Oakland considers housing lifeline
Council explores measure to fund affordable units
Oakland is considering placing an $850 million bond measure to fund affordable housing and infrastructure on the November ballot.
The City Council decided Thursday to take up the issue at a July 5 meeting, which will focus on deciding whether other proposed measures should be placed on the November ballot, including a public advisory vote on the A’s Howard Terminal project that would survey how residents feel about the $12 billion project for a new waterfront ballpark and surrounding development.
Mayor Libby Schaaf and council President Nikki Fortunato Bas said in a joint statement that the proposed $850 million bond measure “would provide game-changing funds for our most essential infrastructure priorities.” In 2016, voters passed Measure KK, a $600 million bond measure for infrastructure — most of which has now been spent or committed to projects. Schaaf and Bas said the services funded by Measure KK are “being implemented at a record pace,” which includes the city’s major street repaving project.
“Measure KK also allowed Oakland to triple our production of affordable housing units needed to address our homelessness and housing crises,” Schaaf and Bas said. “Now it’s time to look forward at the immense needs still ahead of us.”
They said the fund would go toward “affordable housing preservation, street improvements and paving, and the preservation or improvement of public resources like parks, fire stations, libraries, and rec centers.”
More details on the bond and how it would produce affordable housing weren’t immediately available. and with construction costs skyrocketing and high real estate
costs, it’s unclear how big of an impact the bond would have.
The proposed bond measure comes as the city grapples with a skyrocketing homelessness and housing crisis. In the latest official count, the population of homeless people living in Oakland increased by 24% over the past three years. The count showed 1,718 sheltered people and 3,336 unsheltered people for a total of 5,055 people without permanent homes. Oakland accounts for more than half of the county’s overall homeless population of 9,747.
Oakland is also behind on its affordable housing goals. The state asked Oakland to issue permits for 6,949 lowincome and moderate units by 2023, but the city has met only 22% of that goal so far, with permits approved for 1,506 affordable units.
Earlier this month, the city awarded $37.5 million in funds to affordable-housing developers to build 249 deeply affordable units throughout Oakland — 133 of which will be permanent supportive housing for the homeless.
At the time, Schaaf said the projects “illustrate Oakland’s aggressive push to build more affordable housing right here, right now.”