An East Oakland, California neighborhood has been left with unpaved streets for weeks after construction crews refused to finish the job over safety concerns, according to reports.
Residents of Colorados Drive in the Sobrante Park neighborhood have been forced to navigate bumpy streets and debris-filled potholes since city construction crews tore up the road in preparation for repaving — but never came back to finish the job.
“They put signs up, did some work,” resident Shari Angarano told KRON 4, explaining they were first told work would commence in March and that it would be done by mid-May.
Weeks later in June the road remained a wreck, leading Angarano to complain to officials with the California city.
“I called and the engineer with the City of Oakland said that the contractor pulled out because the crews didn’t feel safe.”
“The ground is uneven and a lot of the gravel used to fill potholes is being kicked up,” she said.
Sobrante Park has long had a reputation as one of Oakland’s most dangerous neighborhoods, an issue that was largely seeded by systemic discriminatory policies that cut it off from the rest of the city in the mid-20th century, according to KQED.
It would go on to become a hotbed of drug and gang activity from there, and today remains the site of numerous shootings.
Oakland as a whole has seen an uptick in crime, with burglary up 40% from 2022 to 2023, robbery up 31%, and vehicle robbery up 51%, according to Oakland Police Department numbers cited by the Daily Mail.
The City of Oakland acknowledged that construction crews abandoned the paving job, and told KRON the road would be finished within the month.