If you live here in East Oakland, in the Highland, Woodland or Lockwood Gardens neighborhoods just east of the Coliseum BART Station, where a mob of youths held up a train last week and robbed its passengers, you understand.

You may not condone the crime, but you understand it.

You get why snatching a $600 iPhone, which can be quickly turned into a few hundred dollars on the streets, is enticing.

Because when you look around, it’s barren.

There are no jobs.

There’s not much for the youth to see or do.

But, hey, there are plenty of liquor stores. And there are plenty of young brown and black girls standing on corners, their exposed buttocks revealing lost innocence at work.

Check-cashing stores continue to pop up, but the development that’s been promised in this area is nothing more than underdeveloped dirt lots enclosed by fences.

If you live here, you wake up just about every day praying you don’t catch a stray bullet. And you pray even harder when the weather is warmer.

You know the police only come if someone dies.

You hear that in other neighborhoods people complain about potholes damaging their tires. But it’s not the potholes that worry people here. It’s the car boots for unpaid tickets and the repo man for the unpaid car payments.

You learn that many people avoid driving on the main roads — like International and MacArthur boulevards — because they don’t have driver’s licenses and their cars aren’t registered. Or they’re driving stolen cars.

You find out, too, pretty quickly, which neighborhood parks are really trash dumps and hangouts for people sipping out of brown bags. And you know which blocks have drug houses. You know enemies are always lurking, which is why young men in white T-shirts stare at every car that passes.

And you likely know someone who’s been slain, whose name has been inked onto a forearm, shoulder or chest.

You know that landmarks here are associated with death and despair. Look, that’s where this person was shot and right there is where this person was killed.

Here, at 94th Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard, is where Dominic Newton, a rapper known as the Jacka, was shot and killed in February 2015 while rapping in a van with friends. A boombox mural was painted on the side of the corner store as a memorial.

You realize that if you keep going east, you’ll soon get to the Oakland hills, where the sun shines differently. There are grocery stores, restaurants and a smooth, pothole-less ride. And stunning views of hills and mountains shrouded in fog. You can see manicured hedges in homes that aren’t protected by iron fences, houses without bars on the windows.

As you wind past regional parks, country clubs and golf courses on Skyline Boulevard, it’s easy to forget that way down below people are struggling mightily. Forget living paycheck to paycheck. How about really living day to day?

It might as well be a different world.

And it is.

Authorities say witnesses told them there were up to 60 youths who vanished into the streets outside the Coliseum BART Station after robbing and beating some of the passengers aboard the Dublin-bound train last weekend.

Maybe those youths came from these neighborhoods. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe we never will know.

But know this: The lack of resources and opportunities has decimated lives old and young in these neighborhoods. People are weary, and when they do cry out for help, no one seems to hear or see them.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr