Voters will decide if city of Oakland can build housing
Oakland voters will decide in November whether to let the city develop 13,000 affordable rental housing units.
A measure introduced by Council Member Carroll Fife would authorize the city to develop, construct or acquire up to 13,000 “low-rent” units, although it does not include a funding pathway or speed up the notoriously slow housing approval process. The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to put the measure before voters on the November ballot.
The ballot measure is needed because Article 34 in the state’s constitution prohibits cities and counties from developing or buying “low-rent” housing without a majority vote of taxpayers, Fife noted.
Article 34 defines low-rent housing as any subsidized affordable rental housing project that a local government develops, builds, buys or finances. The provision requiring a vote to proceed has been seen as an impediment to governments’ construction of needed housing in the state. It “has delayed low-income housing development across the state and weakened efforts to integrate some of the most exclusive suburban communities,” states the urban policy nonprofit SPUR. “A number of attempts have been made in recent years to repeal Article 34 at the state level, without success.”
San Francisco passed a similar ballot measure in 2020, Proposition K, as required by Article 34, to build or fix thousands of affordable housing units.
“Article 34 is a prime example of decades-old segregation policy contributing to poor housing conditions today,” Fife said in a statement. “In order to create a city and state where all people have access to safe and affordable housing, we must correct the errors of the past. My ballot initiative seeks to do that for Oakland.”
Fife said bringing the ballot measure to voters this year will clear the way for the city to create a plan for large-scale developments that are predominantly low-income housing.
Oakland is in desperate need of more affordable housing options, Fife said in an interview with The Chronicle.
The city has struggled to build affordable housing because of massive construction costs, which can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit.
Under a state requirement, Oakland and all California cities had to devise a housing plan that spells out how they will include affordable options in new housing. From 2015 to 2023, Oakland had to plan for 14,765 units — including 2,059 very-low-income and 2,075 low-income units. The city’s 2020 status report shows that it’s met 43% of its goal for verylow-income units and 25% of its goal for low-income units.
The housing shortage has fueled the city’s skyrocketing homelessness crisis. Over the past three years, Oakland saw a 24% surge in its homelessness population from 4,071 people in 2019 to 5,055 people in 2022. Its increase in 2019 over the prior two years — 47% — was the biggest jump in the region.
Fife said she envisions the ballot measure as a precursor to a social housing pilot in the city. Her proposal is part of a growing movement in the Bay Area and California to push for more social housing projects — meaning government-developed housing. After decades of building public housing for low-income people, the federal government pulled back on that policy as the complexes were beset by problems.
Barry Zigas, a senior fellow at the nonprofit advocacy group Consumer Federation of America, said the benefit of a social housing project comes down to whether government can guarantee long-term affordability of the units.
Critics might point to what happened with federal public housing projects, Zigas said, adding that those projects weren’t “flexible or nimble to address market challenges,” and aren’t as responsive in addressing maintenance and other tenant issues.
Fife encourages social housing programs similar to those in Europe and Asia, generally with a mix of income levels, resulting in higher-income renters helping to subsidize low-income residents.
While Fife is open to a mixed-income community, she notes the ballot measure doesn’t lay out a vision for that. Her proposal describes social housing for extremely lowincome, very-low-income and low-income residents that would be owned and managed by the city. It could also be owned or managed by an affordable-housing provider, with help from the city.
Fife said the city will have to apply for state and federal grants to ensure that the housing projects can break ground. But the point of the ballot measure is to clear early Article 34 hurdles that could stall affordable housing development by requiring voter approval each time the city wants to fund such projects.