In addition, vector biologist David K. James wrote, “A severe Norway rat infestation exists within these premises, and it appears that it’s a long established and large population.”
Frank Benavidez says, “I can hear the rats scratching around in my ceiling at night and the noise keeps me from sleeping.”
Built in 1929 and presently valued at $4,853,722, the 150-unit California Hotel cost only $1,910,000 when OCHI bought it in 1990.
The tenants reside in Single Room Occupancy units (SROs) and pay their rents by the month. “We are charged either $395 for a basic room per month or as much as $466 a month for kitchenettes without a sink,” said three-year tenant Lisa Glorias, “but they charge us an extra $7.50 a night if we have a guest stay over.”
In 2011, “Richard Earl Singer, a Tiburon millionaire and the owner of the Menlo Hotel in Oakland, was sentenced to prison on August 31, 2011, after pleading guilty on June 22 to one count of solicitation to commit arson. The notorious slum hotel owner was sent to prison for hiring someone to burn down his hotel, and also was fined $60,000 and sentenced to an additional three-year period of supervised release.
Singer was arrested after federal authorities were tipped off about the arson plot. His scheme to burn down the Menlo Hotel was stopped after two informants contacted federal authorities and told them that Singer wanted to hire someone to burn down the hotel. One of the informants assisted federal authorities involved in the investigation.
According to federal officials, on Jan. 10, 2011, Singer attempted to hire someone to burn down the Hotel Menlo — a life-threatening act given that the residential hotel was occupied by tenants, and a restaurant and nail salon operated on the first floor of the seven-story building.
In his plea bargain, Singer admitted that he solicited others to burn down the Hotel Menlo, a low-income residential hotel he owned at 344 13th Street in Oakland.
Singer handed over a check for $1,500 so the arsonist could buy the materials needed to burn down the hotel, and he agreed to pay the arsonist an additional $63,500 about 48 hours after the hotel was burned down. Federal officials said that Singer wanted to collect a maximum insurance payment.”
Fast forward a few years, and in May 2013, Richard Singer was released from prison, and received three years probation. Reportedly, he is back in business buying and selling properties.
In comparison, during 2014, in the Empyrean Towers, formerly known as the Hotel Menlo, that was comparable to the low-income Ridge Hotel in Oakland, Alice Tse was charging renters as much as $79 dollars a night to live in slum-like conditions at the bedbug infested SRO hotel.
Slumlords have been a problem in the Bay Area, and in some cases the tenants sued them as a result.
Through The Years, Rents In Oakland Continued To Rise, Displacing Many:
According to the East Bay Express in 2012, one bedroom units were going for $900 to $1,000 in the Lake Merritt area, but during the same year studio apartments were going for $1,100 to $1,200, and one bedroom units for as much as $1,300.
In April 2015, in an article called “Hot rental market sparks suspicions of landlord arson in San Francisco” by Al Jazeera America, in part it reported, “A San Francisco official held a public hearing in March about the unusually high number of apartment fires in recent years that have hit the Mission District, the neighborhood at the center of San Francisco’s gentrification crisis. Many locals and housing rights activists believe some of the fires may be landlord arson — efforts by building owners to push out lower-income tenants in favor of higher-paying ones. San Francisco has some of the nation’s strongest tenant protections, including rent control. More than 200 residents displaced by fires in and around rapidly gentrifying Mission District over past three years. According to Al Jezeera America, “Housing activist and local journalist Lynda Carson believes she was the victim of landlord arson in 1985, when she was burned out of a low-income hotel in nearby Berkeley.
One of her neighbors died while trying to escape the fire through a window. “She bounced off the fire escape and landed on the sidewalk below and died from her injuries,” remembered Carson. The owners of the UC Hotel were never convicted of any crime.”
During 2015, it was reported that Oakland had the second fastest-rising rents in the nation, passing the pace of San Francisco’s rent increases, coming in second behind the rent increases occurring in Denver. The rents in Oakland have climbed over 12.1 percent during 2015, since the end of 2014.
In 2016, according to a report from Zumper, rents in Oakland were the fifth highest in the nation, and the New York Times claimed that Oakland’s median rent was right below Manhattans median rent.
During August of 2017, the average market rate rent for a one bedroom unit was $2,400 per month in Oakland. This was around the same time that some boycotts closed a restaurant and a night club owned some by KKK David Duke supporters. Reportedly, “A Minneapolis bar has closed down after employees and events hosts learnt that the owner donated $500 to the 2016 Senate campaign of David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Club Jäger shut down after several employees decided they no longer wanted to work for owner Julius DeRoma after learning of his support for Duke, local newspaper the Star Tribune reported.”
Meanwhile, it appears that homicidal landlords may be on the rise.
Lynda Carson may be reached at newzland2 [at] gmail.com
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