Home Care In Oakland, CA

Oakland, CA – This morning, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, City leaders, and community members gathered to celebrate the grand reopening of the West Oakland Senior Center, marking a major milestone in Oakland’s commitment to providing safe and welcoming public space that promotes seniors' wellbeing.

“Investing in the West Oakland Senior Center protects our older adults from the serious health risks of loneliness by restoring community, connection, and dignity,” said Mayor Barbara Lee. “This reopening is long overdue, but reflects a promise kept. West Oakland now has a modern, accessible hub for crafts, fitness, and essential social services, while ensuring every Oakland resident can age with the health, independence, and respect they deserve.”

Located across from the historic DeFremery Park and the West Oakland Branch of the Oakland Public Library, the West Oakland Senior Center serves as an important hub for programs, social connection, and supportive services. “Our seniors deserve spaces where they feel valued, supported, and connected. The reopening of the West Oakland Senior Center represents a critical investment in the well-being and quality of life of our older residents, said Councilmember Carroll Fife. "This revitalized space will provide opportunities for seniors to access essential services, build meaningful relationships, and remain active in the community they love. I’m excited to see this center once again serve as a place of connection, care, and belonging in West Oakland.”

Following a two-year renovation, the building has reopened with enhancements designed to improve comfort, safety, and ease of access for members who rely on its services each day. The renovations include new ADA accessible path of travel and electrification of major building systems, including of the HVAC system and the commercial kitchen. Additional work included interior and exterior paint, lighting upgrades, ceiling repairs, and second-story window replacements. The project modernized core systems, making the 12,000 square foot facility safer, more functional, and easier to navigate.

“Our goal was to open a facility that supports essential programming—from social gatherings to meals and wellness activities,” said Jimmy Mach, Assistant Director of Oakland Public Works. “These upgrades ensure the center remains reliable and efficient so that members have a place where they can thrive.”

Funding for the $3 million project was provided through Measure KK, which supported facility upgrades and path-of-travel improvements. A CalRecycle grant funded the purchase and installation of new energy efficient kitchen appliances. Together, these investments help ensure that the West Oakland Senior Center remains a welcoming and dependable community resource for Oakland’s older adults for years to come.

“Reopening the West Oakland Senior Center strengthens the network of care our seniors rely on every day.” said Greg Elliott Interim Director of the Human Services Department. “This center is a place for people to gather, connect, and feel seen.”

Betty Hicks, Chair for the West Oakland Senior Center Advisory Council added, “For many of us, this center is a second home. WOSC provides us with a safe, nurturing, caring, and loving environment. It keeps us connected. These improvements demonstrate that the voices of Oakland seniors’ matter.”

The ribbon cutting ceremony included music, light refreshments, and remarks from City leadership and community partners.

Residents over the age of 55, interested in becoming a member and participating in programs and services are invited to visit the West Oakland Senior Center or call (510) 238-7016, Mondays through Thursday, 9:00 am – 1:00 pm for more information.

The Oakland Human Services Department exists to make our city a place that works for all. We offer free programs and provide public resources to community organizations that make sure all of our residents can access what they need to be safe, healthy and realize their full potential.

The City provides programming that support independence, safety, health, and active living for seniors. Aging and Adult Services works with community partners to deliver services that include care management, jobs, training, volunteering, recreation and transportation assistance.

Oakland Public Works is charged with building, maintaining, and improving the City’s infrastructure including public buildings, sanitary and storm sewers, lighting, and City-owned vehicles and equipment. Public Works provides or administers essential environmental services including solid waste and recycling services; illegal dumping abatement; street sweeping; maintenance of parks, trees, and medians; and watershed management.

BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) -- A brush fire that broke out Tuesday on the border of Berkeley and Oakland raised concerns among fire officials and residents, but a rapid, multi-agency response prevented it from becoming a larger disaster in the hills above UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium.

The fire ignited before noon in the 1000 block of Panoramic Way and burned approximately 1.5 acres. Authorities said no evacuation orders were needed, and crews were able to keep the blaze from spreading despite difficult terrain.

Firefighters said the incident carried the potential to become much more serious.

"This had the potential to really take off and be a really large-scale event," said Oakland Fire Department Chief Damon Covington. "The multi jurisdiction response between Berkeley, Oakland and CAL FIRE East Bay regional. They all got on scene about the same time."

The fire occurred one day after the 35th anniversary of the 1991 Oakland Hills Firestorm, adding to the anxiety for some longtime residents.

"I was driving across town and looked up and saw the smoke," said Oakland Hills resident Sue Noyes. "Having lived through the '91 fires, it always gives uses bit of concern."

The blaze prompted a response from about 75 firefighters representing multiple agencies. Crews battled flames in steep, hard-to-access areas above Memorial Stadium.

"These are narrow roads. Very tight, windy roads," said Oakland Fire Department spokesperson Michael Hunt.

Fire officials said weather conditions ultimately worked in their favor.

"Slow moving on an upslope. The wind pretty favorable for us today. The heat. Not so bad," Hunt said.

A helicopter conducted water drops to slow the fire's progress. Officials credited coordinated planning and improvements made since the 1991 firestorm for helping contain the blaze.

"A lot of the things we saw in the 1991 Oakland Hills fire were not apparent today," Covington said. "So really just the great job of the firefighters holding it to one building, keeping it to an acre-and-half, and not letting it get it to way from us and turning it into something large scale."

Hunt said agencies have worked for decades to improve interoperability and mutual aid responses.

"Means making sure we have radios functions properly together, hydrants are able to connect to hose lines, the way they are supposed to," Hunt said. "But really, it's just building relationships to ensure that our incident commanders, our battalion chiefs, fire chiefs and incident commandments all able to work well with each other."

Residents expressed gratitude for the response.

"It's pretty incredible they were able to put it out," said Oakland Hills resident Jennifer Fang.

Noyes also praised the firefighters' efforts.

"The response from Cal Fire, Alameda, from Oakland was incredible," she said. "And so heartwarming. We actually got a little bit emotional seeing this wonderful response in our community services here. Our local fire department showed up for us today. It means a lot to us."

Although the fire was contained, crews remained on scene Tuesday conducting mop-up operations and monitoring for hot spots.

"We're going thru the scene right now doing mop up and searching for any hidden signs of fire because the fire can get into the root of the vegetation and it can smolder for a while," said Oakland Battalion Chief Anthony Sanders. "We have thermal imaging cameras that we use and drones that we use and these are all things that came up post 1991."

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

OAKLAND, CA — An Alameda County collaborative condemned Immigration and Customs Enforcement, accusing agents of using "brutal" force during the recent arrest of two people in the East Bay.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment from Patch.

Alameda County Immigration Legal Education Partnership, a countywide collaborative network founded nearly a decade ago to protect, support, and empower undocumented communities in the region, made the accusations in an online post on Monday.

"This past weekend, federal agents appear to have used excessive force in two arrests, one in Emeryville and one near San Antonio Park in Oakland," the group said online. "Both people were injured and needed hospital care."

The collaborative says they're in contact with both people arrested and are providing them with legal support.

"Both have asked for their privacy to be respected,: the group said. "We ask the community and the media to honor their wishes."

The arrests came as the Trump administration continues to push ICE to increase daily immigration arrests as midterms near.

The disturbing attempt to arrest a U.S. citizen riding a bicycle over the weekend in Long Beach also sparked outrage across California over excessive force.

During the arrest, according to the Long Beach Watchdog, ICE agents struck Ricardo Gonzalez with an unmarked car, then tased him twice before handcuffing him.

No arrests were officially made, but video of the incident amassed more than 100,000 views in just a few days.

The city's mayor, Rex Richardson, said he was "outraged" by the incident and that aggressive enforcement tactics were putting residents at risk.

"This is unacceptable, and it must stop," he said.

In Alameda County, the immigration legal partnership is asking community members to combat this by contacting elected officials and demanding accountability, and to connect with local organizations to stay informed, share only verified reports, and know your rights.

"We are grateful for the community's support and solidarity as we continue to help both individuals and protect our community's rights," Alameda County Immigration Legal Education Partnership said.

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A fleet of 74 school buses have spent the last two years powering about a thousand homes, taking stress off the grid, thanks to V2G chargers built in America.

If you’ve spent much time around the electric vehicle space, you may have heard about vehicle-to-grid, perhaps by the acronym V2G (or its cousins, V2H/V2L/V2X, etc).

The basic idea is: if we’re looking to add batteries to the grid or to homes to increase stability and smooth out demand, why don’t we use the massive amounts of batteries available inside electric vehicles for that purpose?

The idea has been talked about for years, but for the most part has not reached wide adoption. The California Energy Commission estimates that V2H could save homeowners a few hundred dollars per summer, and cut peak demand by up to 5GW statewide if it was broadly implemented. But to do this with consumer EVs, homes would mostly need some sort of costly equipment added, and most EVs aren’t V2G-enabled (though that may be changing).

But for fleet EVs, installation can be a lot easier. Putting V2G in homes requires a lot of small scale projects, distributed across a region. But putting V2G in a fleet location lets you access a lot of batteries in one big project, and lets you aggregate those batteries more easily.

So that’s exactly what Tellus Power, a charging equipment manufacturer in Irvine, CA, is doing. We took a tour of its facility and met with CEO Mike Calise and CTO Srikanth Kanaparthi.

The company has been building AC and DC chargers (up to 480kW) since 2010, but its newest push is into V2G chargers, particularly for fleets. It assembles them in America, and they’re “Build America Buy America” compliant.

Its first project in this push was an installation of V2G chargers for Oakland, CA’s school district, covering 74 school buses. The chargers were built by Tellus, and the project is operated by Zum. We first wrote about the Oakland project in 2024, but now we have a couple years of data to show how it’s going.

Collectively, the buses have a total of 11.5MWh of energy storage. Buses fill up overnight, use about 20-40% of their charge during the day, then plug in to V2G chargers after the school day and discharge to feed the grid, just in time for the late afternoon rush on electricity, when people get home and turn on air conditioning, start cooking, turn on the lights and so on.

Or on holidays and summertime (when the grid is the most stressed in California), they can be a grid resource all day long.

74 buses may not sound like much, but with the amount of energy available on board and the total power output of the chargers, it can fuel a lot of houses. The fleet can discharge at about 2 Megawatts at once, and each house uses about 2 kilowatts on average in the evening (though that can spike higher due to HVAC/EV use). That means, altogether, this fleet of 74 buses can power around a thousand homes.

Over the course of the last two years, the bus fleet has returned a total of 1.7GWh of energy to the grid, and has had over 99.5% uptime. This basically turns the fleet into a small and reliable peaker plant, which has delivered on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of electricity to the grid over the last couple years.

Tellus says V2G capacity can get onto the grid faster than any other kind of power plant. A fleet V2G depot can take months to deploy, compared to a timeline of years to build and attach other power plants to the grid. And Tellus says that its chargers differ from others on the market in that they don’t require large transformers on-site, which makes deployment faster and less expensive.

V2G isn’t strictly a “power plant,” since it’s not generating electricity. But it does shift supply to when it’s needed most, which is also when it’s most expensive. This “energy arbitrage” lets Zum buy power when it’s cheap and sell it when it’s expensive, which makes money.

That’s Tellus’ oldest project, but there are others in place and being built – 4 school buses in Burlington, VT; 2 city bus chargers for Lynch Bus Lines in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada; a pilot program at 3 school district sites for ComEd in Illinois; and a fleet of 104 school buses (scaling to 238) in San Francisco, CA.

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Very nice!

It's only one school district. If it is most school districts in CA, like 100 school districts, it could be 200 MW of power, which definitely chips at reducing gas peaker plant usage.

If these busses had solar PV on top? It's ever chipping at reducing emissions. That's the great thing about solar+storage, you can incrementally add it, just a little at a time, and year by year, it becomes cheaper, more effective and will power more and more of our energy needs.

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But even though buses are a popular choice for V2G, there are plenty of other municipal vehicles that are ripe for electrification, which have similar duty cycles and could be used for grid services.

Trash trucks are an obvious one, and they’re the next direction Tellus would like to go in. There are a number of electric garbage trucks out there, and they could generate revenue to offset costs in the same way that school buses can.

All of this together offers a large revenue opportunity for fleets, whether those fleets be private or public. If you have a bunch of vehicles, running those vehicles off of batteries can both save you money on fuel (especially with oil prices being at all-time highs) and generate revenue with grid services, if you install V2G chargers.

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