A tiny California enclave completely surrounded by Oakland is a world apart from its troubled neighbor, with multimillion-dollar homes, sky-high incomes and a dramatically different approach to tackling crime and policy despite the two communities sharing a border.
Piedmont is only 1.7 square miles and has about 11,000 residents, but there is a huge financial gap between it and the adjoining city.
The typical Piedmont home is worth $2.57 million, according to Zillow data, compared with $721,966 in Oakland.
It means that the typical house in Piedmont is worth more than three and a half times the value of a house in Oakland. Median household income in Piedmont is at least $250,000, according to the latest U.S. Census figures, compared with $101,600 in Oakland.
Piedmont’s five-member, at-large council has focused largely on traditional municipal priorities including fiscal stability, infrastructure, public safety and city services.
Oakland’s council has a much stronger progressive-left presence, including District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife, who has been endorsed by the East Bay Democratic Socialists of America. Fife has backed expanded tenant protections, affordable housing, progressive tax measures and social-housing initiatives.
Piedmont’s leaders largely focus on running and maintaining an affluent city, while Oakland has become a testing ground for more sweeping progressive policies.
The two cities also take markedly different approaches to policing.
Piedmont has heavily embraced automated surveillance technology. The city operates 53 Flock Safety automated license plate readers, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Atlas of Surveillance, which documented the system as of April 2024.
Piedmont police openly tout the technology. The department says it uses “innovative technology” to reduce crime and improve public safety, while its transparency portal says, “We know, and our community knows, how effective and useful our ALPR technology has been over the years.”
The department’s 2023 annual report said officers responded to more than 1,200 ALPR incidents that year, resulting directly in 33 arrests and the recovery of 37 vehicles.
Piedmont’s police philosophy is also spelled out in its policy manual, which includes a Law Enforcement Code of Ethics promising “no compromise with crime and with relentless prosecution of criminals.”
Oakland, meanwhile, has struggled with a persistent police staffing shortage. The city’s 2025-27 budget funded 678 sworn officers, below the 700-officer minimum established under Measure NN, while the city’s 2026-30 Violence Reduction Plan described a “chronic staffing shortfall.”
The policing divide comes against radically different physical layouts, too. Piedmont is overwhelmingly residential, with more than 95% of its single-family homes located in its single-family Zone A, while commercial activity is concentrated in two small areas.
Piedmont also maintains its own police department, schools, parks and city government despite being completely surrounded by Oakland.
The types of jobs held by residents also reflect the affluent enclave’s professional makeup.
Management is the most common occupation among Piedmont residents, with more than 1,000 people working in management roles.
Professional, scientific and technical services are the largest employment sector among residents, followed by health care and social assistance and education.
Oakland has a far larger and more varied workforce, with about 235,000 employed residents in 2024.
Professional, scientific and technical services were also its largest employment sector, followed by health care and social assistance and educational services.
However, pay for these jobs varies widely across cities. Median earnings among working men in Piedmont were about $228,000 in 2024, while women earned roughly $140,000.
In Oakland, the comparable median earnings were about $66,000 for men and $62,000 for women.
The communities are also separated by a public-safety divide.
Oakland recorded 4,824 violent crimes in 2025 under the city’s violent crime index, which includes homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
That included 56 homicides, 1,661 robberies, 2,950 aggravated assaults and 147 rapes, according to Oakland’s 2026-2030 Violence Reduction Plan.
Piedmont’s totals were on an entirely different scale.
The Piedmont Police Department reported just five robberies and one aggravated assault in 2025.
The two cities also take markedly different approaches to policing.
Piedmont has heavily embraced automated surveillance technology. The city operates 53 Flock Safety automated license plate readers, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Atlas of Surveillance, which documented the system as of April 2024.
Piedmont police openly tout the technology. The department says it uses “innovative technology” to reduce crime and improve public safety, while its transparency portal says, “We know, and our community knows, how effective and useful our ALPR technology has been over the years.”
The department’s 2023 annual report said officers responded to more than 1,200 ALPR incidents that year, resulting directly in 33 arrests and the recovery of 37 vehicles.
Piedmont’s police philosophy is also spelled out in its policy manual, which includes a Law Enforcement Code of Ethics promising “no compromise with crime and with relentless prosecution of criminals.”
Oakland, meanwhile, has struggled with a persistent police staffing shortage. The city’s 2025-27 budget funded 678 sworn officers, below the 700-officer minimum established under Measure NN, while the city’s 2026-30 Violence Reduction Plan described a “chronic staffing shortfall.”
The policing divide comes against radically different physical layouts, too. Piedmont is overwhelmingly residential, with more than 95% of its single-family homes located in its single-family Zone A, while commercial activity is concentrated in two small areas.
Piedmont also maintains its own police department, schools, parks and city government despite being completely surrounded by Oakland.
That stark separation has now become ammunition for activists demanding that the wealthy enclave be “canceled.”
Oakland resident Jesse Rosemoore is behind the provocative “Cancel Piedmont” campaign targeting the predominantly white city, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Rosemoore, 44, began handing out “CANCEL PIEDMONT” stickers and selling $10 T-shirts bearing the slogan 14 months ago.
“It really is ridiculous that a place like Piedmont even exists,” Rosemoore told the outlet. “I felt like someone needed to bring even more attention to it, because what’s going on there says a lot about our society as a whole.”
Piedmont is 68.6% white and just 0.8% Black, according to Census figures. Oakland, by comparison, is 29.6% white and 20.2% Black.
In some places, the divide can literally come down to a property line, with neighboring households potentially having access to different school districts and police departments depending on which side of the Piedmont-Oakland border they live.
Rosemoore and other “Cancel Piedmont” supporters argue the city’s efforts to confront its history of racial exclusion have failed to address the economic barriers that continue to make living there inaccessible to many people.
But some Piedmont officials and residents argue their community is being unfairly singled out.
“I know people want to always think that we’re horrible,” Jean Chen Takazawa, the Piedmont Unified School District’s director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, told the Chronicle.
“The reality is, we’re doing good work here. Stop judging us and let us just do the work.” Rosemoore, meanwhile, insists the campaign is not a personal attack on Piedmont residents.
He also admits that Oakland has practically no real chance of annexing the enclave since such an action would need the approval of the Piedmont residents.
Instead, Rosemoore sees Piedmont, Northern California’s only incorporated city completely surrounded by another city, as a particularly stark example of the wider Bay Area divide over race, housing and wealth.
“Before you can truly be diverse and inclusive, you have to have the housing that supports it,” said Rosemoore.
