The best Oakland news of 2025

Oaklanders usually criticize the information media for focusing disproportionately on the grotesque or scandalous. And let’s face it: it is a sophisticated metropolis with plenty of challenges to beat. At The Oaklandside, we aren’t proof against exaggerating the doom and gloom.

But there may be additionally a lot occurring right here to get pleasure from. Triumphs, progress, creation and pleasure – thanks largely to individuals within the metropolis searching for his or her neighbors, holding the highly effective accountable and constructing on their imaginative and prescient of what town could be. We thought we’d take a second to recollect a few of them Good information from 2025, as a result of there was sufficient!

Extra kids enrolled in Oakland faculties

Enrollment within the Oakland Unified College District grew this 12 months for the primary time in almost a decade. That is excellent news for a lot of causes. It means dad and mom aren’t giving up on Oakland faculties, and it additionally means extra income as a result of the state allocates funding to districts based mostly on their attendance. Many components doubtless contributed to the surprising improve, together with a $5 million funding in staffing and advertising for enrollment places of work and the growth of who’s eligible for transitional kindergarten.

Within the meantime, the district was in a position to cut back capital income, creating extra secure faculties — a minimum of for now.

Sidewalks are being repaired

Two Oakland residents with disabilities, Nicole Brown-Booker and Michael Curran, sued town in a category motion lawsuit in 2023 over the situation of town’s sidewalks. This summer time, the lawsuit reached a outstanding settlement, with town committing to restore 78,000 sidewalks and 11,000 damaged curbs over the subsequent 25 years. We spoke with one of many plaintiffs about what guarantees to be a robust transformation for individuals who use wheelchairs, strollers or walkers.

We received a baseball championship

Look, all of us miss the A’s. However Oakland’s new two-year-old baseball crew is already champions. The Ballers completed an outstanding 2025 season on prime, and Oakland turned out to have a good time the West Oakland Pioneer League crew throughout a parade and rally. In the meantime, the Oakland Roots soccer crew introduced the Coliseum again to life, breaking an attendance document at their house opener in March.

Bald eagles hatched in Oakland

For the primary time in historical past, bald eagles efficiently hatched a pair of eaglets in Oakland — and hen watchers have been thrilled. Their chosen house? A eucalyptus tree in Mountain View Cemetery on the prime of Piedmont Avenue. The Bay Space is a pure habitat for bald eagles, however the inhabitants has struggled for many years to get better from the ravages of the pesticide DDT.

Loard has returned

Oakland’s iconic 75-year-old ice cream store, Loard’s, reopened its bulbous flagship retailer at MacArthur Boulevard and Coolidge Avenue within the Dimond District in June. The old school retailer had been closed for 4 years. It got here again simply in time for summer time.

Violent crime dropped

Maybe probably the most constructive information of the 12 months: Violent crime in Oakland has dropped considerably for the second 12 months in a row. By the tip of November, town had recorded 59 homicides, in comparison with 114 on the similar time in 2023. Between 2020 and 2023, greater than 100 individuals have been murdered in Oakland every year. The variety of robberies and sexual violence has additionally decreased. The rise after which decline in violent crime in Oakland follows nationwide tendencies because the pandemic started. This excellent news is clearly high-level, as each violent tragedy in Oakland is one too many.

Inexpensive housing was on the agenda

In 2018, when new house buildings appeared to be going up in Oakland by the day, there was one sort of development that was obviously lacking: housing for low-income residents. The town has lastly made important progress on that entrance, issuing permits for a whole lot of recent inexpensive housing models and constructing a whole lot extra in recent times. Measure U, the bond measure handed by voters in 2022, is partly attributable to this momentum, elevating $350 million for inexpensive housing in Oakland.

The province invested in meals safety and immigration safety

Because the Trump administration ramped up immigration insurance policies and rolled again security internet providers, weak residents in Oakland and throughout the county confronted important penalties. Alameda County leaders stepped as much as fill the gaps. The Board of Supervisors invested greater than $10 million in meals help within the wake of cuts to SNAP, the meals help program. The Board of Supervisors additionally accredited thousands and thousands for immigration safety, whereas calls to the county hotline skyrocketed.

BART organized a love prepare

About 200 younger adults flirted and possibly even discovered love throughout BART’s in-motion velocity relationship extravaganza. The transit company hosted the relationship occasion on a prepare that ran between downtown Berkeley and the twenty fourth Avenue Mission stations on Valentine’s Day.

Oakland is genius

Native writer Tommy Orange was certainly one of this 12 months’s MacArthur Fellows, often known as the MacArthur “genius Grant” recipients. Fellows will obtain open-ended prizes of $800,000. Orange wrote the critically acclaimed novels There there And Wandering stars, interconnected books that observe generations of Native American characters in and past Oakland.

We’ve got a nobody-happy finances, however nobody has been laid off

True, one metropolis council member dubbed the $4.2 billion 2025-2027 spending plan adopted this spring as “No one’s Glad Funds.” However Oakland officers have been tasked with eliminating a large deficit, and so they succeeded. Regardless of the preliminary plans, the council was in a position to move a finances that prevented layoffs of metropolis workers. And the mayor and metropolis council labored collectively to get the plan handed shortly, fairly than wrangling over clauses and provisions till the deadline.

A meals justice group expanded

Saba Grocers Initiative, a meals justice and distribution group, acquired a $2 million state grant to open a “meals hub” in Jack London Sq.. By the hub, Saba will transport meals from native farms to colleges, hospitals, meals banks and different areas throughout the province. In addition they plan to broaden their present program by distributing meals to comfort shops. Saba additionally sued town of Oakland over its dealing with of one other federal grant. The swimsuit was arranged this fall for $500,000, exposing flaws within the metropolis’s grant system.

Queer Oakland resisted

It has been a difficult 12 months for queer organizations, which have confronted a pointy rollback of federal grant packages, the erasure of language and paperwork recognizing them, and a slew of govt orders questioning their survival. In Oakland, the varied queer group has come collectively regardless of hardship, celebrating collectively at occasions just like the Oaklash drag competition and supporting one another by means of organizations like Lavender Seniors, a 30-year-old LGBTQ+ senior group. A gaggle known as Rainbow Households Motion has additionally stepped up efforts to help transgender youth.

Oakland’s meals scene gained recognition

Anybody who has eaten in Oakland can attest to our scrumptious and different choices. This 12 months the remainder of the world took discover. Oakland was thought of the perfect meals metropolis in the USA Condé Nast’s Readers’ Awards for the second 12 months in a row. And Solar Moon Studio in West Oakland turned the second restaurant in Oakland to obtain a Michelin star.

You additionally confirmed this metropolis some love; Oakland’s eating choices dominated Cityside’s Nosh prices by 2025.

Kids acquired free excursions

The Oakland Museum of California started providing free discipline journeys to Oakland public faculties. For the subsequent three years, courses will obtain free excursions of the museum’s artwork, science and historical past galleries, together with backed transportation. In keeping with the museum, the price of such journeys was usually a barrier for native faculties.