UPDATE:

11 p.m. Tuesday:

Oakland police have moved Occupy Oakland protesters at the lot at Linden and 18th off the property; according to Twitter reports, a group is marching downtown to Frank Ogawa Plaza.

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Late Monday night, a small group of about 15-20 Occupy Oakland demonstrators pulled up their stakes and established a new encampment - in a vacant lot at 18th and Linden Streets.

By 3 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, those numbers had swelled considerably; between 40-50 people could be seen as the lot buzzed with activity. More campers and Occupy supporters were arriving by the minute, pitching tents, painting banners or dropping off food and equipment donations. Television trucks were pulling up in time for the evening broadcast; reporters, who were not allowed inside the encampment, interviewed Occupiers from outside the lot’s chain-link fence. Meanwhile, across the street, about 8-10 African-American youth loitered, watching the proceedings.

“It’s important to connect the Occupy national movement with the local community, so that the community gets some wins out of this," Tony Coleman, a West Oakland resident and community activist who operates nearby nonprofit Bikes 4 Life, said.

Some of the issues particularly pertinent to West Oakland, he said, were those related to foreclosure.

“There’s so many foreclosures happening, we gotta make sure we get folks educated,” Coleman said.

Often, he added, foreclosures were presented as individual family issues, not community issues. “The way the Occupy movement can help us is by making this a community issue.”

According to city property records, the Occupied property - located at 1809 Linden Street - was foreclosed on Nov. 21 and is scheduled to be auctioned off Dec. 12 on the courthouse steps, an all-too-familiar practice these days. 

Oakland has one of the highest foreclosure rates in California, and one out of every 241 homes in Oakland was foreclosed in August alone, according to a study conducted by real estate website RealtyTrac. The foreclosures also have severely affected renters. According to a 2009 study by renters’ rights advocates Tenants Together, more than one-third of California’s 225,000 foreclosed properties in 2008 were rental units.

If anything, the situation is getting worse. Many delayed foreclosures came due in 2011, and RealtyTrac projects an estimated $12.2 billion dollar loss in Oakland home values in 2012 due to foreclosures.

Initially, posts on social media sites announcing the camp’s presence claimed the occupation of the Linden Street lot had been with the property owner’s verbal permission. But Oakland city official Arturo Sanchez said that hadn’t been the case, and SFGate.com reported that the property owner, Gloria Cobb, had not given written permission to the Occupiers. However, OPD spokeswoman Johnna Watson said no eviction order would be enforced until the police received a request from the property owner.

That wasn’t the only source of confusion with the Linden Street encampment.

Some neighborhood residents bristled with evident tension and outright anger at the appearance of the camp. The lot’s next door neighbor - an older African-American male - launched into a tirade against Occupiers for several minutes, noting that he had lived in the neighborhood for decades.

Another young African-American male in his mid-20s argued vigorously with Coleman, social justice activist and Oscar Grant relative Jack Bryson, and “Melvin,” who helped establish the encampment.

“If y’all get booted from corporate downtown, you got a problem with them. Don’t bring it here,” he said.

But after a few minutes, after being informed that the camp had been established by Melvin and other youth of color, his tone softened even more.

Other neighborhood residents were more amenable to the idea of the encampment. Two young people walking by were told there was free food and water for them, to which one of them replied, “'Fa sho? I am glad to be part of the 99 percent.”

And two older African-American men sitting in chairs in a garage two doors down from the encampment said if it helped the community, they were ok with it being there.

“Long as no fighting or nothing going on, I think it’s alright,” Darryl Michael Taylor, who has lived in the neighborhood for four years, said.

Hammond Tatum, a West Oakland resident for more than 30 years, said, “if it’s serving a good purpose, it’s fine.” Neither Taylor nor Tatum knew anyone personally affected by the foreclosure crisis, they said.

Coleman said that Occupiers were planning on distributing leaflets and going door-to door to address neighborhood and community concerns.

“Once we start thinking as a community, we can move mountains,” he said. “We’re gonna talk to the people, we’re gonna share information, and we know that we’re not going to expect to win everybody over. People have been here for so long, a lot of older folks are stuck in their ways. “

Instead, he said, Occupiers would try to connect with “the folks that’s open for a change … we’re now saying, this is what we’re doing for you, we’re saying, this is what we could do together.” [sic]

Barbara Grady and Jennifer Inez Ward contributed additional reporting.