Charlene Wang
Candidate for City Council, Oakland, CA
Charlene grew up in the Bay Area, spending weekends at her grandparent’s low-income housing in Oakland. She earned her Environmental Engineering degree from Columbia then later earned her Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. There, as student body president, she established the school’s first financial aid program for low-income students, supported graduate student unionization efforts with UAW, and organized students to support university service workers. She worked in then Boston City Councilmember Michelle Wu’s office to launch a trailblazing fare-free mass transit initiative and later helped streamline delivery of Massachusetts homeless services. Charlene also advised creation of health care cooperatives for low-income Americans and New York City’s universal Pre-K.
As a Biden-Harris appointee to the Department of Transportation, Charlene led a $4.2 billion initiative to reconnect communities that had been segregated by the Interstate Highway System. A policy innovator, Charlene won funding to support social housing along decommissioned highways, approval for temporary homeless shelters on federal lands, and a workforce program to connect inmates nearing their release with construction jobs. She currently works at the EPA on environmental justice and civil rights.
Charlene returned to Oakland to be closer to her family and has been alarmed by crime and systemic divestment in our communities. She is already giving back as a Commissioner for Consumer Affairs for Alameda County, former board member at the Family Violence Law Center, and volunteer for West Oakland Cultural Action Network, Asian Immigrant Advocates, and AfroComicCon. She’s running for the City Council At-Large seat to create great Oakland jobs in the energy transition, improve citywide grant application processes, speed housing construction, and help OPD restore full service with community recruiting for community policing.
Charlene’s Vision
Green manufacturing jobs
I plan to build on Oakland's legacy of industry and manufacturing to make Oakland the center of the nation’s clean energy transition by working with businesses and non-profits to bring blue and white collar jobs in clean energy and clean transportation to Oakland, particularly for environmental justice communities like West Oakland and East Oakland where there are also old manufacturing sites ready for re-use. Nearby Fremont has had a green manufacturing boom, and we can do the same and more in Oakland. Congress’ Inflation Reduction Act is bringing unprecedented opportunities for investment in clean energy—let’s ensure Oakland is at the leading edge of this transformation and a major recipient of green investment.
An affordable, walkable city of Oakland
The cost of housing and rent is a primary cause of the homelessness crisis as well as the closure of our small businesses. To lower these costs, I will support the construction of more housing and commercial real estate for all income levels, with a special emphasis on affordable and workforce housing in all parts of Oakland with an inclusionary zoning policy. I will upzone density in the city to build affordable apartments and other housing, and commercial real estate in all of Oakland's neighborhoods especially alongside major bus lines and BART stations. Doing so is key to not only housing affordability, but for making our city a better place to get around without cars - making it easier to walk, bike, and take public transit. Given the long waiting lists to get into Oakland's existing public housing programs, I will seek partnerships between the Oakland Housing Authority and developers to build new public housing, drawing from the effective innovations developed in Montgomery, Maryland. Furthermore, I will work to fix our potholes, repair our sidewalks, slow down speeding with speed cameras and traffic calming, install bus and bike lanes, and transform underused streets into vibrant neighborhood plazas.
“The energy transition is a historic opportunity to empower communities that have been hardest hit by environmental injustices. I'm running to restart Oakland's manufacturing engine, creating blue collar green energy jobs. I've launched a multibillion dollar environmental justice program in the Biden-Harris Administration and am an EPA Advisor for Environmental Justice and Civil Rights. I'm ready to lead on day one.”
-Charlene Wang