Redefining downtowns: Peninsula cities bank on 1970s-era planning tool to transform their civic centers
Arroyo Green in Redwood City. Photo by Gennady Sheyner
There was a time, not too long ago, when gunshots and the drone of court hearings played like a soundtrack to Prince Wilson's life.
In 2011, his son Adam died after a shooting in an Oakland bar. Two years ago, his other son was shot in the leg. When the son's friend helped him to the car and the two drove away, a gunman shot and killed the friend at 98th Street and MacArthur Boulevard, Wilson said.
The personal tragedies and Oakland's climate of violence took their toll on Wilson, 65, and his family. He and his wife divorced after Adam's murder but got back together two years later. They split again after the more recent shooting.
A U.S. Army veteran who was born and raised in Oakland, Wilson needed to get away, but his options were limited. He moved to Modesto and found shelter in a complex for individuals with disabilities, where he spent six years before the place was shut down because of building code violations, he said in an interview. He crashed on couches, lived in his car and moved in with his brother for a month before finding shelter in San Jose through the nonprofit LifeMoves in early 2021. That helped, but it was, at best, a temporary solution.
His housing instability was compounded by health issues. Wilson, a custodian with the Oakland Unified School District, retired in 2006 after suffering a stroke that weakened the left side of his body. More recently, he had two throat surgeries and a heart surgery to replace five valves, he said.
But things turned around last May, when Wilson became one of the first tenants at Arroyo Green, a newly constructed 117-apartment complex in downtown Redwood City. Developed by the nonprofit MidPen Housing, Arroyo Green is part of a residential boom that has brought more than 4,000 new residential units to Redwood City since 2015.
Now Wilson, in addition to going to occupational therapy, physical therapy and volunteering at VA Palo Alto Healthcare Systems, has another routine: visiting the building's game room in the evening, putting on some Al Green and working on his pool shot. "I like to see if I still got it," Wilson recently told this news organization.
Read the full story here.