Oakland seeks volunteers to help outline city’s policies
As Oakland continues fighting the homelessness crisis, city officials are looking for residents to weigh in and oversee their efforts.
The city is looking for nine volunteers to join its first-ever Homeless Advisory Commission. The new commission’s duties will include providing oversight of the city’s spending on services for unhoused residents, reviewing the city’s homeless encampment policies, and providing suggestions to the City Council.
“The impacts of COVID-19 on our economy in general, and on housing insecurity and homelessness in particular, make this Commission more important than ever,” Mayor Libby Schaaf wrote in a news release. “I look forward to collaborating with the Council in seating and launching Oakland’s first-ever Homeless Advisory Commission in November 2020.”
The commission is a product of Measure W,
the vacant parcel tax Oakland voters approved in November 2018. By taxing vacant properties, the city expects to collect $7 million a year for services to help unhoused residents and deal with illegal dumping. Late last year, after an outcry over high tax bills, the city cut the tax rate in half for most people.
Now owners of vacant lots face an annual fee of $3,000, if the lot is in a neighborhood where zoning laws allow no more than four apartments per lot.
Measure W also required the city to set up a commission to oversee the distribution of the vacant parcel tax funds.
City councilmembers will recommend potential members to the mayor, who will appoint them to the commission. The council will then confirm the appointees.
All commission members must be residents of Oakland, and at least half must live in neighborhoods “heavily impacted” by homelessness.
At least two members must be homeless, formerly homeless or from a “low-income” household (defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as a household making a salary of no more than $104,400 per year for a family of four).
At least three members must have professional experience working in homeless services, and at least one member must have financial expertise.
One member may fulfill multiple criteria.
Commissioners will be charged with reviewing the city’s spending of vacant parcel tax funds, recommending how to allocate the funds, reviewing and responding to the city’s homeless encampment policy and its affordable housing policies, and reviewing all other services Oakland provides for homeless residents — including street outreach, shelters, transitional housing and permanent supportive housing.
This will be Oakland’s first official commission to address homelessness. The city coordinates closely with the volunteer Homeless Advocacy Working Group — a volunteer group dedicated to improving the lives of Oakland’s unhoused residents — but that’s not a city-affiliated group.
How to apply
Applications are open for Oakland’s new Homeless Advisory Commission. Apply online at oak land.granicus.com/boards/ w/8552f8c4c0e15460/ boards/36365. Applications are due by Friday, Oct. 16.