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L O C A L G O V E R N M E N T

Oakland’s Neighborly LawyersImagine a cross between the Peace

Corps and a legal aid society; that’s

about what you get with the

Neighborhood Law Corps in Oak-

land, California. A private founda-

tion operating out of the city

attorney’s office fields a team of

dedicated lawyers who work with

residents fighting against neighbor-

hood blight, drug dealing, substan-

dard housing, and pollution.

The goal of the Neighborhood Law

Corps, according to the originator of

the program, Oakland City Attorney

John Russo, is to “put together the

sense of community activism and

the sensibility of a legal aid attor-

ney with municipal powers over

health, safety, and welfare.”

In a recent interview Russo ex-

plained how the program works:

“Our lawyers go out, they work with

community groups, with neighbor-

hood residential associations, mer-

chant groups, the faith community,

and they do this sort of town hall

process for each area, and people

vote to create a work program for

the neighborhood. They say, ‘These

properties are problems, this big

apartment building is in terrible

shape, people are living in horrible

conditions, they’re selling drugs

near this liquor store.’”

Law corps attorneys are paid in the

low five figures (perhaps half the

amount they could earn in their

first year at a large firm) to work in

the community for two years,

enforcing code violations and nego-

tiating with apartment and business

owners to eliminate problems such

as vacant lots or deli-liquor stores

that attract illegal activity.

“They know they’re only going to be

there for two years, so they don’t

tend to make friends or create long-

term relationships in city govern-

ment,” said Russo. “They don’t

care if they step on toes. When they

hear from the planning department

that they can’t get an inspector out

there for three weeks, their reaction

is going to be, ‘Why the hell not?’”

Interestingly, Alex Nguyen, execu-

tive director of the program, is not a

lawyer. “He’s a social worker by

trade,” Russo said. “I didn’t want

an attorney running the program.

Attorneys have a tendency to fall in

love with their cases, and they kind

of forget the human dimension

sometimes. I thought it was impor-

tant to have somebody with a social-

work background run the program.”

Oakland’s housing stock is a study

in contrasts. In the hills are beauti-

fully built homes with stunning

views of San Francisco Bay. In the

“flatlands” of East and West

Oakland are poor and working-class

neighborhoods with a mix of single-

and multiunit dwellings and a deli-

liquor store on every other corner.

Oakland has what Russo calls an

“overabundance” of liquor stores,

many of which were grandfathered

in as the permit process became

more restrictive. Some of these

stores could only be classified

under the category of public nui-

sance. Drug dealing, prostitution,

littering, and loitering pose serious

challenges to civic activists and

neighborhood groups struggling to

clean things up.

“You never see groups of young

men hassling women, gambling,

engaged in illegal activity hanging

out in front of a dry cleaners,” said

Russo. “They’re always in front of a

liquor store. For whatever reason,

liquor is a magnet and a crucible

for bad behavior, and when we have

stores that are unwilling to cooper-

ate with us, in helping us manage

this antisocial behavior, which is a

detriment to the people who live in

our community, we need to take out

the magnet. Does it eliminate it?

No. It’s not a be-all and end-all, but

B Y M I C H A E L M C G R AT H

© 2007 Wi ley Per iodicals , Inc .Publ ished onl ine in Wi ley InterScience (www.interscience.wi ley.com)Nat ional Civ ic Review • DOI : 10.1002/ncr.188 • Fal l 2007

53

it makes a real difference in our

communities. I’m very proud of the

program and what we’ve done.

We’ve really turned some blocks

around.”

Since the program was founded,

the corps has handled forty-eight

actions to abate drug nuisances,

twenty cases involving building

code violations, twenty-three cases

against liquor stores, and sixty-six

cases related to alcohol, weapons,

or other health and safety issues.

“When you get a neighborhood that

is organized around making

change,” said Russo, “and you pig-

gyback their desires on the city’s

health, safety, and welfare pow-

ers—the power to take property, to

shut it down, or to pull away condi-

tional-use permits to operate busi-

nesses, you have a much more

powerful tool to compel.”

In some cases, the corps has

helped small stores make the tran-

sition, as seen in obtaining second-

hand refrigeration equipment so

one store could start selling fresh

fruits and vegetables—a win-win

situation for low-income areas that

may not have their own supermar-

ket nearby.

“The interesting thing,” said

Russo, “is that once you start

doing that and word gets out, the

other folks really bring up their

businesses, and as a result of early

successes, now when we approach

a store owner and say, ‘Look, we

need better lighting in front of the

store’ or ‘We need you to stop sell-

ing the fortified wines and malt

liquors and close at 11:00 P.M.,’ we

get a much more positive and

prompt response.”

The Neighborhood Law Corpsattorneys “know they’re onlygoing to be there for two years,so they don’t tend to makefriends or create long-termrelationships in city govern-ment. They don’t care if theystep on toes.”

J O H N R U S S O , C I T Y AT T O R N E Y,

O A K L A N D , C A L I F O R N I A

The city attorney attended a block

party in central East Oakland on a

street that had once had a problem

liquor store and a crack house. It

also was a street where fearful resi-

dents stayed indoors after dark. The

store is now selling fruits and veg-

etables in addition to alcohol. The

owners have taken the plywood off

the windows so people can see

inside. The city forced the sale of

the crack house.

“And the kids were outside, and

they were riding bikes and playing

hop scotch,” said Russo. “People

were barbecuing hot dogs, and per-

son after person said six months

before they wouldn’t have come out

of their houses. Some didn’t even

know their neighbors.”

More recently, the corps has begun

to focus on multiunit rental proper-

ties, very often with Southeast

Asian or Latino tenants who may or

may not speak English well or know

their rights. Legally speaking, if

tenants pay rent they are entitled to

habitable housing.

The program was created as a

stand-alone foundation, indepen-

dent of the city attorney’s office,

with its own board of directors and

budget funded by grants from phil-

anthropic organizations and indi-

vidual donations. “We created a

foundation, which is then self-

electing, so I don’t have any control

over who’s on that board now, but I

put five people on it when I started

five and a half years ago,” explains

Russo. “What happens is donations

are made to the foundation, which

means they’re tax-deductible and

the board then funds the positions

in the city attorney’s office. This

allows us to give people tax deduc-

tions, which they wouldn’t get if

they just donated to the city, and it

maintains the independence of the

program from the city council and

from the budget process. What I

National Civ ic Review DOI : 10.1002/ncr Fal l 2007

54

didn’t want was this program to

become a political arm for the

council to provide services to coun-

cil offices.”

But now that the program is well

established, Russo is having a diffi-

cult time raising sufficient funds

from private sources. As this article

was being written, he was working

to get the city to fund the program

in the 2008 budget.

It should help that the program has

received national recognition. The

National League of Cities and

CH2M Hill gave it an Award for

Municipal Excellence in 2006. It

was also awarded the Helen

Putnam Award for Excellence by

the League of California Cities.

“You have people who are advo-

cates and city attorneys, but they’re

taking direction from the commu-

nity, and they’re fighting within City

Hall to get things done promptly,”

said Russo. “They won’t be there

long and they want to get results,

and that sort of shames everyone

else into working harder and

remembering why most of us went

into public service in the first

place.”

Michael McGrath is the editor of theNational Civic Review.

National Civ ic Review DOI : 10.1002/ncr Fal l 2007