In 2014, Oakland & the World Enterprises (“OAW”), a nonprofit organization founded by author and former Black Panther Party Chairman Elaine Brown, acquired a license from the City of Oakland to develop this 32,000 square-foot, three-quarter acre City-owned property on the corner of 7th and Campbell Streets in West Oakland, California. The City of Oakland had left that property abandoned and blighted and vacant for over 30 years.

Located only a few blocks from the West Oakland BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station, the site is in the heart and soul of the Lower Bottoms neighborhood, on 7^th Street once known as “Harlem West.” 

The Mission of OAW being to launch and sustain for-profit businesses for cooperative ownership by formerly incarcerated and other socioeconomically marginalized people, its vision was to install five such businesses on the property.  These include a neighborhood market, a fitness center, a restaurant, a tech center and an urban farm.  The City license agreement, however, required OAW to build affordable housing on the site as well. —While seeking the $80 Million needed to build the housing and commercial spaces, OAW cleared and cleaned the site and planted a working vegetable farm there.

In 2022, having secured all the funding, OAW and its new co-developer, McCormack Baron Salzaar, a major affordable housing developer based in St. Louis, employed the construction firm of Nibbi Brothers, which partnered with BGI contractors, to build The Black Panther Apartments.

Construction was completed by June 2024.  The Black Panther is an all electric state-of-the-art building with 20,000 square feet of solar panels on the roof, triple pane windows, and a multi-million-dollar vapor mitigation system underground. The building has earned the highest GreenPoint rating of Platinum.

And, The Black Panther is a 100% affordable housing project, composed of 79 apartments, including studios, one and two bedrooms, for people with extremely low incomes, at or below 30% AMI (Area Median Income). Receiving over 7,000 applications between June and October 2024, by December 2024, the building was fully leased.  All of our apartments are furnished with brand new beds and bedding, glass-top dining tables and chairs, living room sofa beds, dishes and silverware and pots and pans, towels and bathmats in the bathrooms.  We also provide free laundry and free Wi-Fi, and all utilities are free.  Our building has a large and beautiful Community Room and Outdoor Deck where, among other things, we host a monthly birthday party for all residents born in that month.  And we offer numerous supportive services to residents, from employment referrals to educational opportunities.