Liza Veale

Here’s something that maybe only happens in Oakland: a young bunch of hackers, artists and Occupy activists organize themselves into a collective and assume the lease of a defunct heavy metal night club. Once a month, a few of their members hold a live talk show event, called Oakland Nights Live.

They invited the city’s mayoral candidates to be guests, and many of the fifteen showed up. Over the course of two nights, front-runners, including the incumbent Mayor, came to introduce themselves to this very particular constituency.

Mary Butler is a person who "likes to keep very busy and independent."

She worked as a respiratory nurse for most of her adult life. After retiring in the early 2000s, she supported herself the way retirees are meant to: with a small pension and social security. She moved to Las Vegas for a while to take care of an ill sibling. When she moved back to Oakland, she couldn’t find a place to rent. Her retirement funds didn’t stack up.

Thuylynh Nguyen’s family came to the U.S. from Vietnam in order to escape political persecution. Her father had spent eight years as a prisoner of war after serving as a soldier in the South Vietnamese army. The U.S. granted her family asylum in 1991.

'When we say “affordable housing” we're actually using a precisely defined concept. "Affordable", in this context, means housing that costs no more than 30 percent of a household’s income.