Black Cultural Zone buys vacant East Oakland lot for $10 17%
By Natalie Orenstein12%
7/15/2026, 4:17:08 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 22 faulty reasoning types, including Ambiguity (Equivocation), Negativity Bias, and Optimism Bias, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 18.8% saturation with 132 hits. Analysis detected 807 faulty-reasoning hits from 702 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 32.5% and a BS Rank of 17% (17,683 of 21,170 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 83.50% of the article peer group.
The overgrown lot on the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and 83rd Avenue has sat vacant, aside from a lone billboard that sticks out of the tall weeds, for more than three decades.
Now, an Oakland nonprofit is scooping it up for $10, with plans to build affordable housing.
On Tuesday, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors approved the transfer of 8215 MacArthur to the Black Cultural Zone.
The county doesn’t own the property but is using a process called a Chapter 8 tax sale, which allows public agencies to acquire tax-defaulted properties and use them for the public good.
The organization that used to own the land dissolved in 2013, and the site has racked up $1.7 million in back taxes and fines — far more than the $900,000 it has been appraised at.
It failed to sell at auctions, according to the county.
“We’ve been waiting for this for a long, long time,” said Supervisor Nate Miley, whose district includes the lot, at Tuesday’s public hearing.
“This is a strategy we earnestly want to pursue.”
The Black Cultural Zone is a community development corporation engaged in a range of economic and real estate work in East Oakland.
Its overarching goal is to support the growth and preservation of Black communities in the area.
The BCZ has a significant development project planned less than a mile from the MacArthur lot.
The organization plans to build affordable apartments and a food hall at the previously vacant property it’s dubbed Liberation Park.
Once the $10 sale of 8215 MacArthur is approved by the state, the BCZ will “take ownership, maintain the property, launch immediate community programming, and initiate predevelopment for a future affordable housing development,” according to a press release.
It’s not yet clear what type of housing the organization will build.
“Transforming 8215 MacArthur from a 30-year symbol of neighborhood neglect into a community asset is exactly what radical placekeeping looks like,” said BCZ CEO Carolyn Johnson in a statement.
The Chapter 8 process does not require the county to hold a competitive bidding process for the land, said Casey Farmer, who oversees the program in Treasurer and Tax Collector Henry Levy’s office.
But she told The Oaklandside she’d also floated the property to other nonprofits, who weren’t interested.
There is little economic development and several other vacant lots in the immediate neighborhood.
Both land and housing development are extremely costly these days.
“My job is essentially to market these tax-defaulted properties,” Farmer said.
“If we don’t take this action, this property's going to sit there, stuck, forever.”
Properties are considered in default after the owner fails to pay taxes for at least five years.
The county can put them up for auction at that point.
If the money owed on a property exceeds its value, it may be eligible for a Chapter 8 sale.
But it’s rare that all the factors are in place for a successful transfer.
The last time the county completed a Chapter 8 sale was in 2016, with a handful of small lots owned by Oakland, according to Farmer.
Levy told the supervisors he expected to use the tool often when he took office 10 years ago, but discovered “innumerable roadbumps.”
Now, however, his office has identified 10 other tax-defaulted properties that should be eligible for similar transfers soon in East and West Oakland.
Farmer said some of those properties may be environmentally contaminated, so the county and city have secured a federal grant to conduct assessments and relieve the eventual buyers of that cost.
On the MacArthur property, it’s unclear exactly what will happen to the billboard, which currently sports a ubiquitous Anh Phoong advertisement on one side and a Spider-Man: Brand New Day movie poster on the other.
The billboard is owned by Clear Channel Outdoor, which has not been paying rent for the sign since the previous property owner dissolved, according to Farmer.
A spokesperson for the company didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry.
After the unanimous approval of the transfer, the supervisors got up from the dais to take a photo with the people involved in the deal, with Miley calling the moment “historic.”
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