Community & Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Community and Economic Development Committee meeting of Tuesday, 03/10/2026. The time is now 01:33PM, and this meeting may come to order. Before taking roll, will provide instructions on how to submit speaker cards for items on this agenda. If you're here with us in chamber, would like to submit a speaker card, please fill one out and turn one into myself or a clerk representative no later than ten minutes after the start of this meeting or before the item is read into record. Online speaker requests were due twenty four hours prior to the start of this meeting time.

This meeting came to order at 01:33PM, and this and speaker cards will no longer be accepted ten minutes after, making that time 01:43PM. We'll now proceed with taking roll. Council member Fife is excused. Council member Ramachandran? Present. Council member Unger?

Here.

And chair Brown? Present. Thank you. We have three members present, one excused, Fife. And chair before we begin do you have any announcements at this time?

Yes. Well welcome everyone to the community and economic development committee. First announcement is just we will be changing the order of the items. So we will hear item S three followed by S five and then the last item will be item number four. No other announcements at this time.

Thank you. Noting the presence of council member Pfeif at 01:34PM, and also noting the changes made to the agenda, noting that we'll be hearing items one, two, three, five, then four. Reading in item one approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on 02/24/2026 and there are no speakers on this item.

Move approval of the minutes.

Second.

Thank you. That was the motion made by council member Unger, second by council member Ramachandran to accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on 02/24/2026. On roll, council member Fife? Aye. Council member Ramachandran? Aye. Council member Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Thank you. Item number one passes with four ayes to accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting held on 02/24/2026. Reading in item two, determination of schedule of outstanding committee items and we have one speaker that signed up.

Excellent. And did we need to do of urgency? Oh, this is the item three. Okay, so to the administration any changes for the pending list? Administrator Baker.

So for the next item any changes to our pending list?

No, no changes, thanks.

Excellent, so I'll entertain a motion. Okay we'll take the speaker.

Calling in the name that signed up to speak on item number two, Mrs. Sata Olubala.

What did you say? One minute, two minute? One minute? Two? I'm a try to I I cannot understand the rationale for this body never getting any kind of information from the Oakland Housing Authority.

You have the mandate for appointing members to the Oakland Housing Authority. Public housing comes under your umbrella, and you do and housing is supposed to be a crucial issue. Public housing is a crucial component for individuals low income and so forth, but we get no interaction on how we need to look at public housing under the Oakland Housing Authority, particular what's going on with the crazy man in Washington with HUD looking at mandating certain things that is greatly gonna impact public housing, section eight vouchers. The opportunity that you can use your section eight voucher to purchase a home. We haven't waited on any of that stuff.

So when are we gonna take the time to bring Oakland Housing Authority into the room? They have many complaints that have been house brought forward by the people who are living in public housing, and nobody's there to address it except them. We are not protecting the best interest of people who live in public housing until we bring Oakland Public Housing into the room to get a report and to actually have a performance evaluation on what's going on with public housing in this city.

Thank you for your comments. Chair, that concludes all speakers on this item. We just need a motion.

Excellent. I'll entertain a motion.

So moved.

Second. Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Fife, seconded by council member Unger to accept the determination of scheduled outstanding committee items as is. On roll, council members Fife? Aye. Ramachandran? Aye. Unger. Aye. And Chair Brown. Aye. Thank you. Item number two passes with four ayes to accept the pending list as is. Before reading in item s three, we do need sorry. We do need a vote as this item was added was amended at the three day agenda for an urgency finding.

I'll I'll I'll make the motion to move this item. To hear the item. Second.

Thank you. That was a motion made by Chair Brown, seconded by Council Member Ramachandran to accept the urgency finding on item s three and to hear the item on roll council members five. Aye. Ramachandran. Aye. Unger. Aye. And chair Brown. Aye. Thank you.

Motion passes with four ayes. Now reading in item number three. Adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to accept an appropriate appropriate up to $4,400,000 in grant funds from the federal lead hazard reduction grant program, enter into a professional services agreement with Habitat for Humanity East East Bay Silicon Valley Inc in an amount not to exceed $4,021,094.30 to provide grant administration and management construction service construction services for the lead based paint mitigation and healthy homes program and to waive the city of Oakland's local and small local business enterprise program requirements, local employment, and Oakland apprenticeship requirements and request for proposal slash qualification competitive process requirements Upon completion of sorry. Upon completion of a competitive procurement process, enter into one or more agreements in a total amount not to exceed $334,878.13 with one or more workforce development services services providers to expand the supply of workers and firm available available to conduct lead based paint mitigation and healthy homes work and make grants eligible make grants to eligible property owners for the remediation of lead based paint hazards and healthy home improvements and we have one speaker that signed up.

Excellent. Thank you so much. So for this first item we will be hearing from, Caleb Smith.

Good afternoon council members. Caleb Smith, senior policy analyst for the city's housing community development department. We are here today seeking permission to accept a $4,400,000 grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is their lead hazard reduction grant program. This is a nationwide competitive program and it is the first time that Oakland is receiving funding through this program.

We're very excited about this because these funds are going to be able to address two carrier areas of need. First and foremost, the funds from this program will address lead based paint hazards which is a significant issue in Oakland considering our old housing stock. A lot of those homes have exposed lead paint hazards which is a potent neurotoxin. In addition to the $4,000,000 that this grant has dedicated to that use, this grant also contains $400,000 to pay for accompanying healthy home improvements to address other in home health hazards like mold or radon exposure. Now in terms of the delivery of this grant, as part of our application to HUD, we partnered with the local nonprofit Habitat for Humanity East Bay Silicon Valley, which will be serving as a subrecipient.

They will oversee the day to day administration of the remediation work contained in this grant, including working directly with the contractors who will do the physical work, as well as coordinating all the testing before and after the work is done to make sure it's effective, and also working with the renters and homeowners on temporary relocation while the work is done. Because oftentimes they need to move out for a few days while the work is being done. In addition to working with Habitat on the remediation, this item also, following a future competitive bidding process, will authorize us to work with one or most likely multiple workforce and business development organizations to provide additional supports to Oakland workers and Oakland small businesses to access the economic opportunities that come with this grant. Our budget included a little over $330,000 to provide these supports. We are mindful that at present there is a shortage of qualified workers and businesses with the necessary certification to conduct this kind of lead based paint remediation.

So investing in expanding our capacity for this work will be beneficial both for this grant and other future lead based paint mitigation efforts in future. We also are mindful that for especially the smallest firms, the firms that would be a good fit for this kind of work, if this is their first experience contracting with a government funded program, the additional compliance opportunity requirements can be challenging at times. So the small business capacity building supports will be useful to make it accessible to these firms. In terms of who's going to be served directly by this program, based on the parameters of the underlying HUD grant program, this program will be available to both homeowners and renters in Oakland. There is a requirement, first off, that the renters or homeowners need to be low income.

And second, that they have small children in the household or regularly present at the household, which makes sense because these small children are the most vulnerable to these lead based paint hazards. Although applications can be received citywide, the outreach as well prioritization for this program will be based on a set of census tracts listed in the staff report, which mirrors the equity based targeting from our future equitable lead hazard abatement program. The expected duration of this program is going to be approximately four years and we're excited that once this program has been successfully completed, the city will likely be able to apply for additional funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development so that this funding source that we are receiving here for the first time has the potential to be an ongoing source of support for addressing lead based paint hazards here in Oakland. So that's just a quick overview of this program and we're now pleased to take any questions. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much Caleb. We can go to the public speaker.

Sorry we have a number of speakers, chair calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number s three. In no particular order you can come up to the podium, state your name for the record. Or if you're on Zoom, please raise your hand to be easily identified. Miss Asada Olubala, Greg Slaughter, Valerie Bachelor, Alberto Parra, Marcus Romero Garcia, Isabelle, and Linda.

Okay. So I found something that said $4,800,000 from a $24,000,000.26 19 legal settlement with paint manufacturers has sat unused by the city of Oakland since 2021 with plans for usage by the city not expected for usage until mid twenty twenty five. So the question is, have y'all used that money? And where is the report on the expenditures of that particular funding source? Miss Brown?

Okay. Okay. I'll go on. There has been very slow coordination between the city and the county related to dealing with this issue. Also, currently, the system often waits for the children to test positive for lead poisoning before taking action rather than proactively removing hazardous.

And we have to realize that this is only a chip of the iceberg because we got lead in the water. So when we deal with this issue, we gotta go to that issue because OUSD has 80% of its water fixtures and the schools showing some level of lead and they're doing a very poor job of remediating that issue. Over at McClymonds, we got lead in the soil. And I've been trying since 2021 with the mod remodernization for them to do something about the lead in the soil that's on the football field, and they're doing nothing except applying for noticing of exemption, which means you don't have to deal with it. So we got a lot of issues with lead and people who have the ability to do something including the city and OUSD, it's not happening.

Chair Brown, I apologize. There was a misunderstanding. We're actually wanting to make comments on item number four. Can we go ahead and do that when it comes to that item or should we just make our public comments? And I realize I've said it for three but it's four.

Yeah, that's fine.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, chair at this time all names have been called.

Okay, excellent. Colleagues any questions or comments? If not in the immediate, Caleb can you quickly explain I guess the difference between this particular grant that HCD went after and the settlement funds around the program?

Sure. I believe my colleague Ugar Ramirez would like to cover that point.

Good afternoon. Ugar Ramirez, Deputy Director. So this program, which is a competitively awarded HUD grant, we're very excited, a very heavy lift to get that application in, is separate and distinct. However, it is complementary for obvious reasons. But it is a separate program apart from the equitable lead hazard abatement program. We expect to have the details on that program and the MOU with the county sometime in May.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And then in applying for this particular grant is the scope of the work equal to kind of the scope of the settlement as well? Because I guess my question is did we consider I know this pro the programming is is gonna be focusing in on homes right? But as was mentioned by the public commenter we know that you know many of the buildings that are utilized you know within the city of Oakland and and and various other facilities. Were there any thoughts or are there any future plans to do that type of remediation?

Yes, absolutely. In preparing that extensive application, Caleb did consult with the city's working group, which is comprised from leaders in the city administrator's office, the Department of Race and Equity, Housing and Community Development and Planning and Building Department. So we made sure to sign off on the proposal that was submitted to HUD. It's complementary in that some aspects of the HUD funded program are similar to draft elements of the equitable lead hazard abatement program, but then it's complementary in that, for example, homeowners, owner occupied homes will also be served by the HUD grant, where whereas the equitable lead hazard abatement program, because it's leading with equity, really targets, our most vulnerable tenants and our most burdened census tracts. So, of course, that financial assistance would go to the rental property owners on behalf of those vulnerable tenants.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Council member Fife.

Yes. Thank you. I just wanted to state a couple things for the record that this lawsuit that that gave rise to the settlement from these paint companies, I think it started in like 2019 or 2000, and just to the speaker's point, I've been trying to get these funds out into the community since I was elected and since I started serving in 2021. And what I was told at that time was that the city Of Oakland didn't have the infrastructure to create a program that would address the individuals that would potentially be displaced for all of the repairs that needed to happen in the city of Oakland. So we were facing a potential crisis displacing individuals and still didn't have a program that was created.

So since then, hats off to HCD and the Department of Race and Equity for being diligent about this process and ensuring that we could, you know, address the the issues as as best as we can because I still think that the the level of of need in the city outweighs the resources that we have to address the the crisis. That said, I in light of the recent disparity study, Caleb, you stated it in your presentation, but I would like you to elaborate on why we needed a waiver and what steps were taken to confirm that there were no firms no there were not responsive firms to address what what's being asked for and with this grant. Sure.

Through the chair to council member five. This was based off of our department's previous experience working with similar firms. Our department has a legacy home rehabilitation program funded primarily by community development block grants, which among other kinds of home improvements does include some lead based paint remediation work. In our experience, there's a very limited pool of contractors that the city has been able to work with so far. Three quarters of our existing contractors, the contractor pool that we'll absolutely make available to Habitat as well are currently African American contractors.

And we are mindful though that based on some of analysis that was done leading into the Equitable Lighthouses abatement program, they did take a look at the availability of certified contractors with the necessary certifications to do this work in our area. And it was well short of what we needed to address our forthcoming pipeline, which is why it was so important for us to include this, not just workforce development, but also small business development budget in this grant to grow the capacity moving forward over time, especially because we want to those barriers to entry. I

just want to state that I think that's an example that you all provided with this particular grant around workforce workforce development development and and economic economic development that all of our city departments need to model to ensure that we do have race equity and gender equity in in the grants that we pursue and the contracts that we pursue. Am really grateful for the leadership of HCD showing everyone else how it should be done if we really wanna address the disparities in this city. I will make a motion to accept staff's recommendation on this item and say thank you Caleb specifically. You bring a lot of money into the city of Oakland. We appreciate that.

Thank you councilmember. It's very kind.

Yes. I I concur. Thank you so much Caleb and the HCD team. And so council member Unger.

I'll just second that.

Okay. Excellent.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Fife, seconded by council member Unger to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the March 16 special city council agenda. On roll, council members Aye. Ramachandran? Aye. Unger? Aye. And Chair Brown?

Aye.

Thank you. Item number s three passes with four ayes. To forward this item to the 03/16/2026 special city council agenda on consent. Before reading, sorry, noting the change to the agenda and we'll be hearing item s five. Before taking s five we do need a vote as this item was added at the three day agenda.

Excellent. Entertain a motion on that.

So moved.

Second. Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Unger seconded by chair Brown to accept the urgency finding, for item s five. On roll, council members five. Aye. Ramachandran. Aye. Unger. Aye. And chair Brown.

Aye. Thank you. Motion passes with four ayes to accept the urgency finding item s five. Now reading in item s five adopt a resolution authorizing the city administrator to apply for accept an appropriate up to 1 sorry $1,600,000 in funds from the state of California department of housing and community developments pro housing incentive pilot program for capitalized service reserves for affordable housing and make grants or development loans under the new construction of multifamily rental affordable housing program or the rapid response homeless housing program contingent on funding available and we do have two speakers that signed up. Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you so much. And so we'll once again hear from Caleb.

Hello again. Caleb Smith, senior policy analyst with the City of Elkins Housing Community Development Department. This is seeking authorization from the council to apply for a grant opportunity from the state housing community development department. This is their pro housing incentive program. The state has a program called the pro housing designation program, which recognizes cities that go above and beyond the requirements of state law to be housing friendly.

This is based on a combination of land use funding, really a lot of this work that the city does across departments. So we should share our appreciation of the good work that the planning and billing department, economic workforce development and a lot of other departments do to make this designation possible. This grant opportunity for potentially roughly 1.3 to $1,600,000 is available only to cities that the state has designated as pro housing. I want to be if we are awarded, these funds will be used for capitalized service funds to support our work on deeply affordable housing here in Oakland because there is a limited amount of these funds available from other sources, so there's a strong need for it. Although we always apply for this grant when it is up, it's a very straightforward application.

We're also mindful that the state's rules prioritize newly designated pro housing cities that have not previously received this funding. And that's the reason why although we were awarded funds in the first round that this grant existed, we have not yet received an additional award. We're mindful though that at a certain point the state is going to run out of pro housing cities. So if we keep applying then hopefully we will eventually be awarded additional funds. So that's just a little background about this grant. Now please take any questions. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much Caleb. And then can you quickly share one of the questions I had asked previously. Can you explain how that pro housing designation kind of impacts some of the other, you know, grants that we do apply for as well?

Certainly. Thank you council member. The city's pro housing designation does not just unlock access to this grant program, it also provides a scoring advantage in a series of housing and transportation related grants for both the city and sometimes even for our partners. So examples of that include the state's affordable housing sustainable communities program, a program several Oakland projects have won funds from over the past few years, which pays for affordable housing and transportation improvements close to transit. Also things like the state's Cal Home program which supports things like home ownership, that also has a scoring bonus.

And then the transportation sides, I believe there's an inner city rail program that we as a city don't apply for, but our friends at BART could potentially get a scoring bonus from that. So there's a wide variety of ways in which the city of Oakland's housing friendly policies is making it possible for us to be in a good position both funding wise and potentially also for our partners too. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And so if no immediate questions we can hear from the public speakers.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item s five David Boatwright and Miss Asada Olubala.

David Boatwright, District 4. This program is called a pilot program yet there have been other projects like this preceding it and it's not clear what makes this a pilot project and what impact that has on the ability to use these funds. The other thing is it's only for $1,600,000 which in housing is a drop in the bucket. What type projects might this be combined with? And where does this money go if we're awarded this money? Where does it go until it's tied to something more significant? That's it. Thanks. So

this is a project for which the application is due 03/31/2026. So is this another rush job that you're trying to rush it through and we haven't timely dealt with it? So there are compliance issues that have to be a part of the application and it says that you have to be in compliance with state and federal housing laws. Are you all in compliance with federal housing laws? No, we don't know because you don't have any ability to have any insight or who has the insight about HUD.

That's the that's the Oakland Housing Authority. So how are you achieving compliance with housing, federal housing and state housing? The other thing is that there's such when I read it, there's such a thing as a revenue bonus award up to $500,000. I don't know if that applies to us, but the thing that concerns me it says funds are made available to each geographic category based on the percentage of twenty thirty population projections. So this project will not be based on income, it will be based on geographical categories.

Is and if I'm if that and I might have looked up the wrong thing, but that's what I did find when I looked up this particular grant. How are you able to get a partial award that says that exists? And let's see. That's all I had related to this.

Thank you. That concludes all speakers on this item.

Excellent. Any questions or comments, colleagues? Caleb I did have a quick question. Would you happen to remember that in in the first time that we that the city applied for this pro housing grant what project it was used to fund that first time.

I'm afraid I don't have that information off the top of my head. This application isn't dedicated to a specific project. It sort of becomes a flexible fund that can be integrated with some of our other projects that are awarded through either our new construction notice of funding availability process or our rapid response homeless housing project process.

Yeah. I think that the public speaker made a good point. I know that the report or even what you mentioned was that you know there's consistency around applying for this right so that we try right but I was curious you know in that first time that we applied curious how the funding was allocated. So maybe if you can follow-up with an email.

We'll look into that. Thank you councilmember.

Excellent. Thank you so much. All right. So we just need a motion to move this item to the special city council meeting on the sixteenth, right?

So moved.

Second. Thank you. That was a motion made by council member Unger seconded by council member Ramachandran to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the 03/16/2026 city special city council agenda. On roll, council members five? Aye. Ramachandran? Aye. Unger? Aye. And chair Brown? Aye. Thank you. Item number s five passes with four ayes. To forward this item to the 03/16/2026 special city council agenda on consent. Now reading in item number four. Receive an informational report on the housing and community development department's anti displacement strategic action plan and we have 12 speakers that signed up to speak.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And so we will hear from Chris.

Hello. Hello. Thank you. Hello, council members, members of the public. My name is Chris Norman, chief of staff for the city of Oakland's housing and community development department. May I please have the slides on the screen? There we go. All right, so and I'm joined as well by Ugo Ramirez, our Deputy Director of Community Development. He'll come up in just a little bit in the second half to present the next part of this. So we are very excited to present this informational report on HCD's second strategic plan focused on its anti displacement services.

We bring this to you today as an informational report. The impetus for this plan was the end of the pandemic era eviction moratorium in 2023 when the previous council requested information on community level trends related to displacement and housing stability. Beyond the typical response, we decided to create this strategic plan to better communicate how HCD services would grow and be prioritized over the coming years. With that, I want to acknowledge that this plan focuses on HCD's sphere of influence and the resources that we manage. So we don't speak to what the city at large does or cultural preservation, economic development, but I do wanna shout out EWD's most recently published strategic plan as well.

Alright. So we will cover the following today. I will provide some introductory framing around how we approach housing investment in the city of Oakland as well as an overview of what we support in HCD related to housing stability services. I'll then discuss the homeowner sorry, the development process of the plan including rooting us in key data that tells a story of housing stability in Oakland over the recent years. The data is foundational for the actions we describe later in the presentation.

I'll share how we approach community develop community engagement to develop the plan and highlight some of the feedback and themes we heard directly from Oakland residents. Afterwards, our deputy director will share guiding principles for how we invest our funds and offer our equitable investment framework to make sure that we can have the greatest impact with our dollars. We'll then share select implementation strategies to move this work forward, and we'll end with a discussion on what performance measurement and management looks like. Alright, let's get started. So I want to acknowledge that housing means several things to many people and that those definitions are not the same.

This slide depicts some of the key buckets we use when we talk about what housing means. It can mean protection to keep people housed which is the focus of today's conversation. It can relate directly to homelessness meaning interim or transitional shelter. It can mean the development of permanently affordable housing with public subsidy to make sure that it's affordable long term. It can mean preservation or rehabilitation to make sure we don't lose the housing we already have.

And it can mean market rate production or homeownership opportunities. I share this because we want to be specific when we talk about the issues we face and the solutions we come up with. Many housing entities around the Bay Area in California use the three p framework for how we approach housing solutions. We must preserve what we already have, build new affordable housing, and the focus of today's conversation, protect residents from displacement. The work we do in this protection category is primarily supported by funding resources such as the rent adjustment program fee, boomerang or $18.70, as well as some federal dollars that we have.

This supports the services part of our work which is different from the capital resources needed to build new housing. We believe that clarity is critical in our work, which is why HCB articulates our approaches through these three across the three p's through our strategic plans. These plans name a north star that guides our work and ultimate with the ultimate goal of creating impactful solutions across the full spectrum that I showed earlier. And I want to acknowledge that a large part of housing stability is the availability of housing in general. The work to build more housing and enough housing for different income levels is discussed in our capital investment plan somewhat separately, but of course they are very linked.

You will also note some overlap today between the anti displacement plan and the city's new homelessness strategy. Both plans, for example, highlight homelessness prevention is absolutely critical and we'll show how that links together later. So what does HCD support with our current protection funding? HCD's protection work is generally held within the department's community development division, which is comprised of two units, the rent adjustment program or RAP and the community development and engagement team or CD and E. In total, HCD only has about $16,000,000 in the current fiscal year across these two units to support housing stability work.

This is compared to more than 100,000,000 for capital development much of which is thanks to Measure U which by law cannot be used for services like these. Our deputy director will discuss these two teams in greater detail later but RAP operates with about $10,500,000 annually meaning there's about 5 and a half million left to spend on other services such as eviction defense, homelessness prevention, etcetera. Again, Ugo will discuss this more deeply, but I wanted to highlight several ordinances all passed by Oakland City Council that create what we call a protective policy environment meant to serve the majority of Oaklanders and promote stability as well as a fair rental market for for small property owners. This ranges from rent control to Just Cause to the rent registry, and these all fall within the realm of protection as they aim to stabilize residents at large. To put that in context, there are about a 182,000 occupied homes in Oakland.

Oakland is a renter majority city with a with with about 59% of its residents being renters, and of those rental units, 40% are rent controlled and 18% of them have some sort of government subsidy in them to keep them affordable long term. I want to mention for a second why did we create this plan? Why is it important to discuss housing stability and anti displacement work in Oakland? I myself am a black and Mexican person who grew up in an extremely low income household where my parents were disabled and they did not work. My family was forced out of our home and split up due to housing policies that told us where we could or could not live.

Unfortunately, my story and my family's story is not unique. It is our country and our region's history that is impacted by redlining, community disinvestment, growing economic inequality, and much more that got us where we are today. So I wanna share that because everybody in this room has a story related to this, and that's why we're talking about this. This section that I'm coming into now will offer some data, some of which you have already seen, but it's important to raise it contextually to so that we all have a kind of foundational point and that we understand why we're doing this. It's not easy data to receive.

I wanna name that, but I also wanna acknowledge that every data point is more than a number. These reflect people, these reflect our neighbors and our families. So let's dig in. Oakland's black population decreased from 43% in 1990 to 21% in 2023. That's an out migration of almost 70,000 black Oaklanders, which is about three fourths of the current black population of the city.

I wanna take a second to thank our department of race and equity who helped us ground this work in the city's racial impact analysis process. Thank you for that. That is 19% in 2025. The REA process has us all start by naming the future we wanna see in our community, especially in response to where we are now. Along with our stakeholders and community members, this is a statement we developed to name the future condition that we wanna see.

All Oaklanders, including all income levels and those most impacted by disparities and displacement, have healthy, safe, fair, affordable, and stable housing. Oakland's communities are stabilized without disproportionate displacement of historically underserved communities. According to the city's REA process, to make progress towards where we want to be, we first need to understand where we are now. Our plan selects key data points that tell the story of stability and displacement in Oakland, desegregated by demography and geography wherever possible. These topics include displacement migration, rent burden, overcrowding, evictions, and more.

I won't go through all of them, but I will name a few just to make sure we have similar understanding. First of all, the table on the left shows the income ranges we use when we discuss what is considered low income or extremely low income in Oakland right now. For example, those households who earn 100% of an area's median income, meaning half of the households earn more than that and half of the households earn below that, for a single person, it's 112,000 a year. And for a family or a household of four, it's about 160,000 a year. Those are the medians.

Low income is up to 80% of those numbers and very low income is up to 50%, extremely low income up to 30%. I wanna thank our partners at Stanford University's Changing Cities Research Lab who have been critical partners for Oakland HCD. They wrote a powerful report on the state of housing insecurity in Oakland, which I suggest reviewing, but they also helped us do an analysis which you see on the right. This colorful chart basically shows that when extremely low income people are displaced from Oakland, they experience it much more intensely than any other group. They're more likely to be forced to leave the Bay Area altogether.

They don't just move somewhere down the street, they don't move to the next city over, they leave the Bay Area at large because choice is absolutely key and critical in determining where we land. That's compared to moderate or higher income residents who can more so afford to find other places more locally. Next, I want to highlight rates of rent burden. When a household is burdened, that means they pay over 30% of their monthly income on rent and when they are severely rent burdened, that means they pay over 50%, half of their monthly income on rent. About half of all Oaklanders at large are rent burdened and about 28% are severely rent burdened.

But when broken down by race, however, we start to see those disparities. For example, whereas 37% of white renter households are burdened in 2022, 62% of black households pay more than a third of their income on rent. These differences are important to highlight because they show us where we might focus our efforts to reduce disparities in housing. I'm gonna skip ahead just a bit for the sake of time, but homelessness, we know this is critical especially around the nation here in Oakland. According to the twenty twenty four point in time count, again, we clearly see why there is an equity imperative to this work.

Whereas black folks make up 22% of the population, they represent 52% of the unhoused population. I also want to discuss home inflow, who becomes newly unhoused. We cannot stop homelessness if there continues to be growth in who experiences homelessness. Though we may house about 1,500 people in a given year, over 2,500 people become newly unhoused. And in Oakland, 59% of those newly unhoused folks are black.

That is extremely frustrating and we want to reduce and eliminate homelessness altogether, yes, but we also have to recognize that these disparities exist and we have a responsibility to create strategies that meets the needs of these specific groups as well. Alright, almost done with my part. This is a huge one. This is data from the Superior Court of Alameda and it demonstrates eviction filing rates from before the pandemic, 2019, up until 2024. We saw a huge dip eviction filings during the eviction moratorium 2020 through 2023, but then the numbers skyrocketed, surpassing pre pandemic rates.

While evictions may not lead directly to homelessness, they are absolutely still a disruption in families' lives and community connection and so much more. Oakland's housing stock is fairly old with about three fourths of it being built before 1980. These exact numbers have shifted in recent years, but there's still a significant proportion of older housing around. The older these homes are, the more likely they are to face several cold related issues. While many can be remedied without disruption to a resident's life, some may require relocation which has the potential to result in displacement if not handled correctly and with care.

So that's all I'll discuss for quantitative data, but I also want to highlight some of the qualitative things we heard from our community members. We've worked on developing this plan over the past two years with community engagement from late twenty twenty four to early twenty twenty five. First, we held two part focus group sessions with several stakeholders to create a shared understanding of the issue and then to discuss potential implementation strategies. With that feedback, we designed community dialogue sessions which we hosted with each council member at the time. Council member Fife and Omachandra, thank you for your assistance back at that point.

We coordinated with other city departments and also held discussions with our county and regional partners to think about how we can leverage resources. Overall, we interfaced with over a few 100 residents to partner and develop this plan. Definitely not going to read this slide, but these are some partners that were invited to our sessions and joined us. And you can read more in the report in the slide deck. So I'm going to end my portion by just naming, I'm not going to elaborate on them, but I am gonna just read some of the perspectives and themes that we heard from members of our community during our sessions.

Past and present out migration of black Oaklanders is massive and disproportionate. Addressing disproportionate sorry. Addressing disproportionately high rates of black homelessness must be our highest priority as a community. As you hear these, also wanna say think about these and keep in mind which ones stay with you as we talk about our implementation strategies because we want we designed the strategies to respond to these directly. Significantly more people become unhoused for the first time than what our homelessness system response can serve.

Evictions exceed pre pandemic levels since the lifting of the moratorium. Eviction defense and legal services are effective, but they're not scaled to meet the need, and they're not targeted necessarily to prevent homelessness, people who need it the most. Oakland's rental assistance program is effective and targeted. We experienced that, they shared. Oakland HCD funding for services is scarce compared to what it puts into capital.

That was in response to some of the data we shared. Tenant protection laws are vital and should be strengthened. Tenants need to know I can't read that because I am they need to know. They need to know what their laws are and rights are in relation to the ordinances that have been passed by council. Long time small property owners are vital to Oakland's housing ecosystem and they need help.

Homeowners and leaseholders who informally house friends and family are essential to stabilization and they also need help. And then residents need to know where to go to get the assistance they need no matter what issue they're facing. So those are some things that we heard directly from members of the public and I wanna pass it now to Ugo, deputy director of our department to talk about our implementation plan.

Ugo Ramirez, deputy director housing and community development department. I oversee Oakland HCD's community development division which is comprised of as Chris said, the rent adjustment Program Unit or RAP, sorry, and the Community Development and Engagement Unit or CDE. This division, the Community Development Division, is responsible for implementing housing stability policies and programs such as rent control and just cause, code compliance relocation, and community based services including eviction legal defense through Oakland Housing Secure and targeted homelessness prevention through Oakland Keep Oakland Housed among other partnerships. To guide our approach to resource allocation and resource development, we established the following guiding principles. This is essential as resources are extremely limited and not scaled to the need.

We start by basing all of our decisions on equity which in turn starts with looking at the data. Understanding root causes and who's most burdened so that we can divide devise strategies that reduce those inequities. This centers our residents with highest risk of housing loss and deep long term poverty. We're committed to not only maximizing the impact of the existing slice of the pie, but also growing the pie by leveraging funding sources such as Oakland HCD demonstrated in an earlier item, that $4,400,000 competitively awarded grant, expanding partnerships and resources as mayor Lee and other city leaders are doing through our measure w advocacy and partnership with the county, and implementing as best we can as we work to make systems work for our residents whom we center in our work. And finally, we iterate, evaluate our impact, and learn to achieve greater results.

The need is great and we can't do it all, so we asked ourselves and our key community stakeholders throughout the development of this plan the following question. With the limited dollars available, how should funding be prioritized to have the maximum impact for those most impacted by housing disparities? Our resource allocation approach is best represented by this equitable investment framework. It's an adaptation of the public health model of prevention wherein at its base you'll find strategies that promote protective factors that contribute to one's health. In this case, tenant protection policies that contribute to housing stability for most of our residents.

And as the strategies go up the pyramid, they're more targeted, more intensive for residents with the highest degree of housing insecurity, housing precarity, housing instability, whatever term you prefer. Consistent with our racial equity impact analysis, interventions that help mitigate risk factors such as risk of homelessness, risk of eviction, risk of foreclosure, risk of losing our legacy small rental property owners. We concentrate our resources where inequities are greatest to thereby reduce those inequities. It's for this reason that homelessness prevention is at the top of the pyramid and is our highest service priority. Each of the tiers is described in detail in the anti displacement strategic action plan, but I'll provide a high level overview here.

So at tier one, our highest priority consistent with our guiding principles and racial equity impact analysis is homelessness prevention. Our residents who are most likely to not only lose their housing, but to experience literal homelessness. These residents are informally housed, couch surfing, or otherwise marginally housed. They have no or extremely low incomes. They have rents that eat eat up most or close to all of their income.

And they've been involved with systems that disproportionately alter their life trajectories such as criminal, legal, and foster systems. The service interventions include flexible financial assistance, mostly rental assistance, and individualized support. Tier two a focuses on our tenants at highest risk of housing loss, service interventions that are very similar to homelessness prevention, but serve a subset of residents who may, without our help, lose their housing and suffer the detrimental and rippling effects of eviction, for example, but who will not necessarily experience homelessness. Tier two b focuses on our low income homeowners and legacy small rental property owners. We heard loud and clear and we agree that they are essential to the vitality of Oakland's culture, economy, and housing ecosystem, especially when it comes to housing precisely those residents are larger strategy centers.

Not just the mom and pop landlords, but also the auntie and elder homeowners who provide housing to their friends and family despite their limited resources, overcrowding, and deferred maintenance. Interventions here include foreclosure prevention, estate planning, and other legal services that can help to establish intergenerational wealth, generous housing rehabilitation financing to address deferred maintenance and promote healthy housing, and small business development support for legacy small rental property owners. And finally, at the base of at the base or foundation of the pyramid is our rental housing policies that promote housing stability and a viable rental housing market. This protective policy environment includes foundational policies such as rent control and just cause, code compliance relocation, and other tenant protection policies. The anti displacement strategic action plan is an implementation plan.

It's not a planning document that sits on the shelf and never sees the light of day. Our implementation strategies are organized in the following categories. To target and scale our services to serve our residents with the most housing precarity, to improve housing habitability, to increase small rental property owner viability, to strengthen tenant protection policies, and to increase homeowner viability and prevent foreclosure. This plan goes into detail for each of these implementation strategies and it considers for example their equity impact potential, funding and staff capacity constraints, and whether the strategy is tied to a core function of the department such as a mandate to implement a specific local ordinance like rent control, the rent adjustment ordinance. I will highlight a few of our implementation strategies and I'm happy to elaborate if you have any questions following our presentation.

When prioritizing services most impacted by disparities, some of our implementation strategies include partnering with Alameda County to scale up Oakland's model targeted homelessness prevention program using Measure w funds and thereby advancing one of mayor Lee's five points in the city's plan to reduce homelessness by 50% in five years. Applying our targeting approach to other effective programs such as eviction legal defense and availing ourselves of greater flexibility in our use of federal community development block grant or CDBG funds by preparing neighborhood level analysis to develop what CDBG calls a neighborhood revitalization strategy area. It's a little wonky and bureaucratic, but happy to elaborate on that later. Improving housing habitability through our partnership with the Planning and Building Department in our joint implementation of our equitable lead hazard abatement program at HCD, LHAP, and their proactive rental inspection program or PRIP. Increasing small rental property owner viability by exploring a CDBG funded small business development program in partnership with the economic and workforce development department that provides individualized business advising and technical assistance to our legacy small property owners, Strengthening tenant protection policies with policy analysis and consultation with our tenant, property owner, and other key stakeholders to inform recommendations we make to you, to the City Council to amend tenant protection policies.

For example, the recent displacement of dozens of tenants from their homes on January 19 provided insights as to how the code compliance relocation can be better improved. Thank you. To be clear, more responsive to the needs of displaced tenants, and better aligned with the city's other tenant protection policies such as just cause eviction protection. Oh, there we go. And finally, increasing low income homeowner viability through foreclosure prevention and other legal services such as estate planning that helps families establish intergenerational wealth.

Alright. To maximize our resources and impact, HCD will use city funds to prioritize impact for those with the greatest need, and we, of course, will need your support, Leverage expertise of and partnership with our sibling departments for greater impact. Align with county and regional priorities to leverage funds. Support state legislation for anti displacement policies and programs, and your advocacy in that will be essential. Optimize use of federal formula funds, and explore philanthropic support for new programs and approaches such as that initiative to establish intergenerational wealth through estate planning.

So to conclude, we need all three p's to address the housing crisis. These are the strategies in HCD's sphere of influence. There are other strategies and other systems outside of HCD's sphere of influence that are critical to protecting our residents from displacement such as education, employment, health care, child care, cultural preservation. As I mentioned earlier, our homelessness prevention imperative is central to both our anti displacement strategic action plan and mayor Lee's five point plan to reduce unsheltered homelessness by 50% in five years. As you can see here, that will require scaling up our efforts.

The most humane and cost effective way to address homelessness is to prevent it from happening in the first place. And reducing influence of homelessness will also enable these other essential strategies to work optimally and overall actually save hundreds of millions of dollars over five years if appropriately scaled. Ongoing evaluation and accountability are key. HCD prepares several reports on performance and impact of our production, preservation, and protection strategies as you can see here. But HCD will begin preparing a more in-depth annual report on anti displacement policies, programs, and partnerships that support housing stability as well as our progress on this, our anti displacement strategic action plan, its implementation strategies.

So we plan to prepare this report toward the end of the calendar year for the previously completed fiscal year. And this is the last slide. Thank you for bearing with us. For those who would like to go deeper, our anti displacement strategic action plan includes these appendices that cover discussion of additional grounding data and sources, community engagement and feedback, alignment with our housing stabilization strategies of the housing element. I think you see a pattern here of really touching back on other strategic plans that the city has in place.

And also alignment and consistency with foremost experts in the field of anti displacement. So we include a white paper on strategy effectiveness by Karen Chappell and her colleague. So thanks again. Chris and I are happy to take any questions.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Super grateful for all of the hard work in putting together this very detailed report. Just wanted to uplift and make sure that members of the public when you click on the agenda item scroll to the bottom of the view the report scroll to the bottom and then you can click on the full report which is over 50 pages. And really from pages, starting at page 50 you can actually see and check the status of all of the recommendations to see whether or not you know these are ongoing efforts or what is the work that is being done.

I also wanted to take a moment to also thank the Department of Race and Equity for just your efforts and really reproducing a report that really sheds light on the continuing inequities that we're facing within the city of Oakland. I think that this plan does provide really valuable insights into the ways that Oaklanders have been displaced from their homes and what the causes of those are and how that continues to push folks into you know homelessness. And so I believe these findings are especially disheartening when we look at kind of the racial disparities that continue to force black Oaklanders out of their out of their homes. And so I have a handful of questions and comments but would open it up to my colleagues first to ask any questions. Council member Unger.

Thank you. I just had some some questions about keep Oakland housed. I'm just curious to know more about how it works. Do we predict people who are about to lose their homes and then support them to stay housed with financial support? I it's a partnership, right? I think we put in three and a half million dollars. Who else is putting money in? How much do they contribute? Sort of how does the partnership and the program work?

Thank you. Through the chair, excellent questions. Let me start by sharing kind of evidence base behind it. So it's a model program because rental is it rental assistance has existed for decades in our community, but it's been generally available to all low income folks, certainly not scale to meet the need. And because resources are scarce, there's that targeting targeting imperative that didn't really exist before Oakland's program.

So what Oakland's program does is it uses those factors that are most predictive of homelessness. For example, research finds that those who have experienced homelessness in the past, that's like the biggest predictor of future homelessness. But there are other risk factors. For example, criminal legal system involvement, extremely low income, severe rent burden. So we, our program, developed an application that asks pretty much those questions.

And we can therefore collectively, you know, as a whole, the vulnerability of that applicant. And so there's also been evaluation that has found that there is a direct connection in terms of preventing influenza homelessness. So that's how the program works and that's what is meant by targeting in that it considers a variety of factors, not just you must be low income and you must have an eviction notice as had been the case for many years. Oh, that's right. And in addition to the financial assistance, is flexible and responsive, it also provides support services to help reduce or remove other barriers that that are are barriers to housing stability.

So that's that's the program model. In terms of the partnership, yes, the city of Oakland actually was not the initial funder. It was actually the philanthropic sector back in 2017, I believe. But it did have kind of the political support of city elected leaders. And what is extraordinary about that partnership is that the city has because as you probably know, the philanthropic model is that you kind of create this proof of concept so that local governments can then sustain it moving forward.

Continues to be a public private partnership. And for example, our partners our partners at Bay Area Community Services or BACS and that coalition of providers, they've been able to leverage multiple times more than what the city has contributed. Additionally, in addition to leveraging philanthropic dollars that they fundraise and that we support, of course, they're also able to leverage additional resources through Medi Cal billing, so very specific rental assistance and case management because of that kind of core competency that they have. So the city is able to leverage. You know, in terms of cost reimbursement, our grant making is cost reimbursement.

Right? So we pay for the actual costs of these services. But it's important to understand that the city of Oakland's dollars do not cover the costs of our providers in serving their Oakland clientele. They have to necessarily leverage other sources. So the city is not the sole funder of these partnerships in terms of the services that go to Oaklanders.

Excellent. And I know that in 2025 we talked at great length around the programs of Oakland Housing Secure and Keep Oakland House and it's my understanding that in the housing stabilization program report within that report we will be able to learn more about the the overall impacts of of how the funding that we're able to provide for those programming and their impact on the community. So really looking forward to that as well. If so, if no immediate comments, we can call the public speakers.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak for item number four. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium. Or if you're on Zoom, please raise your hand to be easily identified. Irene Farnsworth, David Boatwright, Asado Olavala, Jennifer Finley, Jeff Levin, Damian Scott, Greg Slaughter, Valerie Bachelor, Alberto Barra, Marcus Romero Garcia, Isabelle, and Linda. Please state your name before you begin.

This is David Boatwright, District 4. It is referred to in the plan, but it there's a special group within housing and community development that supports production and preservation of affordable housing. That sounds a lot like oversight and maintenance and is something the city needs to work on. The plan also indicates that these very important functions, the oversight and maintenance, aren't fully staffed in Oakland, and that's probably been apparent from some of the projects. Has the city performed a post appraisal of its historical funding of homeless to identify ways to make this funding more effective?

Are there any city supported education or skills development provided by the city to aid the homeless in working toward improving their well-being and self sufficiency? Thank you.

Good afternoon city council members. My name is Valerie Bachelor and I'm the director of ACE Oakland. We want every single Oaklander to have a safe habitable home to live in. And that's why I wanna call your attention to the proactive rental inspection program that's attached in the anti displacement work. What we have seen throughout the city is that tenants are facing horrendous habitability issues and they are trapped in these homes because there is no other place to go.

And that is unacceptable. So we need to make sure that we have a program that makes sure that repairs are not only identified but they are done, that tenants are not displaced or burdened with additional costs because of those issues and mitigate disasters such as the building fire that was referred to earlier. This also calls the question the relocation ordinance. Right now it is not clear as to when it is actually initiated and so it leaves folks with having to deal with figuring out when their landlord gonna provide them any sort of information around a disaster that happens in their community. Again, is unacceptable that folks have to deal with these issues and landlords are not held accountable to our state and local laws.

Again, we are a city that has a lot of tenant protections. We now need that enforcement and a proactive rental inspection program like every other major city in California would allow us to have that. And so I really wanna call your attention to that part of the presentation and it's a real mandate that that needs to be part of the discussion when dealing with anti displacement. Thank you.

K. My name is Gregory Slaughter. I'm a resident of District 7, and I'm also an ACE member. I just wanna quickly talk about two places. One place where I lived at, another place where I'm assisted by organizing with right now. First place is called Northgate Terrace. It's, you know, Telegraph North Oakland. It's a senior facility. Okay. It's run by not by the the management.

It's run by the roaches and pests and the and the criminals that's outside coming inside to where people around there don't feel safe in their own in their own place. Management doesn't do anything about it. They just turn their head to everything that's going on. It's the same thing with this place called Oakland Station. If you're aware of that, it's on A Hundred And 5th Of East 14th. Builders been there for five years, and it's a mess. It's dirty. It's filthy. You have criminals. You have pills. You have prostitutes, drugs. It's ridiculous in that building right there. Okay? And I'm a say this here. That's why we need a proactive rental inspection program instead of waiting for the tenant to complain.

The city must regularly inspect rental homes to make sure landlords are following the law in basic health and safety standards. If they aren't, then the city then we need to hold landlords accountable in order to prevent small problems from becoming dangerous ones. I've been in Oakland for over seventy years. Okay? I'm not a baby.

And I watched it go from good, real good, to being terrible right now. I never seen homeless like it is right now. But one person I wanna say something to, and that's councilwoman Pfeif, You have been supporting with us with AIDS for a long time, and I want people needs to recognize that you do a hell of a good job. Okay? And I wanna thank you. K.

Good afternoon council members. My name is Alberto Para. I'm a tenant who lives in District 5 and a member of ACE. I'm here today because the place I rent has serious serious problems that have not been fixed. In my home, we are dealing with mold, pests, and other issues. These problems make it hard for me and my family to feel safe and healthy in our home. I have reported these issues many times when nothing has changed. No tenants have to live like this. Many renters are afraid to speak up because they worry about retaliation, eviction, or rent increases. This means problems stay hidden until they become emergencies.

That's why we need a proactive rental inspection program instead of waiting for tenants to complaints. The city must regularly inspect homes to ensure landlords following the law and basic health and safety standards are met. If they aren't, the city needs to hold these landlords accountable to prevent small problems from becoming dangerous ones. Everyone deserves a safe place to live. I to support a strong rental inspection program so tenants like me don't have to fight alone just to have safe housing.

Good afternoon. My name is Marcus, and I'm organizer with ACE. I'm calling for an immediate implementation of the proactive rental inspection program as outlined in the anti displacement presentation. It forces the vulnerable tenants to choose between their health and their housing. We need a proactive rental inspection program that ensures landlords are following the law and maintaining habitable conditions.

Habitability in Oakland looks like children breathing in toxic mold while their parents' pleas for repairs are ignored. It looks like seniors wrapping themselves in blankets for years because the heat has not been restored. These residents are choosing to live like this. They have been held hostage by a system that rewards landlord neglect and punishes tenant complaints. I urge this committee to implement a proactive rental inspection program that inspects units on a regular landlord cycle and to hold landlords accountable to the law, not just when they get caught, but as a condition of doing business in Oakland. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Irene Farnsworth and I'm the director of regional homelessness prevention with All Home. All Home has been at the forefront of helping scale homelessness prevention programs throughout the Bay Area and has been a member of the partnership supporting Keep People Housed Oakland for the past five years. I'm thrilled to see the include continued inclusion of this program both as part of the city's anti displacement strategy as well as its homelessness action plan. As the anti displacement strategy writes, in Oakland specifically, black residents represent 22% of the population yet 59% of the new incidences of homelessness.

We also see the largest displacement rates out of the county for low income and black residents. Keep People Housed Oakland uses both census tracts and evidence based risk factors to focus on these communities to ensure those who are most impacted are able to stay housed. We also know that the need outstrips resources available and that many more people need support than our programs are able to deliver. This is not just an issue in Oakland but one that we see at Allhome throughout our entire region and we will continue to advocate for more resources at all levels of public investment and from the philanthropic sector to ensure these programs are able to continue to scale. Thank you for your ongoing support of this critical program and for the thoughtful work that went into developing this plan.

Chair Brown, we have Isabella here who's a little bit shy. This is our first city council meeting so she would like me to speak a little bit about her story if that's okay. Thank you. So this is Isabella. She's a senior that lives in Oakland Station.

She's had many issues with her apartment so much so that she's even hurt herself in her own apartment and has not been able to get those issues remediated. She has received multiple three day or quit notices even though she has been dedicated in paying her rent and has shown multiple times what her rent looks like. Every time she goes into the office, she's scared that she's gonna get evicted. And she is one of the many seniors in our community that is dealing with these habitability and harassment issues. She also, as folks talked about earlier does not feel safe in her building.

There have been folks that multiple times have broken into the units, have broken into the mail in her building and she does not feel safe. I believe that as Oakland, we want to keep seniors like Isabella safe and we want to keep them here. That's why we need the proactive rental inspection program to make sure that she is not the one that has to deal with a landlord that is a corporate landlord but that the city can support them in making sure that the landlord is fixing issues and remediating the property. Thank you.

Okay. So this dog and pony show about displacement under the banner that you're looking at the displacement of black people, that's a lie. If you were serious about the displacement of black people, you would have to look at gentrification. You would have to look at your sanctuary city status and how when illegal immigrants come into this city, they have taken spots that had been traditionally African American housing spaces. So East Oakland was 60% African American, now it's 60% Hispanic.

West Oakland was 60% black, now it's mostly white and Hispanic and some Asians, I'm sorry, Arabs. You don't discuss that, but all over not here, all over this country, Harlem, gone. Compton, gone. Tremaine, New Orleans, traditionally African American, Washington, D. C, chocolate city, no more chocolate city, because of gentrification and the fact that illegal immigrants have been successful with getting housing.

They're not on the street homeless, they're not 9% unemployed, and the OUSD, we got newcomers, 19 people assigned for newcomers and refugees. We got newcomers schools, newcomers curriculum, newcomer wellness program, nothing for African Americans. So don't come in here and put the title, oh, we're dealing with black it's not displacement, it's push out. Some some black people have chosen to leave this city because of safety issues, because they can't get housing the way they want to, but other people are coming in and they're getting housing. I'm talking about these illegal immigrants.

Yes. Thank you for your comments, miss Asada. Yes. If your name was called and you would still like to speak on this item, please raise your hand on Zoom or come up to the podium. Switching to Zoom user Jeff Levin, you can unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Jeff Levin with East Bay Housing Organizations. I would first just like to commend staff for the great work that has gone into this strategy. EBO has long supported a three piece approach to the housing prices, production, preservation, and protection.

And, this report clearly focuses on one of those three p's, but understands the way it is situated, within those three p's. I wanna call out a few things that we have noted here. We think this is an excellent example of developing a plan through a racial equity lens that starts with a disparity analysis and then develops a strategy aimed at addressing those disparities. A lot of community engagement. EPHA was one of the participants in the many subject matter, consultations, but that included participation and listening to impacted people and communities.

An analysis and strategy that is evidence based and grounded in data, one that speaks to issues of both individual displacement and community stabilization, a comprehensive approach across a wide range of programs and policies, detailed metrics and procedures for monitoring and evaluating these programs on an ongoing basis to make sure that what we're doing is actually working. We strongly support the strategies and priorities identified in the report, and we urge the city to fully utilize its own resources and seek out new funding sources to fully implement this strategy. And we endorse an approach that seeks to prioritize impact for those with the greatest needs and the most risk for displacement. Finally, with respect to proactive inspection, to ensure their properties meet basic standards of habitability, when owners fail to maintain these standards, the cost of correcting those conditions must be borne by the property owners and not pass through to renters. We must make sure when we are improving habitability that we are doing so for the current residents without increasing rents.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Last call for Jennifer Finley and Damian Scott. Chair, at this time, all names have been called.

Excellent. Thank you so much to the public speakers. Council member Fife.

Yes. Through the chair, I I wanted to ask just a quick question of staff because I I'm headed to Washington in a few weeks for a housing conference with some other elected officials from across the country. And one of the things that was mentioned in our was the general plan or the housing element or potentially both was utilizing social housing to address some of these issues, and it's something that I know we don't have the capacity to do, and I I think yep. I thought I saw our director over there. Where if at all would a social housing policy fall into the framework that you've put forward, particularly since it probably doesn't address homelessness, but in in your in your framework would it fit in anywhere possibly?

Thank you. Through the chair, Emily Weinstein, director of housing community development. I think the first question we'd have to ask ourselves is what do we mean by social housing? There's I think pretty much anybody you ask probably has their own definition of social housing. So that would be the first we'd have to discuss what what you mean.

I think for the most part though, when we think about social housing, it generally falls in to kind of the production side of of the strategies. And so oftentimes, it's kind of a mixed income model that allows for cross subsidization between higher income units and lower income units. And so that would be a strategy that we would need to look at from kind of a production perspective. There aren't a lot of funding sources that allow for that kind of cross subsidization, but it is off it is very much, you know, a a topic that many people are discussing. I know BAFA is talking about it.

There was the bill at the state that is now Turner Center as well as Liberation in the Generation are are combining together to do the study of social housing within California. I think that's going to be released sometime in the next few months. And so I think everybody is watching to see whether the intended strategies come along with funding sources.

Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. And you said it would be more closely tied to production, but there are existing spaces that are city owned in in particularly in my district. I know we were talking years ago about the Malonga Center which I thought would be ideal Mhmm. To help facilitate a social housing project, but couldn't there be non construction or non production based projects?

Yeah. Through the chair of council member five. I think that's right. There's a there could also be a model for existing buildings. I think it would come down to ownership structure and then funding structure. Something like the Molonga obviously has a significant amount of rehab needs and then you'd need to determine how you would operate the the building. And so what would be the different income levels that would be in the building to allow for the cross subsidization and ensure that the operating costs and service costs are being met.

Okay. And we would have one of the things we discussed in the past was also a social housing oversight body or mechanism. Would would we still have to do something like that outside if that is something that we would bring to the city of Oakland, something that we would have to bring outside of the city, a completely different department or a completely different institution?

I I don't think so. I think it really depends on the funding structure. The places where social housing is being experimented like in Seattle Mhmm. Or in DC, they've created additional bodies that have the ability to issue bonds or or diff or they're basically like a quasi governmental entity that can raise capital so that they have funding sources.

Which is why it's being discussed at BAFA. Yeah. Yep. Well, I I wanna say while you're there, I have been working very closely with the Housing and Community Development Department in the city of Oakland for years before you were in the position that you're in, before Chris was in the position he was in. And I've seen the department grow leaps and bounds and become more structured and more organized and more efficient and effective at getting outside grants and doing all of this work and bringing us together.

I think this this report is another indication of how clear and concise it is and how direct it is, easy to understand, and it gives us a road map for how we're going to move forward and something to measure against. So I want to thank you for your leadership in HCD because I noticed the difference.

Thank you.

And I will make a motion to accept this report. I'm not sure if we do you want to send it to the full counsel? Because if so, I would like to do that on consent.

I I think that we should.

I'll make that motion.

Okay, perfect. And then I guess just to kind of continue, Council Member Fife, we're kind of on the same wavelength on this because as I was reading through the report one of the first things that came to my mind was around social housing. And so you're absolutely right that I think it's SB555 is supposed to be completed by December 2026 and then there's currently a bill going through the I think it passed through the assembly already and it's on the senate side for it to actually place a ballot measure to support a social housing bond. So I think that that is definitely something we could serve to benefit from. And then I guess kind of my initial thoughts on the report, You know I think as I was reading through I'm just going to start with just some of the things that I wanted to highlight here.

So on page 18 the report mentions some of the common characteristics of Oaklanders experiencing homelessness and kind of lays out you know black men between the ages of 35 and 55, folks who experienced prior homelessness, potentially involved in the criminal legal system, substance abuse and behavioral challenges as well as just generational and deep poverty and trauma. But one of the things that I really wanted that really stood out to me was actually this bullet point around on general assistance and that's actually something that when you think about and you compare it to how many Oaklanders are extremely rent burdened, I've found that just the amount of folks who you know the amount of money that you know community members may receive on general assistance it's nowhere near what the cost of rent is right. I think you know some of our seniors may get you know at minimum $1,000 a month. And so one of the larger questions that I believe that we need to answer is you know what is you know what what could be our plan to help lower the cost of rents in our city and then also I know in the past we did do a pilot around like guaranteed income because I think that that would also help to support those who are on general assistance.

Just wanted to, I know towards the bottom of the report it's pages 50 through the end. It walks us through you know where we are in the process of implementing some of these things. But just wanted to get your thoughts around like how, if we have any plans around you know working under that bullet point around those who are rent burdened and also this linkage to those who just genuinely don't bring in enough money monthly.

Hello to the chair. Emily Weinstein, director of housing community development. So I think part of the reason for providing all of that data is to sort of deconstruct where the needs are and what strategies are needed for different populations. At this point, we have such limited funding that where we have targeted, as you know, is really at that, those people that are at most at risk of becoming homelessness. With the $3,500,000 that we provide annually, it's only a drop in the bucket.

And so we know based on the homelessness strategic plan and the modeling that we need to try to increase that to about $25,000,000 per year. So as it relates to how we provide funding for other populations, I think it really depends on where we can leverage other resources. At the county level, if we're able to build a countywide homeless prevention program, then that could free up some Oakland funds for other demographics that may not be most at risk but are still at risk. And so when we look at impact, that's really what we are trying to balance. Obviously there's such a great need when we think about that, the pyramid.

We could keep going down and provide funding all the way down that pyramid. Right now we're just at the tip of the spear. I think the other thing is, you know, there has been a shallow subsidy study and we can look at that impact. One of the things that I'll note is because people are within the shallow subsidy are not right at risk of becoming homeless, the impact is not as big as the impact would be for the Keep Oakland House population. So that was one in talking to Bax, that's one of the, it still has an impact, but it's not going to be as impactful because they're not most at risk of becoming homeless.

It can help stabilize a family, but it wouldn't necessarily have the impact of preventing homelessness because those people would not be necessarily falling into homelessness.

Yeah. Thank you. I think I continue to be focused on our seniors. And so I guess we can I would be interested in what's who is studying at this moment that data as well to make sure that we're because when we think of it's not only rent but it's also just the overall cost of living, right? And to just live not only in Oakland but in the East Bay as well. Well.

Okay. Just to oh,

I'm sorry. To add one more point, you know, part of what we the benefit of the keep people housed is the infrastructure that we have in place in terms of the sort of administration of the program as well as the community partners. And so there is the ability to iterate on that program and we are talking right now with the Department of Violence Prevention if that kind of, you know, similar approach could be used to focus on a population, the clients that DBP serves. So we could explore the idea of having a different population that is targeted with a similar infrastructure. We just need to identify funding.

Thank you. I was delighted to read that in the report as well that the partnership between the DVP and the study that you all are going to initiate as well. I guess maybe just for the sake of time the last question that I'll ask was around the neighborhood revitalization strategy areas page 26 of the report. Of course I did read towards the bottom kind of what that implementation would look like but I was curious around I guess like the equity like when we're saying you know these revitalization strategies would we be piecing together because as I was looking at the map around I think it said 80,000 units built before 1978 and then the map was showing the areas in dark purple that could benefit from the proactive rental inspection. So just was curious if the revitalization strategy areas would be kind of linked to that data as a roadmap.

I'm gonna hand it over to Ugo who knows a lot more about the NRSA.

Thank you for your question Chair Brown. NRSA's neighborhood revitalization strategy areas are a term and a construct of HUD, the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. And you might recall and in fact HCD staff will be presenting on our next annual action plan which will detail our spending plan for CDBG, home, and other formula grant dollars in the coming months.

So stay tuned for that. You might recall that CDBG has pretty significant constraints. One of which is a cap on public services. It's capped at 15% and this anti displacement strategic action plan is essentially a services plan, whereas our capital plan really addresses the production and preservation. So one way to kind of reduce some of those constraints is for the city of Oakland to establish neighborhood revitalization strategy areas and to certify certain community based organizations as community based development organizations or CBDOs.

Again, it's very like bureaucratic Huddies kind of stuff. But what is what can be advantageous about that is that by establishing nurses and certifying CBDOs, we might we, the city of Oakland, might be able to increase the funding for services which is one of kind of the advantages of a CBDO within a NRSA. So it's just kind of like regulatory flexibility and the City of Oakland, know, as you can imagine it's a neighborhood specific plan. So it would take staffing capacity to do that analysis and to devise kind of the strategies. But that's something that we are considering or endeavoring to do as I've had two vacant management positions in my CD and D unit, so I'm hoping to fill those positions so that we can take on that work that we hadn't done before in Oakland.

Excellent. Thank you. I think these neighborhood revitalization strategy areas it sounds like a good idea. And so look forward to hearing more about that. And the community base, is it district orgs or development orgs?

Organizations. Uh-huh, CBDOs.

Excellent. Just wanted to make sure I had the acronym right. Okay I believe, oh okay one more thing that I want wanted to bring up in the report. So page 26 okay which there's I think it was under the recommend high recommendation around connect residents at risk of homelessness to employment and training programs and just kind of flagging that there are a handful of organizations that are doing that good work around employment and training. One being Roots Community Health and they have a great kind of pipeline to providing housing in the employment and the training.

And so my note here is continue to support programs like that, right, which is really outlined in the plan as high. And we already have community based groups doing that amazing work as well. And so hopefully we're able to continue to partner with them. Council member Fife.

Yeah. I just wanted to say quickly because I think I I said everything I need to say about the report. This is not about HCD. I wanna say to the members of the public, particularly the organized members of the public who are supporting each other to come out here in the middle of the day, keep doing what you're doing, keep speaking up, keep showing out, and all of the things that you do, and most importantly, keep supporting each other. Because when this doesn't work, you will.

And you will work for each other, because some of the greatest impacts that I've had around housing and justice and all of those things didn't happen here. They happened because of the organizing that you all are doing. So coming in the middle of the day, when you could do anything else means everything. So get more people to do what you're doing, keep taking care of each other, and that's how we will win. We're gonna do this too. I'm gonna keep fighting for this too, but you keep doing what you're doing.

Keep coming.

Alright. Thank you so much. Council member Unger, Ramachandran. Well, I'll second. I think there was a motion already so I'll second.

Thank you. We have a motion made by council member Fife, seconded by chair Brown to receive and forward this informational report to the March 16 city council special city council agenda. On roll council members Fife. Aye. Ramachandran. Aye. Unger. Aye. And Chair Brown. Aye. Thank you. Item number four passes with four ayes to receive and forward this informational report to the 03/16/2026 city council agenda on consent. Moving on to open forum and calling in the names that signed up to speak in no particular order. You can come up to the podium or raise your hand, on Zoom to be easily identified. David Boatwright, Jennifer Finley, and Asada Olubala.

So I found this Cesar Chavez position on illegal immigration. Cesar Chavez, farm worker, in 1960 and nineteen seventies showed strong opposition to illegal immigration, viewing undocumented workers as a strikebreakers who undermined union efforts, depressed wages, and were exploited by growers. Chavez campaigned for strict immigration enforcement, reported that he reported undocumented workers to authorities and sometimes physically blocked them from coming across the border. Well, go ahead, Cesar Chavez. Come on now.

What you all got to say about him? I know you have something to say about me when I say illegal immigrants, you want me to say undocumented, but if Caesar can say it, I can say it too.

Switching to Zoom user Jennifer you can unmute yourself and begin your comment.

Hi, everyone. I missed, my chance to comment on the last item. I just wanted to say, thank you to everyone who is involved in that and who showed up today and who's moving this work forward. We desperately need it. So thanks.

Thank you for your comments. Mister Boatwright, would you still like to comment? Or okay. At this

time oh. Okay.

David

Bowry in District 4. Question. Is the city's recently constructed Dignity Village modular project on Eads Avenue now being occupied? It's been under construction for a little over a year. Any learnings from this 41 unit, dollars 3 and 50,000 per unit project that can support more modular housing. This project was estimated to cost about a third of the cost per unit as the refurbishing costs of the 2,700 International and 34th And San Pablo projects whose costs were about $1,100,000 per unit.

Thank you for your comments. Chair that concludes all speakers.

Excellent thank you so much. This meeting is adjourned.