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Vickie Liu
Vickie Liu is one of PAO's Cantonese leaders. She has lived in Oakland for thirteen years, and currently lives with a family of five in a one-bedroom apartment. Vickie joined PAO when she was given an unfair eviction notice from her landlord becasue she refused to pay her rent that was raised 60%. Instead, she organized seven neighbors from her apartment to fight the extremely high rent increase and eviction notices.
Vickie won the battle, and believes it is very important to have an organization like PAO to refer low-income Chinese and other Asians, like herself, to get help. She hopes the housing market becomes more stable and thinks the best solution is to have more available affordable housing. "The city of Oakland, not private companies, should build more housing, becasue private companies are only there for the profit."
Cang Ye
Cang Ye was a high school teacher in China and now teaches a calligraphy class in the Chinese community. He describes PAO as an organization to "fly the flag for affordable housing." Cang Ye believes that if we really want to find long-term solutions to the housing problem, everybody needs to be involved.
"Businessmen and developers should see housing as a basic need, not as profits, so that we can have more affordable housing for the working class and low-income residents. The City should provide more affordable housing to make sure people of Oakland have affordable and healthy homes. The state government should support the building of more affordable housing and jobs. The federal government led by President Bush should not have started the war or implemented tax cuts, so we can save money for affordable housing and jobs."
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