BART director moves back to district after address controversy

OAKLAND, Calif. - BART Director Lateefah Simon would have much preferred to keep renting her Oakland apartment instead of moving to Emeryville.

But she felt she had to make the move, the East Bay Times reported, to keep her seat on the BART board. To serve her constituents, she has to live within her district's boundaries, which her Oakland apartment apparently did not. 

In March, the BART board removed her as a director after it came to light that her home next to BART’s MacArthur Station in Oakland fell outside the line of her District 7 boundary.

Simon had said she had consulted with BART officials who told her she could legally do that.

"I would not have moved my family to this residence otherwise," she said in a statement at the time. "I am deeply disappointed about this situation."

She said she had moved to Oakland because she had been receiving racist threats because of her progressive stances on police reform. 

Simon, the only Black board member, received an outpouring of support. Even the BART board let her stay on as they investigated the address issue. 

But this week, Simon told the newspaper that she had to move. She said that she now has to pay a broken lease fee and switch her daughter to a new school in a new city. 

She now also lives farther away from the BART station that she represents.

Adding salt to the wounds, the East Bay Times reported that the BART board recently approved new district boundaries putting Simon’s old Oakland address within her district.

But those new map lines don't take effect for another two years.