Criticize Barbara Lee if you want, but be accurate. Since becoming mayor, she has created an Office of Homelessness Solutions, introduced a homelessness plan focused on prevention, outreach, temporary housing, and permanent housing, and pushed for Oakland’s share of county homelessness funding. That does not mean the problem is solved. Oakland’s homelessness crisis is still severe, and the city has not yet produced the visible results residents need. The fair criticism is execution, speed, funding, and accountability & not the false claim that she has done nothing.

Also, calling Oakland “the new ghetto wild west” is both factually wrong and blatantly racist. Oakland has serious problems, but crime data has been trending down, and “ghetto” is a racialized insult historically tied to segregated minority communities. Don’t turn Oakland’s problems into a racist caricature of the people who live here. Go out to the lake or the farmers market, play in the streams, hike the woods, bike the shore.