The California Hotel in Oakland, one of the East Bay’s most recognizable landmarks, has seen better days.
Most know the historic building in West Oakland by its enormous rooftop sign, which looms over Interstate 580 and is passed by 160,000 drivers daily. The century-old hotel is famous for its Spanish colonial revival design, and longtime denizens still proudly reference its history as a mecca of Black music after World War II, when the likes of James Brown and Billie Holiday played its famous club.
But that legacy brings no special treatment for those who now call the hotel home: 135 low-income tenants whose rent is publicly subsidized. Nor does the hotel’s listing on the National Register of Historic Places, or its more impressive features, like the inlaid California golden bears that mark each step of a stairwell and the jade-green ceiling in the lobby. In fact, many tenants hate living there…