Founding Member, Board Member, and EBHO’s First Employee
Maryann Leshin was one of the founding members of EBHO, then Oakland Housing Organizations (OHO), and its first employee.
She has remained involved in EBHO’s work throughout our 40-year history alongside her career as a consultant and in leadership roles at Eden Housing, Inc., Enterprise Community Partners, Community Housing Partnership, and the City of Oakland’s Housing and Community Development Department.
In May 2024, Maryann sat down with EBHO’s Chief Program Officer Rev. Sophia DeWitt to recount the founding of our organization and share reflections on the past four decades of housing justice in the East Bay.
Sophia: First of all, to start, can you tell us how you got involved with EBHO?
Maryann: I was working there from 1984 to 1988. I worked for the Oakland Citizens Committee for Urban Renewal (OCCUR). I had previously gone to a community planning Master’s program, and I’ve done some union organizing also.
I got this job as a Community Development Specialist with OCCUR. My friend, who’d had the position before me, let me know about a group of housing developers who would meet monthly to talk about how to deal with opposition to their projects. He thought it would be interesting to see how OCCUR could support their work.
So I started attending the meetings. At that point, the group had the name OHO, Oakland Housing Organizations, and it was just an informal monthly lunch meeting at EBALDC’s Asian Resource Center.
It was tooling along, and I was leaning in, providing a little support here, a little support there, and then at some point, a group of us decided we would try to raise some money for staff and move the work forward beyond just a lunch meeting.
I remember meeting at OCCUR’s office to write a grant proposal to the Garbodi Foundation. Everybody sort of volunteered me, and of course, I was in happy agreement to be the “staff” on a part-time basis should the proposal be funded. OCCUR agreed to serve as a fiscal agent on the application. We applied, and we got the funds and that was it. We were off to the races!
Sophia: Do you remember how much that first grant was for?
Maryann: Well, I remember what my salary was. It was $12,000 a year, half-time, which was actually a raise for me! But of course, I was also paying just $220 a month in rent for a gorgeous one-bedroom apartment near Lake Merritt, so it was a totally different era.
Sophia: What were some of the challenges, either organizational challenges or policy challenges, that OHO faced when it was first getting started?
Maryann: You know, I don’t really recollect there being much friction of any sort. I’m sure that there were some challenges, but everybody was so collegial and so excited to start this new endeavor.
We all knew each other, and there was a lot of trust. We were just taking it one step at a time; we didn’t have huge expectations. We were a rag-tag group of folks figuring out how to create an organization.
One of the questions that arose was surrounding our partnership with other organizations. In 1984 or 1985, we joined a coalition to create a community equity participation program to address racial inequities – though I’m not sure that was the language used at the time. It was called the Community Equity Participation Plan that we were promoting at the City Council. I think it was through taxation or some other revenue stream to sort of bring back to the community.
Sophia: What was the City Council like at that time? Were they fairly supportive? Did you have a lot of NIMBY residents?
Maryann: There was definitely NIMBYism, though this was before the term “NIMBY” came to be. The original purpose of OHO was to talk about how to address that challenge.
The Council’s orientation was completely different than it is now. There was only one progressive Council member, Wilson Riles Jr – as an aside, I met my husband phone banking for Wilson Riles Jr.’s first mayoral campaign. But I remember Councilmember Leo Bazile saying something at a City Council meeting like, “We don’t need affordable housing. We don’t want people coming from other places into Oakland. We have enough people here.”
He was one Councilmember I remember being particularly difficult. For others, it just wasn’t an issue. So yeah, it was not a friendly Council.
But the [Department of Housing & Community Development] staff at that time was just fantastic. There’s still great staff there — I’m proud to say I’ve been a member of the staff myself! It was a very, very strong and progressive staff.
Sophia: Are there any lessons that you learned through interfacing with City Council that have stuck with you through the years?
Maryann: It’s important to remember that things do change.
When I was working at OHO, things weren’t at the crisis level that they have become, but it’s become a crisis because we were behind the curve. But the Council is so different now than it was 30, 40 years ago. They’re completely different in their view of housing. Affordable housing isn’t a dirty word anymore. It doesn’t need to be prettied up, sugar-coated, or whatever. People are comfortable with that terminology and understand the issue affects everybody.
Sophia: What do you think is EBHO’s greatest strength?
Maryann: Trying to marry the idea of a trade association where people have common interests and needs and technical capacity needs and movement organizing. There was a consciousness of, not just building, but also tenants rights and community equity. What EBHO really has always done from the beginning but has now exploded in terms of its impact is staying true to that idea that it’s an organizing platform and it’s a movement platform. And that makes it unique in some ways.
I came into that work as a former community organizer, so I always felt the importance of housers having that broader consciousness and not just becoming real estate technocrats who happen to have figured out a way to create housing to serve people of low incomes.
I had experience organizing with low income tenants around housing quality issues and also trying to get more affordable housing and land use planning. And I loved doing organizing work. You need all of those tools if you’re going to make sustainable change.
And so I saw EBHO as an organization that we had to kind of uniquely handle that mix. It wasn’t just a policy shop. And it wasn’t just like an “organize, let’s storm the barricades,” kind of place. It had a combination of things which I found intriguing.
Sophia: You’ve mentioned how proud you were to work on some of the original resident organizing work of EBHO. What would you say about why that work in particular is important?
Maryann: I really believe in people power. The ability to turn people out; that’s historically where unions got their power. It’s an important part of the work that we have a local broad-base constituency, that is reflective of the communities we work in and not just a hired technician who knows how to work tax credits and build buildings.
It’s about harnessing the power of affordable housing residents to advocate for creating and preserving affordable housing. These are people who are willing to take the extra time out of their day to come to a City Council meeting or sign a support letter to say, “Hey, I am in such a better place because of this affordable housing. I want it for everybody.”
We do our lobbying, but bringing people to the steps of the Capitol or City Hall is a critical piece. The powers that be aren’t going to listen otherwise. Equipping people with the tools, and the training promotes not only their capacity to advocate on behalf of affordable housing, but just to become more active civically.
Sophia: So what have you been up to since you left your position at OHO?
Maryann: EBHO was the beginning for me. I got my feet wet in affordable housing, and I have never left that work. I just couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
It’s been 40 glorious years. I’ve worked for local governments and multiple nonprofits. With few exceptions, I’ve been focused on creating housing opportunities. I’ve spent a fair amount of time on permanent supportive housing, at [the Corporation for Supportive Housing], in my consulting work, and at the City of Oakland. I’m heading toward full retirement one of these days, hopefully later this year.
Looking back, my experience with OHO was a harbinger of all the great things that were to come. The camaraderie, the trust, just the fun! It was such a crazy issue, but still, there was laughter and levity and people supporting each other. That’s always been there.
OHO, EBHO, it’s been such a pleasure and an honor to be associated with it. I’m excited to be as helpful as I can be, even in my upcoming retirement.
Sophia: Thank you so much for your leadership over the many years, and thank you for speaking with me!