Bartlett

Like many of the neighborhoods in this area of Oakland just to the west of MacArthur Freeway, tiny Bartlett (barely seven city blocks total) is a densely packed residential neighborhood. And as in the other adjacent neighborhoods, the most common kind of housing here are California bungalows dating from before 1939. These home vary in quality. Some have been very well maintained while others look their ages, as if they have been around for more than three quarters of a century. The nicer homes in Bartlett have nice bushy front lawns, often with decorative topiary.

On the western end of the neighborhood along Humboldt Street, the bungalows give way to uninviting apartment buildings and leafier homes with backs to the creek that forms Bartlett’s western border. The high number of these boxy apartment rows account in part for the high population density of area—about twice as high as that of the rest of Oakland.

On the occasions when I have driven by the area, I have found it a little depressing with garbage strewn about the sidewalks, broken beer bottles and clutches of seemingly aimless young men with nothing better to do then congregate outside. In 2009, a man was murdered right along this stretch, so the impression that this a gang area is definitely not an illusion.

Put simply, I would not feel safe living in or near these apartment buildings.