OAKLAND — Hard times are in full swing in Oakland, where nonprofits providing free meals to senior citizens, legal defense to immigrants, violence interruption strategies and other crucial services are reeling from a sudden loss of $2.6 million in public funding.
The abrupt slashing of city contracts — in some cases, money that had already been promised — to the local nonprofit sector is part of the fallout from a $130 million budget deficit that also resulted in layoffs of nearly 100 city workers.
“We hire people from the community to help their community — what is better than that?” Andrew Park, of the family-service nonprofit Trybe, said at a news conference Tuesday in the city’s Fruitvale District. “We need more funding … not to fight over funding we already won.”
City Administrator Jestin Johnson, who announced the funding reductions last month in an email to nonprofit leaders, did promise reimbursements for work that the nonprofits had already completed. But money they had budgeted in the coming months will be squeezed.
The reductions were part of a litany of cuts that, along with layoffs, have temporarily closed two of Oakland’s fire stations and canceled police-training academies.
But the effects feel especially crushing to some of the most well-known nonprofits in a city that has prided itself on offering residents a robust social safety net.
Some of the nonprofits affected include Trybe; SOS Meals on Wheels, which provides free meals to seniors; Centro Legal de la Raza, which provides legal defense to immigrants; CURYJ, a youth-justice organization in East Oakland; the Peralta Hacienda Historical Park center; and a support group for victims of violence, Adamika Village.
The nonprofit leaders warned Tuesday that the services they provide will decline or may disappear if the city doesn’t restore some of the funding, which amounts to several hundreds of thousands of dollars annually for each of the organizations.
Andrew Park, executive director of Oakland-based nonprofit Trybe, speaks into the microphone at a news conference in the city’s Fruitvale District on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. Park was among the local leaders who railed against the city’s decision to slash public funding for nonprofits, part of efforts to resolve a $130 million budget deficit. (Shomik Mukherjee/Bay Area News Group)
One of the hardest-hit groups, SOS Meals on Wheels, found out last month the city was cutting over half of its annual $150,000 in public funds that help cover meals for seniors.
The nonprofit will continue to receive $300,000 in city revenue from an Alameda County transportation tax, but the nixing of its contract delivered a gut punch to the nonprofit, which suddenly lost the ability to invoice the city for money it had earlier been promised. Currently, the organization services about 1,000 homes a year.
For now, SOS Meals on Wheels can draw from its emergency reserves, its director Kim Olson said later in an interview. But as early as next year, it may be forced to create a wait list for seniors who access its meals.
Olson is among the nonprofit leaders who expressed frustration Tuesday at how the City Council had previously left an impression that the worst of the cuts could be staved off.
Following a Dec. 17 council meeting, then-Mayor Nikki Fortunato Bas described in a public memo having “rebalanced the budget” with some money-saving moves the council had taken.
Bas, who has since left office to join the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, did not mention in the December memo that worker layoffs and major funding cuts were still on the way.
The city has struggled to establish its messaging around the budget crisis, which has often divided residents and candidates in an upcoming special election around political lines of how much the Oakland Police Department’s budget — the city’s largest over-spender — should be tightened or protected.
Former Mayor Sheng Thao, who was recalled by voters last November, repeatedly assured residents that the city would receive a budget-saving salve from a sale of the Coliseum — only for those funds to still be in limbo, months after the deal was struck.
More recently, Johnson arranged the hiring of two consultants, who will assess the city’s finances over the coming months and recommend measures for balancing the budget before the next two-year cycle begins in July.
Former Oakland city interim mayor Nikki Fortunato Bas waves to the newly elected council during the 2025 Inauguration Ceremony held at Oakland City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 6, 2025. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)
One consultant, Ben Rosenfeld, will build the city’s long-term fiscal strategy; another, Deborah Edgerly, will help on a more temporary basis.
It’s unclear, though, what measures could help local nonprofits restore city funding they’d come to rely on for years.
Maciel Jacques, a director with Centro Legal de la Raza, griped Tuesday that the various groups that receive public funding had been pitted against each other over the structural budget deficit, which she accused city leaders of failing to address, despite it persisting for years.
“The city of Oakland cannot continue to rely on organizations to provide life-saving services without paying for them,” Jacques said.
Centro Legal, which also provides legal defense for tenants facing eviction, know-your-rights workshops for largely Spanish speaking day laborers and youth education clinics for high school students, recently lost out on a new $1 million city contract.
City officials withdrew the contract from consideration at a meeting last month before it could be taken up by the City Council.
These kinds of rug-pulls have frustrated nonprofit leaders, as well as Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, a former Centro Legal staff attorney who criticized Johnson for not notifying the council last month before approving the cuts.
“Financially stable nonprofits have (various) funding sources,” she acknowledged, “and the city can’t keep giving out grants forever. But the fact that some of this money was cut mid-year, when they’d already been promised? That’s what really gets me.”
Shomik Mukherjee is a reporter covering Oakland. Call or text him at 510-905-5495 or email him at shomik@bayareanewsgroup.com.
