Caballo Hills, Oakland

Just above Mills College in the lower half of the Oakland Hills, you will find Caballo Hills, home to Merritt College. Merritt College is one of the fine community colleges in the Bay Area. They offer a broad range of classes to an eclectic student body.

The neighborhood is also book-ended by two good parks, Leona Park in the southeast and Leona Heights Park in the northwest. These parks are good for hiking offering pleasant views of the Bay (as much of the neighborhood does) but many of the trails are poorly maintained.

The residential areas of the neighborhood are fairly heterogeneous. You get lots of newer McMansions up on the crest of the hill. These are sprawling newer structures resembling many of the condominium complexes that have become a fixture in the gentrification of Oakland. They are at once large, imposing structures while remaining somehow flimsy looking.

Down near the freeway on the southern end of the neighborhood, the streets feel more like a rural area with no sidewalks and dirt driveways. The streets slope along the natural contours of the hill and the homes are similar to those you find in the country—functional and worn.

In the center of the neighborhood, you have tightly packed condos—now exact replicas of the kind of gentrified apartments you see in the city. They stare across at each other like soldiers at attention, blocking out much of the view of the Bay with their perfect and unvarying symmetry. Up the hill from these structures are empty streets, clearly where the developers planned to erect more such structures just as the financial crisis hit.

Overall, this is a great diverse neighborhood in which to live and offers various choices depending on your preference.