MEET YOUR NEIGHBORS

For more than 40 years, Shadetree has been a unique cultural landmark in Oakland—a place where people can live affordably and work where they live in a culturally rich, communal environment.

From artists to carpenters, costume designers to social workers, activists and musicians, this property has grown and evolved over generations thanks to this community’s spirit of collective ingenuity and perseverance.

-A New Era-

In 2005, the Shadetree property changed hands and in the fall of 2016, the new owners decided to sell. Faced with eviction and the loss of this cultural institution, the residents—18 of them at the time—banded together, formed a nonprofit, SHADE (Shadetree Historical Artisan Development Engine), and raised the money to purchase their home through a series of loans—primarily from individual citizens and fans of the property over the years.

This campaign, conceived and spearheaded by Donna Smithey, a housing rights advocate and activist, not only allowed the residents of Shadetree to maintain and improve their unique lifestyle but also rescued the structures and property from being acquired and demolished by a massive neighboring development project. The success of this effort put Shadetree and its residents front and center in the fight for affordable housing and the preservation of creative spaces throughout the bay area, particularly following the Ghost Ship tragedy of 2016.

Today, Shadetree is home to 30 residents, spanning three generations—artists, musicians, writers, activists, an electrician, landscapers, carpenters, a bridge builder, a climate change activist, a social worker, a notary, historians, fabricators, mothers, fathers and children.

In 2018, the story of their remarkable achievement was featured on KQED and NPR and later that same year they received a stewardship award from the Oakland Heritage Alliance as part of the city’s Partners in Preservation initiative.

In 2019, they became active participants in the newly launched Oakland/Saint-Denis sister city program, conceived and helmed by Juliette Donadieu, Cultural Attaché from the French Embassy in San Francisco, and Julie Fry, founder of California Humanities in Berkeley. This initiative fosters a continual exchange of ideas, concerns and solution models between Oakland and the Parisian suburb of Saint Denis as both share many of the same challenges and achievements regarding affordable housing, cultural inclusion and urban development.

Shadetree is proud to be an historical and cultural Oakland institution, forever indebted to a vast extended community of friends, partners and allies, most notably local nonprofit Safer DIY Spaces, founded by David Keenan, which assists live/work and artist community spaces with core safety improvements, legalization processes, construction financing and more.

There is still much work to be done at Shadetree and throughout Oakland, as this community and its allies continue to fight for the people’s right to live creatively, affordably and safely for generations to come. To join this fight—and it is a fight—please contact info@shadetreeartisans.org and stay tuned for further developments, as Shadetree is soon to become part of another exciting initiative which promises to provide a better way to invest in community, culture, and affordable living in Oakland and beyond.

-Our History-

This was originally an industrial complex, housing businesses over the years that dealt primarily with the Port of Oakland, receiving and processing shipped goods. After falling into disuse, it was purchased in 1979 by Robert A Schultz—an artist, sailor, painter, sculptor, and artisan mechanic with a penchant for restoring vintage automobiles to their former glory, including the first car to drive across the Golden Gate bridge, which Schultz discovered in a local junkyard.

A pillar of the Oakland community with a gift for storytelling and a DIY spirit, Schultz also worked for the city of Oakland, the Oakland Museum of California, and helped build Children’s Fairyland and the Oakland Zoo. With Schultz serving as Shadetree’s property manager and cultural ambassador, an eclectic community naturally formed over decades, with a diverse range of backgrounds, professions and skills which gave birth to the carefully crafted live/work structures found here today.