Community & Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon and welcome to the Community and Economic Development Committee meeting of Tuesday, May 26, 2026. The time is now 1.50 p.m. and this meeting may come to order. Before taking roll, I will provide instructions on how to submit speaker cards for items on this agenda. If you're here with us in chamber and would like to submit a speaker card, please fill one out and turn one into myself or a clerk representative no later than 10 minutes after the start of this meeting or before the item is read into record, whichever occurs first. Online speaker requests were due 24 hours prior to the start of this meeting. This meeting came to order at 1.50 p.m. and speaker cards will no longer be accepted 10 minutes after, making that time 2 p.m. We'll now proceed with taking roll. Council Members Fife?

Present. Thank you.

Council Member Ramachandran is?

Excused. Excused.

Council Member Unger?

Still here.

And Chair Brown.

Present.

Thank you, Chair. Before we begin, do you have any announcements at this time?

Yes. Good afternoon, everyone. Before we begin, just a few announcements. Public comment will be limited to one minute and 30 seconds. And in addition, please note the updated order of the items that we will be considering today. We will hear item six first, item five, item four, and then item three. Thank you so much.

Thank you, noting the change of the agenda to take items six, five, four, and three after items one and two. Starting off with item one, approval of the draft minutes from the committee meeting of May 12, 2026, and we do not have any speakers on this item.

Excellent, thank you so much. I'll entertain a motion.

So moved.

Second. Thank you, we have a motion made by Sorry, we have a motion made by Council Member Unger, seconded by Council Member Five to accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting of May 12th, 2026. On roll, Council Members Five. Aye. Ramachandran is excused. Unger. Aye. And Chair Brown. Aye. Thank you, item number one passes with four ayes to accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting of May 12th, 2026. Oh sorry, it passes with three ayes and one excused, Ramachandran. Reading in item two, determination of schedule of outstanding committee items, and we have no speakers on this item.

Excellent, thank you so much. To the administration, any changes?

We move from the city administrator's office, no changes at this time.

Excellent, thank you so much. I'll entertain a motion to move the pending list.

So moved.

Second.

Thank you, we have a motion made by Council Member Unger, seconded by Council Member Five to accept the determination of schedule of outstanding committee items as is. Sorry, we have a speaker card that came in right before.

Yes, that's right.

Calling in the name that signed up to speak on item number two, Mrs. Sato-Olabala. Okay, sorry.

Back to, she'll go ahead and skip then.

So that was a motion made by Council Member Unger, seconded by Council Member Fife to accept the determination of scheduled outstanding committee items. On roll, Council Member Fife. Aye. Ramachandran's excused. Unger. Aye. And Chair Brown. Aye. Thank you. Item number two passes with three ayes, one excused. Ramachandran to accept the pending list as is. Now reading in item number six. Adopt a resolution authorizing grant agreements with service providers competitively selected for Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act program services for fiscal years 2026 to 2029 in a total amount not to exceed $2,650,000 for fiscal year 2026 to 2027 to provide comprehensive adult and dislocated worker one-stop operator business engagement and youth services. Two, amendments to existing WIOA yowa agreements to extend contract terms through june 30th 2027 and increase funding in a total amount not to exceed 584 109 and three grants of yowa contingency set aside funding to support community-based outreach referrals and workforce strategies in an amount not to exceed one hundred twenty four thousand nine hundred ninety nine dollars and ninety nine cents to oakland private in industry council and in partnership with Spanish-speaking Unity Council of Alameda County and in an amount not to exceed $125,000 to allow family community development in partnership with Roots Community Health Center, subject to approval by the Oakland Workforce Development Board, and we have a number of speakers on this item.

Okay, thank you so much. All right, and so everyone will have the opportunity to speak. during this item and so I politely ask for you to reserve your comments to public comment, thank you. And now we'll hear from staff for a brief update on this item, five minutes.

Great, good afternoon. Honorata Lindsay, Economic and Workforce Development Department. We are coming back today with a revised recommendation for approval of the new WIOA services contracts and the amendment of existing contracts. So I'll go ahead and quickly recap items one and two and then just briefly share some background on item number three. To establish service delivery for the next procurement cycle, the Department of Economic and Workforce Development and the Oakland Workforce Development Board released a competitive request for proposal for WIOA-funded services for fiscal years 2026 to 2029. The RFP solicited proposals that are detailed for you on page three across multiple service categories that are designed to support high quality and coordinated workforce services across the city. Following proposal review and scoring, staff did develop funding recommendations for the new grant agreements with providers that are shown in table one, and that's on page four. Now, in addition to the procurement cycle, staff did evaluate the need to maintain continuity of services under existing agreements. And so as part of the state's allocation for the current year, the city did receive a slight increase. A portion of those funds consistent with the board's direction was to use these funds to amend existing agreements and extend contract terms for current service providers. And those amounts are shown in table two on page five. The purpose of these funds Contract amendments and increases really is to again support continuity of services and reduce disruption to participants and employers during the transition into the new procurement cycle. And lastly, staff is recommending two limited scope partnerships, and those are listed for you at the bottom of page five. These funds are supported, I'm sorry, these contracts will be supported with WIOA contingency set aside, which was originally intended to respond to any potential legislative impacts, but ultimately the intent of these partnerships really is to strengthen equitable access and in response to some concerns regarding community representation and geographic access. These recommendations do not alter the procurement results of the lead provider established through the competitive process, and we do view this as an opportunity to balance not only the procurement integrity, but also strengthen collaboration with trusted CBOs, thank you.

Excellent, thank you so much for providing the update. And so colleagues, the main kind of shift and change on this item is item number three, ensuring that we have equity across the entire city of Oakland where two providers, both the Unity Council as well as Roots Community Health will come in as subcontractors under the grant agreement supporting adults in this work. Colleagues, any questions or comments? If not we can go to the public speakers.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number six. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium. State your name for the record before beginning. And if you are sitting time, just let me know so I can adjust the clock for you. Mayra Ramirez, Angelica Garcia, Asada Olabala, Richard Dejarigui, sorry if I'm pronouncing last names wrong, Jonathan Jones, Jeffrey Watson, Joyce M. Guy, Yawo Tekpa, Gay Player Cobb, Tony Trinh, and Oakland Private Industry Council. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium to make your comments. to move things along, if we can have speakers come up to the podium, thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Brown and to the other council members. Thank you. On behalf of the Oakland Private Industry Council, I'm Raymond Langford, the CEO, and I want to thank the City of Oakland Workforce Development Board for selecting the Oakland Private Industry Council to provide workforce development services for downtown Oakland and West Oakland. and we're also excited about the continued collaboration and partnership that we have with the city of Oakland, and we want to thank you for this great opportunity.

I'm going to cede my time to Pastor Langford. Pastor Langford. Give my time back.

Do the chair to the member of the public. He still had time on the clock, so.

Yeah, we'll do it later. Okay.

good afternoon i'm doctor jeffrey watson and i'm here representing the oakland private industry council i also want to thank you for all of the support that they have received from the city of oakland and they've done a wonderful job in supporting training for adults and young people in the city of Oakland. Right now, I think it's extremely important that we are able to get new contracts and continue this forward because in less than a week, Our program that the government has put in, HR1, is going to come into place and every able-bodied individual who is able to work is going to have to work 80 hours a month. And I think that the Private Industry Council will be in a perfect place to help to support the new requirements that are going to be coming with HR1, and that will allow people to every able-bodied person who had food stamps to continue to get food stamps. So thank you for the support in the past, and we look for your support going forward in the future. Thank you.

Good morning members, or good afternoon members of the council. I'm Richard Dejauregui. I'm the Chief Operating Officer at the Oakland Private Industry Council. I'm here to support the actions by the Oakland Workforce Development Board bringing this forward to your committee. I would like to see it move forward from here. To be very honest, this is a tough situation that we all find ourselves in. And the services that are performed by the Oakland Private Industry Council are not only desperately needed right now, but if the awards are not in place in a timely fashion, there's going to be an interruption in services. And this could impact hundreds of people. And so while we do appreciate the difficulty with iSupplier, and we've been partnered with Unity Council for many, many years, and we appreciate the difficulty with iSupplier, but the awards have to go forward. Otherwise, the damage to the community could be irreparable. And so we ask for your support. We thank you. for your past support of the Private Industry Council, and we thank the Oakland Workforce Development Board for their very fair and open RFP process that was also very comprehensive. And so, again, we're here in support of that. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, members of the committee. I am Yawo Tekpa with Oakland Tech. I'm the manager for our West Oakland office. I just wanted to thank you for the support that we have gotten from you in the past and hope to continue to receive that support because of the vital role that our program plays in the community. Not a few days ago you guys saw what we did outside here. And thanks to the support and the funding. So we hope to continue doing that work to support the community, thank you.

Good afternoon everyone. Like Yao and Richard and everyone say, we're here to thank you for this new RFP, for giving us the opportunity to serve all the clients.

Sorry, please state your name for the record.

Mayra Ramirez, so I'm Mayra Ramirez, I work with the Oakland Private Industry Council, so I'm the manager of the WIOA services, so I'm the one who work face-to-face with the clients who are coming into our doors every day looking for work. So I thank you again for giving us the opportunity to serve the community of Oakland, because as everybody know, everybody's struggling to find a job and they need our support. A lot of clients come in because they need help with finding a job, they need support, they need the connections to be able to find a job and also training. So we are there to help and like Richard say, we don't wanna stop services and have them wait because believe me,

i have a lot of clients who need our services so i thank you for your support again and and hope to you know just continue this help for our clients in the community of oakland thank you good afternoon council my name is joyce guy i'm the executive director of the west oakland job resource center and i want to thank you for what you guys have been doing but i want to be clear It is an honor, I'm humbled that we have the partnership with OPIG to work with the Job Center because we've been working long and hard to get this. The people of the West have been left out as destitute for a long, long time. time and we need to continue to have this funding going because what we're doing with our training programs we have a very extensive truck driving training program and tdl program we have access to maritime employment and jobs and training and that we're trying to bring back forth we have listen we have people from this community and working with partnerships with OPIC where we're transferring clients or working clients back and forth and just being supportive and being good stewards over the funding that we have. And now we have this partnership that we have to continue the services. Once you take something away, it takes too long and too much to have a comeback to build up for the community to trust you. So we have to continue this service and I thank you guys for the time.

Hello, my name is Tony Trinh, and I'm the executive director for the Oakland Chinatown Improvement Council. I just want to speak on OPIC and Pastor Lankford and the incredible work that they're doing. For the last two years, we've been working together. We've been combining our communities, getting to know each other. They've attended our Lunar New Year, and we're currently working on the 6th Street encampment. issues, Pastor Lankford has came out and provided his expertise while we are also providing our expertise on ambassador training and also working within the community. So I would hope and I would hope that the contract continues July 1st. There's just not much more I can say that that kind of resembles what we're doing together. We're also holding a Stop the Hate symposium where a third of the Latinx community, a third of the African-American community, a third of the Chinatown community come together to learn. So please continue the workforce.

So unemployment for black people in the United States is 7.5. State of California is 9.1. And the city of Oakland is 9.9. These people aren't doing nothing for black people. We are unemployed, unhoused, on the street 70%, whatever, whatever. But I don't understand, with all of this stuff going on, with nonprofit fraud, that you haven't decided to look at some of these nonprofits that you give money to. Now, 2016, the Unity Council participated in fraud and spent $500,000 on maintenance and operation from NeighborWorks America funds. You gave them the money to pay it back. The Lau family screwed up some money, a million dollar application for homelessness. You allowed them to reapply. So you have these groups that constantly come in this room and you constantly give them money and you never verify anything. But one thing is for sure, no nonprofit in this city has eliminated the high unemployment of African Americans in this city. None of them. But they're gonna get up here and they're gonna send black people up here saying we're doing stuff. Why is our unemployment?

Thank you for your comments, Ms. Olabala. If your name was called and you still wish to speak on this item, please come up to the podium. Chair, all names have been called at this time.

excellent um thank you so much um so once again i just want to thank you know city staff and our our city team for their work on this item also thank you to all of the providers that showed up to speak about the amazing work that you all are doing to support workforce in our city and we know that we have to continue to just do an even better job right to get out and to connect with community members. So I will make the motion to go ahead and move all three of the detailed items forward to our June the 2nd council meeting.

And if there is a second.

Second.

Second.

Thank you.

We have a motion made by Councilmember, or sorry, Chair Brown, seconded by Councilmember Ramachandran to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the June 2nd City Council agenda. On roll, Councilmembers Five. There you go. Aye. Ramachandran. Aye. Aye. Unger. Aye. And Chair Brown. Aye. Thank you, item number six passes with four ayes. To forward this item to the June 2nd City Council agenda on consent. Moving on to item number five. Receive an informational report from the Oakland Housing Authority on the status of their programs and current projects and we have five speakers that signed up to speak.

And the good afternoon Chair and Commission.

Thank you so much for this opportunity to present to you on behalf of the Oakland Housing Authority. My name is Patricia Wells, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer for the Oakland Housing Authority. May we have the slide presentation up please? Again, there is the title page on the next slide. You'll note the Mission for the Housing Authority, which is often unknown. Next slide, please. And that is...

Thank you.

Great, and that is to ensure the availability of quality housing for low-income persons, promote civic involvement, and to promote the economic self-sufficiency for residents, as well as to further the expansion of affordable housing within the city of Oakland. One of the things you'll note here is who we serve. We serve one in 15 individuals in our city of Oakland through our multiple affordable housing subsidy programs that includes over 15,000 housing choice vouchers, over 1,300 public housing units, 2,000 non-traditional subsidized housing units, and we do that through 20 years of moving to work MTW. That's a total of 18,400 families served and we serve in every community here in our city of Oakland. If you wanna know a little bit of the statistics, the Housing Authority manages 248 project-based voucher properties, which are garden-style apartment complexes, encompassing of 1,539 units. We have two OHA-managed family public housing sites, encompassing 762 units, and three third-party managed sites by partners in the community. We also are a partner of five mixed finance, mixed income sites, totaling 823 units, and we are part of 80-plus partner-managed project-based voucher properties. 3,300 units at an estimated $5.7 million per month in rental assistance paid to our partners. Approximately, $1,500 average monthly rental assistance is paid on behalf of those 18,000 plus families. If you look at this citywide map, this shows the built environment for the housing authority. Each of the clusters and colors represent a portfolio managed by a team of leasing, property management, and services staff. And if we were to add all the housing choice vouchers in the color of lavender, it would complete the encompassing flat lands of the city of Oakland. But each of those different squares represents one of the properties that I noted in our statistic. How do we do that? Through holistic approach to healthy communities. We have a family community partnerships department that provides a cornucopia of resident services focused on jobs, education, community leadership, subsidy programs that include all healthcare and substance abuse type programs, and it's all encompassed at each of those properties and available to each of the 18,000 families we serve. We do property management in partnership with our Housing Choice Voucher Team, as well as the Oakland Housing Authority Police Department, which is a special district police department underneath the Housing Authority. Right now, we're proud to be partners with the city of Oakland in so many dynamic partnerships, including the Oakland Path Rehousing Initiative, which is a sponsor-based housing program serving special needs communities, including veterans, people formerly in homeless encampments, families reuniting after a parent has been incarcerated with their children, Foster Youth Initiative, as well as a whole host of other families who otherwise might not be served by HUD programs. We also are in partnership with the city with Building Bridges, our local housing assistance program. We are proud to be part of the Digital Offer Initiative where the Board of Commissioners for the Oakland Housing Authority helped in my idea to support free Wi-Fi to all of the public housing households here in the city, and we're part of the Middle Mile Initiative with that also. We are proud partners with Oakland Promise Plus, and it was a thrill to celebrate 98 of our students graduating last weekend during the Promise Plus programs. We have several operating rental assistance subsidies that we leverage with the City of Oakland HCD funded projects, and I'll talk a little bit about that later. And when you think of those little dots, which are smaller apartment complexes, we partner with the city on our own Don't Trash OHA illegal dumping renewal, where we basically invest almost $900,000 to do a seven-day-a-week removal of illegal dumping in front of properties where the housing authority owns them, and we do it seven days a week in partnership with a nonprofit known as CEO Works, who provides employment with folks who need a opportunity to start their employment path. We also consider ourselves a force multiplier to all the great work here in the city of Oakland. About $25 million dispersed in rental assistance each month to our partners, our primary partners, 3,600 property owners who lease to our Housing Choice Vouchers families. Right now, annually, about 4,500 vendors are paid in the city of Oakland excuse me, 1,700 from the city of Oakland out of $4,500 partners paid through vendor payments and that shows you the amount of income that's going back into our city through the work that the housing authority has done. Last year we actually removed 300 tons of illegal dumping through that program I mentioned earlier. Our OJPD, Special District Police Department, has responded to over 8,100 calls for service, most of those proactive and often community in nature, participating in community festivals. and the Housing Development and Preservation. The Housing Authority, since we started development in the hope six days in the year 2000, we co-invested over $1 billion in total development costs to create and preserve more than 2,000 affordable units in our great city. We have roughly about 1,450 units in the development pipeline at 16 sites with over $155 million committed in a various multitude of ways. Most of those projects are in partnership with our friends at HCD. Some of the highlights is we're a project sponsor and funder for 77th and Bancroft, 92 units of senior housing in partnership with the California Affordable Housing Initiative, Eaton Housing, and Black Cultural Zone. We also have recently acquired a property at 401 Santa Clara Avenue, 104 units that will also be focused on senior affordable housing, and we are working on a strategy for public housing preservation and also part of the great partnership at Mandela Station Residences and SETA. Our strategic plan for our small apartment buildings is a multi-year transformation plan for roughly 1,500 units of those small apartment buildings. We're working on the strategy now. Once it's in draft form and presented to our board of commissioners and our board of directors, we will be doing charrettes throughout the city of Oakland to get feedback from the residents that we currently serve as well as neighbors. And the goal is to take these now 50 year old properties and make them bought up to date in all needs that might have been unfunded in the past so that they can thrive for another 30 to 40 years. Our areas of future focus and advocacy, well, it's three part. First on federal priorities. Right now we are closely watching HUD requirements for expiring voucher programs such as the emergency housing voucher where we serve over 470 individuals who receive those vouchers during COVID and we're working to add them back into the community. HUD has also proposed work requirements for persons receiving a subsidy as well as term limits for the amount of time that you can participate in a program. That's part of our advocacy focus. I mentioned that some of our advocacy focus is on those $155 million committed to those 1400 sites. Keeping that money here in Oakland so that we can continue to assist those projects and working on advocacy for the National Environmental Protection Act requirements. What's uncertain about it? Well, we all read the paper and we know it's going to be about funding our market here in Oakland and the growing need for different types of properties for different types of communities. In our 88 years, one of the things I would say, the Housing Act was passed in 1937, Oakland lost no time, and the Housing Authority was funded in 1938. So in one year, we started our good work, and since that time, we've developed, as I mentioned, 925 units ourselves across 10 sites, and been a part of over 2,000 units put together through our housing partners. Again, I wanna talk about the fact that at the Oakland Housing Authority, with our seven commissioners who are part of the Oakland community, over 374 dedicated staff and a whole host of partners and community-based organizations, our focus is to not just provide affordable housing, but to be a part of Oakland's ability to provide safe, welcoming communities for all. And we do that not just by providing the housing piece, but also opportunities for the families that we serve. And with that, that concludes my report. I should mention that I'm joined today by the Chief of Social Impact, Domenica Henderson, who has been the leader in many of the innovations over the last 10 years, and also Commissioner Lynette Jung Lee, who has come to support our endeavors here today. Thank you, Chair, and I'm available for any questions.

Excellent, well thank you so much just for your willfulness and excitement in accepting the invitation to present to the CED committee. I've had the privilege of working alongside you kind of in various roles. since when you stated around 2020, right? Especially that 77th and Bancroft site, right? And all of the illegal dumping and different things that were happening and now to see the partnership with the partners and that will help create that senior housing, right? Definitely what the community needs. And so I've always been in awe of your leadership and of OHA and just really grateful for all of the work that you all are doing. And also really appreciated in the slides, in the presentation that you presented, just really showing, I think sometimes in community we can get feedback where maybe we think that most of the OHA sites are maybe located maybe in deeper East Oakland, et cetera, but we're able to see from the map that it's spread out all across our city, and then really was grateful to see just some of the future planning as well. I did have one specific question around slide, I think it's slide 12. I know you mentioned about this at a very high level, but it has to do with the federal kind of priorities and then this bucket around the work requirements and just wanted to see if there, do you have any additional updates on that specific category and if any of our kind of Oakland community members have been impacted by that at all?

Thank you, right now it's proposed, but it's an interesting thing when you listen to the programs that the Housing Authority has traditionally put forth since our inception. In fact, my first hire almost 28 years ago at the Housing Authority was working on employment, working with the Workforce Development Board. Many of our programs, including a Jobs Plus grant, as well as several other grants we have, are focused on getting the families who are work-able into employment that includes those adults over the age of 21, but also we have a very robust program for our youth in employment. So while the requirements are something that's out there, we are tracking it as advocates in our industry groups to try to give great examples from Oakland on what it would mean for families to have a work requirement in order to receive a subsidy for everyone to find a home. So stay tuned for that. I'm often in engagement with different staff from the offices so that they know kind of what we're doing and what we're up to for advocacy. But you can be assured that we, too, want every person who's able and interested in working to gain employment that is something that makes them feel good about themselves as well as add back into the economy of their family as well as the community.

All right. Excellent. Thank you so much. Colleagues, any questions or comments? Council member five.

Hello. Thank you for being with us this afternoon. I just have a couple of questions. Very general high level information in the presentation, but I appreciate having some of those details that I was not aware of. But I one of the things that is really impactful that I haven't seen a full solution to is Youth homelessness, I just wonder how the Housing Authority deals with people who aren't of the age in order to qualify for housing. They can't get on a list. How do you deal with unhoused youth?

No, thank you for that question, and it's a great question. You're correct that you have to be of legal age in order to be an applicant for the Housing Authority. We do have partnerships though for our foster youth initiative and sponsor based programs that will allow 18 year olds to go through specialized programs for subsidy in those cases. One of the things that we also are a part of is a partnership with UC Benioff where families who have children and infants in neonatal care, there's 50 slots for 50 families so that their children find homes, now true with the adults, but it's geared toward the children and making sure the children are housed. One of the other things that we do is in partnership with the Oakland Unified School District, We have a partnership with them for children who are chronically absent. We've done some fantastic work in 12 partner schools, high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools, so that the word is getting out to those young people who are attached to a family unit, because it doesn't always have to be the bloodline family, but rather the family as defined by HUD standards. I was remiss in not mentioning and looking at you council members we just celebrated our 127th home buyer through our housing choice voucher home buying program and we also secured a grant with the Department of Justice to enable 50 individuals who are exiting out of sexual trafficking to be able to find a home again they have to be over the age of 18 years of age So that is a flat line for the Housing Authority in serving specifically youth, but a lot of the partners that we have, like Abode and Missy, they help young people in other ways, and it's kind of our way of being a force multiplier, being able to serve those families in three-tiered ways so that they can be part of our partnership, part of the programs that we do at our larger sites.

Thank you for sharing that. And then my other question was about the shifts that are happening at the federal level. I know we talk about this all the time. Yes. the can you share if the right i mean the the work requirements what those are and have will they impact the city of oakland and how the work requirements if enacted would impact every housing authority in the nation there are over 300 uh 3 000 excuse me in the nation

It would require recipients of federal funding, the Housing Choice Voucher Program as well as the Public Housing Program to be mandated to get work within a specific time. The details of that aren't necessarily established yet and it would be one of the other proposals is to coincide that with term limits of no more than five years on a housing program. Right now our average term for a family on housing average is roughly about seven to nine years, so that would definitely limit families, and when we heard in this great meeting and meetings before here at City Council of the difficulty on getting folks to employment, stable employment with benefits that allows them to have a living wage so they can afford living in the city of Oakland, that's something that the Housing Authority continues to be a part of in the larger City of Oakland conversation. I'm gonna turn to my colleague to see if she would add anything. Thank you.

And lastly, I just want to thank you so much for the partnership with Suda and Mandela Station. I think that's going to be a phenomenal project. So I look forward to making sure for now. I mean, we always fight for affordable housing. The jobs is so critical, especially with the as we heard from one of our public speakers, the high level of unemployment for for black folks. And I'm saying that because it's West Oakland. Right. So. we not only need affordable housing but we need the jobs piece for the ability to afford and we know that's really hard to do in the bay area so i look forward to continued partnership on that thing the jobs and housing and great community is at the heart of the mission for the housing authority so we're proud to be part of that and so many other projects here in our city excellent thank you so much council member ramachandran

Thank you, thank you so much for presenting today and for everything you do for Oakland residents for 88 plus years. In my past life, I used to work with domestic violence survivors and did a lot to help those access housing, obviously in a very different federal administration. Um, I know the wait times now, if you're applying for a voucher fresh or, you know, darn near impossible, but, um, are there programs for subgroups like DV survivors? You mentioned trafficking, um, and other groups to be able to access priority, um, based on it, not just that, but other factors.

This is where I'm going to invite Chief Henderson up to be able to respond to that question.

Good afternoon, council members. My name is Domenica Henderson. I'm the Chief Social Impact Officer for the Housing Authority. And yes, so we have a set of special programs. Those are the local programs that we highlight the 2000 households. In those programs, we assist families who are exiting as Executive Director Wells mentioned, exiting sexual trafficking or human trafficking and labor trafficking in general. We also assist families who are experiencing domestic violence and have a robust program to not only assist them with the move, but identify other so that they're able to retain that housing as well. And our local programs are where we typically assist those families in addition to if a family has a voucher and they need to move, then we will expedite those moves. But if there is someone that is really in need daily, then what we do is work with partner agencies or community-based partners to get referrals to some of our local programs, and that's the way that we are able to assist families without having to have them wait on a long-term wait list.

Thank you. And one other question. I know last year, I believe, the list reopened for a short period of time. I assume that we got thousands of applications and we're only able to house a certain number. Do you have any update on that list reopening?

Well, what I would say is that we did open the list early last year in 2025. We got between 22 and 25,000 applications, we had that lottery down to about 5,000 households. And so 5,000 households are on the wait list and we will pull from that wait list until it's completed and that's when we would then reopen a new one. I would estimate, it's hard to put a pinpoint on the timing of it because there's so many factors, But what I can say, actually, is that our wait list, the last wait list opening before last year was in 2011. So it took us a long time to get through 10,000 households. We are hoping to be able to reduce that amount of time and serve the need more quickly. But it really depends on a lot of uncertainties, including the funding that's coming from the federal government.

Thank you, Domenica. And Councilmember, you could have stayed right by my side. One of the things I would mention is I noted the 470-odd emergency housing vouchers. The Housing Authority is absorbing those vouchers because that program was terminated. To absorb those 474 families, we're taking a slot that would otherwise go to someone on that waiting list. So the waiting list time period got moved back. so that we could preserve the housing subsidy for those 470 families. And that's a big piece of the core of the Housing Authority's mission. While part of our mission is the production and preservation of new housing, we actually consider ourselves in homeless prevention. And that's why you have so many programs that we put on to try to help our families become more self-sufficient, employment, credit repair, credit management, so that they can stay housed.

Thank you for that question. And those 474 was the result of federal funding?

It was a federal issuance of emergency housing vouchers, 75,000 nationwide, we received 515, and then through natural attrition, we're at about 474 right now. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

Excellent, we can hear from the public speakers, if any.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number five. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium. State your name for the record before you begin. Buffalo Sojourn, Lynette Jong Lee, Assata Olabala, Samuel Ramey, and Jeff Levin.

Friends, enemies, and political operatives, first I'd better commend the City Council for pulling these people in to report. There are five different versions of Housing Authority in Alameda County. One of them is countywide, and each one is their own fiefdom. Right now, even as our Housing Authority perpetrates the slide from allotted low-income funds to affordable funds, right now were i to go to apply for a place on one of their buildings they would tell the manager don't let that clown in and were you to ask them about the demographic breakdown of their clients you would find out within the last five years half of their new clients are speed freaks half of them are from out of town and they've got ukrainians and other immigrants occupying low-income housing. There's a phrase in Russian that says, listening to a known liar lie. I don't want to mess with your money. These people here, they weren't here when their predecessors started the corruption. I don't know about you, but I know in what you've said, there are at least five things that can be proven to be an outright lie.

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Sojourn. Thank you for your comments, Mr. Sojourn. Your time is up.

Good afternoon, Chairperson Brown and members of the Council Committee. My name is Lynette Chung Lee, and I've been a member of the Oakland Housing Authority Commission for the past 12 or 13 years. Formerly, I was the executive director of the Ebald C East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation for 27 years. Although I have some background in affordable housing and community development, I have to say that I have learned a lot being on the OHA Commission because it is a large and complex organization. It has been a great partner for many nonprofits, not only in affordable housing by providing vouchers and financing to ensure that we can serve very, very low income including homeless residents and homeless veterans, but also working with nonprofits and government agencies on many service programs to build up the skills and opportunities for its residents and the surrounding neighborhood. It has been really staff, starting from Director Wells on down through the organization, has been really.

Thank you for your comments.

Thank you.

My name is Simeon Raymond. I'm with the National Homesteading for Mental Health Outreach. I am the hit man for HUD. They come to Oakland next. They're going to ask you, are they citizens of this country? And do they qualify for this program? Right now, they're in Little Rock. I asked them to come to Little Rock. They're in Little Rock right now. Scott Turner, tearing up. Everybody popped down and fired them. They were crooks. You think all these tough cities here, they've been coming all through the whole country. And we, because this is over with. This is over. There's no such thing as affordable housing. Stop that. It's low income. The judge already said, you can't change one word. That's Constitution. Y'all going to jail. So get this together. All the shelters you go, tell them to put them back, pay for all shelters across this country. No one in America is supposed to be homeless under Stuart B. McKinney Act. Okay, I've been homesteading for 35 years in this city. I need to program backwards. I'm gonna have a senior citizen and a mental health facility built, and you guys gonna govern it. I already have the okay for it. We have $5.8 billion waiting on us right now. I just need you. That's all. No one in America gonna be homeless no more. The three shelters, put them back. Don't put nobody homeless. Nobody. And that's America. We're gonna make America great again. The food program, I have you, I'm gonna do it.

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Ramey. Thank you for your comments, Mr. Ramey. People should have it.

Thank you Ms. Brown for bringing this item because I've been asking that this be brought to this body. I'm very confused about what government agency has authority over the Oakland Housing Authority. I know that they receive federal funds. I'm gonna read you in Oakland Forum how HUD has taken over in several cities Oakland Housing Authority for mismanagement, including in San Francisco. So we have to have some accountability by this organization. Who has the monitoring process over this agency? Can anybody tell me? Okay, I'll finish. The other thing, the source of funding that this agency has access to, where is the source? I know we get HUD money. I became very upset when a young lady in a wheelchair came here and said that she couldn't get accommodations from this group because she had to go to Berkeley. I got very upset when I hear that people are coming here from foreign countries. The Yemeni community is vast in the Oakland Housing Authority's housing. That's why we have so many kids that are over there at West Oakland, because our Yemeni community is living in the spaces. You got a waiting list of over 5,000.

Thank you for your comments, Ms. Assata. 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. Really, we would just like to thank the Council and the Housing Authority for bringing this report forward today. In my years, I can't actually recall a time when we've had as comprehensive a report from OHA on their activities, so this has been really great. Just to underline what's been said already, you know, the city's housing programs and affordable housing programs address an array of incomes. The Housing Authority historically has provided the bulk of the housing assistance for people at the lowest income levels, those particularly in the extremely low income category with less than 30% of median income, either directly through their own programs or in partnership with city funded projects. This is part of what makes it possible for the city's own portfolio to serve a range of incomes from extremely low to very low to low. And we really appreciate the many years of partnership in that way. But it's really important when we are looking at all the ways that the city is attempting to meet It has had unmet needs for housing, that the housing authority plays a really important role for serving folks that the city's programs alone have a great difficulty in reaching. So just thank you for that.

Thank you for your comments, Chair. That concludes all speakers on this item.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much. Colleagues, any additional questions? Council Member Fife?

One of the public speakers did raise something that I've been curious about. Are there special, through the chair to Director Eisen, are there special accommodations that people from war-torn areas of the world get to move forward on a list if it's publicized by the Housing Authority? How does one particular ethnic...

The answer is no, but to be able to answer the question fully, I'm gonna ask Chief Henderson to come up and talk about eligibility.

Thank you for the question. So we receive our funding from the federal government, from HUD, and so the vouchers that we receive are available to the entire population. When we open a wait list, we advertise it to everyone. We don't have special vouchers for special demographic types right now. There are some cases that happened in the past where housing authorities may have received disaster vouchers specifically around an earthquake in certain cities or in Katrina was a really most recent example where those recipients were moved all over the country and so housing authorities were able to welcome them into their communities temporarily or permanently. But in terms of special demographic type of vouchers, we don't receive those from the government.

So how does it occur that a particular location, because I am thinking about West Oakland, you see a growing population of one particular group. How does that happen?

I think that what we see is that the wait lists that are advertised across the city, they're advertised in some communities in different ways or marketed in different ways that reach different communities. We have seen activities where certain, organizations will gather people together and fill out the waitlist help fill out the waitlist application together that sometimes helps what i would say is that it really is about numbers so are we do a lottery and so the more people of a certain community or another apply for a waitlist if the if the numbers are higher than this statistically people will may look similar but um we are bound by fair housing regulations, and so we do a very affirmative marketing plan, and we vet those and work with our partner organizations to make sure that we're publishing them across the community.

Is it possible for me to work directly with your organization next time, sorry, next time a list opens up to like get the word out to our communities?

We would welcome everyone in this room and all rooms to help us mark it out.

I'm sorry. Order in the chamber or you will be asked to leave. Order in the chamber or we will ask you to leave. All right, thank you.

Typically when we open up the wait list we actually have sessions for community based organizations, faith based organizations to understand how the wait list will work. We do an online wait list opening as well as we'll host wait lists like this past wait list we hosted at several of the schools in partnership with Oakland Unified School District as well as other community based organizations. So the answer is yes and I will make sure that we get the information out to everyone. in our elected here in the city and one of the things that can happen as Dominica explained how marketing is done and the numbers of people that might apply is that people are housed in the built environment based upon bedroom size. So you have to be eligible for a bedroom size. One of the things we know through the emergency housing voucher program which was largely people who were experiencing homelessness at the time that we housed them is that they were single household family members. And so a large number of those folks are single folks who are families. And the subsidy is, and thank you Ms. Henderson, Right now, the law requires, the regulation requires that one person in the household has to be an eligible citizen. If that one person is eligible, the subsidy goes to all the eligible members in that household. Subsidy is not paid to non-eligible members in the household. So it could be that a household may have three people in it, but only two are eligible for subsidies, so the subsidy's based upon a two-person household. And so that's where you might see persons where you wonder how the demographics.

Okay. And so because of Council Member Five's question, it did spark a question for me, because I know I heard that the amount of applicants at first was over 20,000, but then it was narrowed down to 5,000. And so I am curious how you narrow that down. And then it becomes a lottery at that point.

The lottery is what narrows it down. So we have all of the applicants. weed out double applications so somebody might apply twice or more than once. So we take those out and all unique applicants are about 22,000 for this last waitlist opening for the main Housing Choice Voucher Program. Then we conduct a lottery and get the 5,000 households that then will be issued a voucher essentially as their number gets pulled.

Excellent, thank you for clarifying. And thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you soon again. All right, thank you. And so I believe for this item, it's up to the body, but we can receive and file this in committee if we're interested.

Just need a motion. I will make a motion to receive and file.

Second.

Thank you.

Thank you, that was a motion made by Council Member Unger, seconded by Council Member Ramachandran. To receive and file this informational report in committee, on roll, Council Members Five. Aye. Ramachandran. Aye. Unger. Aye. And Chair Brown. Aye. Thank you, item number five passes with four ayes to receive and file this informational report in committee. Moving on to item number four. receive an informational report on housing development programs by the Housing and Community Development Department for fiscal year 2025 to 2026. And we have four speakers that signed up on this item.

Excellent, thank you so much. So for the presentation and hoping to stay, get back on track for our committee meetings, let's do 15 minutes max. Okay, thank you.

Good afternoon, Chairperson Brown, Councilmember Fyfe, Councilmember Ramachandran, Councilmember Unger. My name is Faydar Maui. I'm the Deputy Director of Housing at HCD. Thank you so much for the opportunity to present the Annual Housing Programs Informational Report, fiscal year 2526. This is the second time we present this report. The previous report was fiscal year 2425. The agenda for today is to set the context, to go through our strategies and progress, to go through our main funding programs, and new this year is a portfolio survey, as well as opportunities and challenges. So HCD does not actually own many buildings or any owned buildings, any buildings. We mostly finance them. We invest in developer-led housing when we partner with OHA, who we just heard a great presentation from. We partner with Alameda County, state of California for public sector, subsidies as well as private sector partners like commercial banks and community development financial institutions. We also enforce regulatory agreements on affordable housing produced as a result of inclusionary zoning incentives such as impact fee waivers and density bonuses. HCD's mission is dedicated to improving Oakland's neighborhoods and ensuring all Oaklanders have safe and affordable housing. We have the focus of the three Ps, preservation, protection, and production. HCD's housing division, which I'm reporting on, focuses on preservation of existing housing stock and the production of new housing. We also produce, under the state mandate, under the Oakland Regional Housing Needs Allocation, which states that the city of Oakland's goal is to produce over 26,000 units by 2031, of which 10,250 units, almost half, need to be affordable to low, very low, and extremely low-income households. Because of limited funding, we created a capital investment equity framework under the 2023 and 2027 Strategic Action Plan. The department's capital investments are first dedicated to improve the outcomes that are most affected by racial disparities in housing, namely the unhoused or those in need of permanent supportive housing. And due to the need of operating subsidy, which is in short supply, We next focus our efforts on creating housing for low income residents and then further down in terms of our equity framework priority, we further invest in the preservation of the city's existing affordable housing and the acquisition of housing in the open market to be converted into deed restricted affordable homes. Again, to go over our funding programs, our main funding programs is new construction, which is the creation of multi-family affordable rental units. Our R2H2 home key program, which is where we produce our homeless units. Our CAW program, which is where we acquire market rate rental units and convert them into affordable housing under rent restriction for 55 years. We also have an asset management team where we preserve our portfolio. So this is a really important slide to implement the funding programs. From the previous slide, we rely heavily on Measure U funding. Thank you to the city council for approving seven resolutions over the three past years to authorize $248 million in Measure U funds plus approximately 60 million in other local funds. It's very important to note that we have allocated all of Measure U tranche one and tranche two to our funding programs, and of that, we only have $16 million left to reward to projects. which speaks to the importance of accelerating tranche three. We're gonna go drill down even more, which is the HCD strategies in progress to date. Our priority strategies this year was increase efficiency in the process within the organizational structure. We've prioritized a streamlined approvals from city council to allow funding to be, awards to be allocated quickly and to align with our, state and county funding timelines, and along with streamlining, the Housing Division has promised to bring this informational report to ensure transparency in project funding and development progress. As in previous years, our funding allocation aligned with our Strategic Action Plan, and in terms of our NOFAs and awards, we align our project selection with the measure of EUTRANGE II, with the allocation of County Measure W recently, and also our state deadlines for tax credits and taxes and bonds. We've implemented a rolling NOFA process for our R2H2 home key and ACCA projects, and we've increased our efficiency for the ACCA project by partnering with the Housing Accelerator Fund, a community development financial institution. As stated earlier, in HCD's Strategic Action Plan, we prioritize the funding of permanent supportive housing. Our target is 39% of all funding, or $188 million over four years for this type of housing, which is housing that is affordable to households earning zero to 30% of AMI. Our second highest priority is the funding of low-income housing. affordable at 30 to 80 of ami we target 30 of our funding or 178 million our third priority is aka at 15 and our fourth priority is portfolio preservation at seven percent of all funding And this slide shows the progress for meeting those goals. As you can see, we exceeded our target goal for permanent supportive housing production. We have reached 46% of total funding versus our goal of 39%. We produced 1,000 units of PSH versus our goal of around 800. And we exceeded this goal in our third year of our four year plan. So this also underscores the need to continue to accelerate the sale of tranche three to continue to pursue meeting our housing goals under our strategic action plan. This is an overview of our fiscal year 25-26 accomplishment. We have around 1,400 units under construction of which 591 units will provide housing for folks exiting homelessness. We completed 700 units of housing of which 238 are units to provide an exit to homelessness. Of the 700 units completed construction, it's important to note that 300 were a result of inclusionary zoning. Next year, this number will be substantially lower as market rate development has decreased substantially, while HCD projects will increase in comparison for completion rate next year. Comparing our productivity relative to other cities in Alameda County, for the calendar years 24 and 25 combined, Oakland represents 42% of all permits issued for affordable housing in the county of Alameda. How am I doing? We're gonna drill down to new construction. Okay, the new construction NOFA is the main vehicle for funding affordable housing development for the past few decades where we forward commit funding to developers so that they can leverage and build their capital stack, for example, adding low-income housing tax credits or taxes and bonds. In the last two rounds, we've operated on a pipeline model which allows us to make additional commitments as city funding becomes available. this year thanks to the authorization to forward commit measure you and other funding sources we will we were able to award 63.6 million dollars to five open developments in addition we renewed our long-standing collaboration with the oakland housing authority on four projects here noted with the asterisks the housing the oakland housing authority provides valuable rent subsidies that allow for the deepest affordability Here are some examples of our affordable housing developments. The projects on this slide have all received low-income housing tax credit awards, and the three projects that have red stars have started construction. This is from our 2024 new construction NOFA. This slide is from the projects in our recent 2025 new construction pipeline award round, and you can see that already three of them have received low-income housing tax credit allocations, which means they will start construction in late fall. This slide shows the projects that are under construction. There are actually seven new construction projects under construction, including the three that I just mentioned. Again, the asterisks show the projects that we have ongoing partnership with the Oakland Housing Authority. We completed three projects this year, and we just celebrated the grand opening of 3050 International Flickaburra Apartments last week with Mayor Lee. And this is a deep look at the Eliza, which is under construction just down the street a couple blocks from here. It broke ground in December 2025, and you can see the first few floors already jutting out of the ground of this 97-unit project by Mercy Housing. Even with all the projects that we've been able to fund, we still need almost $250 million in city funding for future projects, again, underscoring the need for tranche three. Our next funding program is the Rapid Response Homeless Housing R2H2 version and our partnership with the State Home Key. R2H2 funding program results in projects with the deepest affordability at zero to 30% AMI. There are six projects under construction providing 422 permanent supportive housing, or PSH. The city funds both capital and operating funds in this funding program and uses a rolling NOFA application process, as mentioned earlier, which is a streamlining strategy. We have three projects completed, three R2-H2 projects completed in the fiscal year, and it resulted in 128, these three projects resulted in 128 PSH units, including Friendly Manor, which will have its grand opening in early June. That project will offer 52 beds to chronically homeless youth. Our next funding program is the Acquisition and Conversion of Affordable Housing program called ACA. The ACA program also has a rolling NOFA application process and we are this year in partnership with the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund to streamline underwriting and loan closings so that developers can meet marketplace timing. This program is designed for developers to purchase apartment buildings off the speculative market and convert them into affordable housing with rents at 80% AMI and below. Of note is the 33-unit Adora Apartments, which a local nonprofit rooted, purchased to convert into affordable educator housing. And this is highlighting the work of the asset management team, but this is the HCD portfolio survey and summary. So we didn't have a portfolio, we had NOFA this fiscal year, but the asset management team did a survey to understand the key demographics and building property status of our portfolio. So the building condition data shows that 85% of survey respondents indicated that they had no major building systems upgrades in the last decade. This reveals a long-term issue of deferred maintenance, and HCD predicts that our upcoming $7 million portfolio rehab NOFA, which is coming out this fall, which will be oversubscribed. The portfolio by council districts shows that we have 175 properties total in the portfolio, of which 152 are city-funded properties and 23 are non-city-funded properties where HCD enforces the deed restrictions on inclusionary units. We have a total of 9,000 units of affordable housing across all council districts. Some key demographics show that we have a range of affordability in our portfolio. 46% of all units are affordable at 31 to 50% AMI, 32% of all units are affordable at 51 to 80% AMI, and 19% of our units are affordable at zero to 30% AMI. Those are our PSH units. Yes, coming to it. In addition, our demographic information revealed that 52% of heads of households self-identify as black or African American, 26% identify as Asian, 13% self-identify as white. This is the range of household size and it shows that 55% of the household consists of one person households and 19% are two person households and so on. This section I will look forward to some challenges and opportunities. So, HCD does face some challenges in the coming year, the greatest being our funding limitations since Measure KK and Measure U tranches one and two have been awarded to, all of it has been awarded to programs and projects. To fund our existing project pipeline, we really need Measure U tranche three to be sold as soon as possible. For new construction, our biggest challenge is the rising cost due to recent federal level policies and ongoing need for operating subsidies for extremely low income units. For our R2H2 program, we rely on state home key subsidies, but the state's current focus is on veterans housing. However, in Alameda, there's very little need for homeless veterans housing. In addition, all our experienced service providers are operating at maximum capacity. For our CHI, it's also a capacity issue. Specifically, our small developers and community land trusts lack technical and financial capacity. However, on the bright side, we do have some opportunities that we're looking forward to. The state will create a new state housing agency, which promises to bring a one-stop shop, aligning state bond allocation with tax credit awards, hopefully cutting down the time and money it currently takes to build a finance stack. We're also looking forward to the state housing bond of up to $10 billion, which will capitalize this new state housing agency. In addition, with respect to the permanent local housing allocation, the PLHA, currently we use the PLHA allocation for operating subsidy, but it sounds like the state may require 20% set aside to fund home ownership projects. Home ownership projects, we haven't had funding for a while now. And we're also continuing to monitor two smaller ongoing initiatives, infill development toolkit and the redevelopment of tax defaulted lots. And that concludes my presentation of the annual housing information report for fiscal year 2025 to 2026, and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much. The staff report was very detailed, and it also clearly outlines and shows just all of the amazing work that the entire HCD team does on behalf of the entire city, Oakland residents, and so just a huge thank you. I have a few questions, but I will open it up to my colleagues first. Council Member Fife.

I just have two primary questions. I've been trying to work with the county on tax defaulted lots in Oakland since 2017. I was able to get the tax assessor to hire staff to help with the program, but kind of lost track of where things are right now. I'm happy that in the last one to two years things have moved forward significantly But through the chair to perhaps director Epstein Where are things right now? Oh What did I do?

This is Emily Weinstein through the chair to council number five. What did I say? It was the wrong name, but it's okay. I understand why I'd be top of mind. So to answer the question about tax defaulted properties, we are working with the county. And there's kind of a number of different ways to approach it. In terms of the city's role, one of the first things we can do is to remove liens from the properties that the city has. And so, The county has a list of properties and they've gone out with some RFPs for a few of the larger parcels. They're also looking at some of the smaller parcels. And we are working with them to determine whether there are sort of future developers for those developments. And if so, we would be involved in, we'd come back to council to remove the liens would be on those parcels to help reduce the cost that it would take to then build on those parcels what does that do for the person who owns the property that's leaned so it's tax default so there's there's the empty lots and then there's the uh lots that are occupied right right now the county's focused on uh empty lots oh okay i don't have that many in my district

They're really, really small, not developable. But I have to say that I was just reading an email from my professor. I apologize for that. It's not the person you were thinking of. And my second question was about the money right now that you currently have for projects. How much is it? Seven million?

So through the chair to Council Member Fife, we have a total right now of sort of $16 million left over of Measure U. $7 million of those dollars are going to the rehab portfolio NOFA that's coming out this fall. So that's money that's already been allocated or awarded to a program but not yet in projects. We have about seven million left in the ACCA portfolio, but what you saw today, I'm sorry, R2H2. No, ACCA, we're out, sorry. For R2H2, we have about seven million. It is a rolling NOFA, and so actually a portion of that right now, we're looking at a project that may take up a portion of those funds within the next couple weeks to make an award. So we're really down to probably about four million dollars And then there's about $1.7 to $2 million left for new construction, and that's it. So the second tranche of Measure U was sold, and we have this existing pipeline of projects, and so we put those out to the projects that we knew would have the best chance of moving forward at the state level, and what you're able to see is It's working, we've been able to move all of our money quickly into projects that are now under construction. Very few that we have funded have not yet started construction. But we will have a gap in terms of projects that we can award funding to until we sell tranche three of Measure U.

Is there anyone that can answer when that might be? Do you know when that might be? that would have to come from the the budget office finance but you haven't they haven't indicated this is annoying um not not at this time we don't know so you will be out of funds to help support the development of any affordable projects when i mean for new construction we're out now

And one of the things that's really important, we will look at impact fees that come in, but because there's been such a dearth of market rate development, there's not much impact fees that we're expecting to come in for next fiscal year. And one of the concerns we have is that we often need to put, we're the first money in for certain developments. We have an opportunity with potentially Measure W coming down the pike that we wanna make sure we have funds into those projects so that we can support those to get county funds. We also need to make sure that with this new reorg that's happening at the state, the new Housing Development Finance Committee just had its first meeting today, and they are putting together the regs behind all of their different funding programs, and the hope is to roll out the first wave of funding awards that would be subsidy as well as tax credits and bonds I think I just looked at today's in April. So the NOFA would open in January of 2027. So we would need to line up the developments by then so that they could apply to the state.

So how can we as a body, this committee and the entire council help to ensure that we do have the resources to help continue what has been an amazing run of units on the market in Oakland? What can we do?

So I think there's a larger conversation about when the third tranche of measure will be sold, how much of the bonds will go towards the different infrastructure needs. A significant portion has been going to affordable housing. The first tranche all went to affordable housing. So I think they are trying to balance how much money goes to affordable housing versus roads and public works. And so that's a conversation for the finance department. We have made it clear that we're out of money and that we need funding.

Yeah, we can't have that. Thank you. I mean, I agree that potholes are one of the biggest issues that we have to face and transportation issues are major, but people are leaving Oakland because there's not the affordable housing available to meet the need. So thank you for that.

Excellent, so thank you so much. A lot of the questions that I had were actually answered. I got my answer about the Housing Development and Finance Committee, they met today, and those funding awards, or that application will open January of next year. So that was great. I was also looking at, thanks for providing the roadmap on page 32 of the currently unfunded new construction just so that we can see what are some of those projects so that we have that top of mind. I was looking at the table on page 30 where it showed the 1.7 million where it says new construction TBD. I imagine that amount is too low to allocate out to any of the new construction. So those were some of my questions. Colleagues, any additional questions on this item? Okay, we can hear from the public speakers. Thank you.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number four, Jeff Levin, Asada Oluwole, David Boatwright, and Simeon Ramey.

David Bowright.

Is there a reason the 40 Brookfield Senior Gardens modular homes after completion in March in 14 months is still not occupied? Resident selection could have been completed before these units were ready for occupancy. The four Homekey Plus projects costing $500,000 to $1.1 million, which were shown in one of the slides, per unit were authorized by the city council in february 18 2025 year and a half later now i see where two of those have started construction but a month ago there was nothing going on no work has been begun on any of these four projects and are estimated to be completed in 2028. Shouldn't the city at least try to fund some more cost effective and timely housing such as modular at 350,000 per unit or 3D printed homes that can be fabricated and installed in less than two weeks for $70,000 for one room units or 150,000 to 230,000 for two to three room units. I'll keep the rest of my comments for the open session.

So Oakland needs 10,261 affordable housing units by 2031. That's a state mandate. The city official estimates it will take $2 billion in city investments alone to construct these units. whereas current local, state, and federal funding levels fall short of that amount. So, how you gonna do it? Then it says that you have a unit, and you didn't do a whole lot of discussion about the units that were developed for the homeless, but you had completion of the Phoenix Apartments in West Oakland, and you had ribbon cutting in February, I'm sorry, in November, but in February it was announced that the developer, the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, was in a dispute with the contractor, So it wasn't open. And it says the contractor is getting ready to sue the East Bay, I'm sorry, developer for $2 million. So why y'all don't bring that up in the discussion? We got an issue. Now those units were 101 units for homeless and low income. See, that's what y'all do. You tell people what you want to tell them. You don't tell them everything. We have a facility.

Thank you for your comments.

My name is with the National Homeless Union. For four years, I've been sending them $5.8 billion, because y'all won't act right. I'm not going to stand up for nothing. Your building is funded. Get the paperwork done, and send it to her. Scott Jones from Home and Checkout, send it to her. You don't get the politics in the city, send it to her. You're funded, but your paperwork got to be right. Don't put a damn person on the street. No more in Oakland. No more in this country. No more. Her taking care of all of this. Housing, education, all of that. We're going to do a whole new thing in this country. We're going to clean the house. This corruption got to go. People on the street should be in there and people in there should be on the street. You got young people walking around and got old people on the street. Come on now. sad i didn't see y'all done with them i have my fact i have started these oklahomans in 91. i'm one of the original oklahomans i've been fighting houses for ever since i knew the whole program about it send your project to her to my brother and they don't pay for it it's all they paid for the shelter they paid for to put me i know people on the street unfortunately all information don't put now no person on the street I'm from the National Home of the United Chicago, Illinois. Why? Chicago got the largest housing in the world. Cabrini Green, 23,000 plus family .

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Ramey. Switching to Zoom user, Jeff. Jeff Levin, you can unmute yourself and begin your comments.

Thank you. Once again, Jeff Levin speaking for East Bay Housing Organizations. Thank you very much to HCD staff for a very comprehensive report. This is really excellent, and we are delighted to see that this is an annual report and look forward to seeing more of these in future years. The accomplishments that they have cited are quite significant, very encouraging. There's obviously a lot more to do But I think a lot of praise goes to HCD staff for all that they have done here. We particularly appreciate the strategic action plan and the way that policy and funding priorities have been based on an initial assessment of racial disparities, and then the policies and programs are designed specifically to reduce those disparities. We think this is an excellent example of how to do equity-driven policy, so thank you for that. Couple things we want to highlight. There have been statements in the past from at least some council members about black people not being served by the city's housing. The data here shows that over 50% of the residents of the city's portfolio are black. There are still many people who are unserved, but I think that statistic is worth noting. It's not noted in this report, but I think most residents also were previously living in Oakland, not coming from elsewhere. On geographic distribution, it's great that there's distribution across all seven districts, but the real issue is high versus low.

Thank you for your comments. Chair, that concludes all speakers on this item.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Excellent, so Director Weinstein, did you have a preference to have this item go to the full council?

Through the chair, or to the chair. I prefer that it go on consent.

Okay, excellent, sounds good. I'll entertain a motion on that, and thank you.

So moved that we forward this to full council on consent. Excellent.

Second. Thank you, that's a motion made by Council Member Unger, seconded by Council Member Five. To receive and forward this informational report to the June 2nd, 2026 City Council agenda, on roll, Council Members Five? Aye. Ramachandran? Aye. Unger? Aye. And Chair Brown? Aye. Thank you, item number four passes with four ayes. Support this item to the June 2nd City Council agenda on consent. Now reading in item number three. Adopt the following pieces of legislation. One, a resolution authorizing the city administrator to accept an appropriate Senate Bill One grant funds from the California Ocean Protection Council in an amount not to exceed $144,900 to fund staff time to work on the existing conditions and vulnerability assessment analysis for the regional shoreline adapt adaptation plan to authorizing the city administrator to apply for accept an appropriate senate additional senate bill one grant funds from the ocean protection council to in an amount not to exceed one million three hundred fifty five thousand one hundred dollars for completion of the sub-regional shoreline adaptation plan and authorizing the city administrator to represent the city in intergovernmental relations with neighboring jurisdictions within shared shoreline operational landscape units. And two, a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a cooperative agreement to purchase services from Conger Moss Gleelard, landscape architecture for the development of the sub-regional shoreline adaptation plan by relying on the existing professional services agreement between the city of Alameda and CMG landscape architecture for an amount not to exceed $1,355,100 and adopting appropriate California Environmental Quality Act findings. And we have one speaker on this item.

Excellent, thank you so much. And we will hear from staff on this. And let's just do 10 minutes for the presentation. Thank you.

Good afternoon, council and the public. My name is Laura Kaminski. I'm the strategic planning manager for the city of Oakland. Kate Topp, if we could have the presentation. Okay, so I'm here to talk about the sub-regional shoreline adaptation plan and the grant funding for that. So just as a little bit of background for Senate Bill 272, this mandates that the California coastal and shoreline cities and counties to collaboratively plan for sea level rise. This requires completion of a sub-regional shoreline adaptation plan by January 1st of 2034. This Senate bill grants the Bay Conservation Development Commission, or BCDC, authority to develop guidelines for the San Francisco Bay shoreline and approve these regional shoreline adaptation plans. It dedicates Senate Bill 1 funding via the California Ocean Protection Council, for track one, which is to fund the planning for the regional shoreline adaptation plan of up to 1.5 million, and track two for implementation funding for projects included in the regional shoreline adaptation plan, up to $10 million per project. And so what's really important to note here is that the sooner the city can finish their regional trauma adaptation plan, the sooner we can apply for this implementation funding for projects, which is a much larger amount of money. And this money is available in a first come first serve basis. So we as a city wanna try to be eligible as soon as possible. So some background information is in the sub-regional sea level rise adaptation planning context. The city of Oakland has worked with the Oakland Alameda Adaptation Committee, or OAK for short, which is a multi-jurisdictional sea level rise planning and adaptation effort that started in 2021. It's been led by the city of Alameda, with the city of Oakland as a key partner. This covers Alameda plus most of Oakland shoreline including the Port of Oakland Oakland Airport Caltrans corridors the East Bay Regional Parks District and What's really important to note with this process is that when you're talking about sea level rise? Sea level does rise does not know jurisdiction boundaries. So it's very important that we're doing our planning that we're collaborative with our neighboring cities because As an example, if the city of Alameda builds a levee wall, then that means that water goes onto Oakland and makes our flooding worse, or vice versa, and so we want to work together, which is very important as part of this process. There's also a geographical area that aligns with the San Leandro Operational Landscape Unit that encompasses the shoreline from the Bay Bridge to Oyster Bay. And as we all know, there's a high risk of flooding and sea level rise impacts in these areas. And Oak, which basically serves as a model for the Senate Bill 272. As part of this Oakland Alameda Adaptation Committee process, the technical work has been done by Conger Moss Gileard Architects, or CMG, and Pathways Climate Institute. The key outputs have been an existing conditions report, a flood exposure and vulnerability memo, and several adaptation projects in Oakland and Alameda. There's been engagement led by Greenville Alliance and local community partners including CASA, Hood Planning, and Surrogate Land Trust. And for the next step is for, from the OAK, is to update the existing work that's already been done to align with the regional trail and adaptation plan guidelines since that was adopted after this initial work was done. And also for eligibility for project two, tracked to implementation funding as I mentioned earlier. So just to show on a map here, the sub-regional adaptation planning context maps has the Oakland shoreline, which includes two of these operational landscape units, which has the East Bay Crescent, which has the cities of Albany, Berkeley, and Emeryville, and Oakland. And then there's also the San Leandro operational landscape unit that has the city of Alameda and Oakland. So to go over the requirements of the Regional Shortland Adaptation Plan that's required by BCDC is that for phase one, which is what is actually currently being worked on right now, there's an element A of stakeholder and community engagement, an element B of looking at existing conditions, element C for vulnerability assessment, And then what we're wanting to apply for more grant funding for is for the phase two part, which will have a continuation of stakeholder and community engagement, but also an element D of adaptation strategies and pathways, an element E of land use and policy plan, an element F of implementation plan and funding strategy, and element G, which includes a project list. So for the phase one strategy, it leverages the partners for the Regional Shortland Adaptation Plans and funds staff coordination time to complete this phase one. So again, elements B of existing conditions and C for vulnerability assessment is being worked on and also stakeholder community engagement is taking place. The City of Oakland Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan, which updates the original OAK consultant's work and community engagement work and funds the completion of phase one deliverables for Oakland's Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan. And in addition, there's also an East Bay Crescent Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan that's led by the SF Estuary Partnership and includes the City and Port of Oakland, Emeryville, Berkeley, and Albany, and completes phase one deliverables for a small area within the port jurisdiction. Both of these partner-led regional shoreline adaptation plans use the same contractor team led by Conger Moss-Gilliard Architects that has been under contract for the Oak since 2023. For phase two funds, contractors to complete the remaining RCEP elements, the staff requests a cooperative agreement to leverage Alameda's RFP solicitation process and contract and use SB1 funding upon award to complete phase two with CMG leading adaptation planning for Oakland. So this is just an overall timeline, kind of shows how all these different processes are happening at once and really the importance of the coordination amongst all these different cities when we're trying to plan for our shoreline adaptation plan. So for the timeline in phase one, spring of 2026 through fall of 2028, this is coordination with the City of Alameda and Emory Bay Crescent to complete the Elements B and C. And this is fully funded already and it's in progress and it's aligned with the partner RCEP's timelines. We do need city council approval to accept phase one funds, grant funds, and appropriate for staff time as part of this, so this is a small amount of money. In addition, then we need for phase two, which is spring of 2027 through winter of 2028, staff with consultant support wants to complete the elements D through G of the regional shoreline adaptation plan. and leverage the partner regional shoreline adaptation plans and port waterfront resilience plan that's also going on. And so we need council's approval to apply for the SP1 grant in June of 2026. And that grant would fully fund phase two, so we do not need additional funds from the city to complete this plan. And we also need council approval to apply, accept an appropriate phase two grant funding, and execute a cooperative agreement to enter into contract with CMG using the phase two grant funding. And again, as part of this element A, what will be going on during the whole time of community engagement. So the rationale for this cooperative agreement is it would leverage Alameda's RFP process and contract, and it has been reviewed and approved by the Department of Finance. It would use SB1 funding to complete phase two with CMG leading adaptation planning for Oakland, and CMG is a small, regionally-based firm. Its subcontractor team for phase one includes small, disadvantaged women owned in Oakland-based firms. The Department of Workplace and Employment Standards has reviewed this proposal and supports the cooperative agreement. In addition, this would build upon existing and longstanding collaboration, technical and community engagement work through the Oak and Oakland RSAP phase one to complete phase two. It would maintain a sub-regional collaboration in strengthening Oakland's position to receive this SB1 funding leverage. limited truck one funding that may not otherwise be sufficient to complete the this RCEP so it's really important for getting this you know grant money there's limited amount and by having this cooperative agreement we're saving a huge amount of money from cost efficiencies building upon existing processes and knowledge of this consultant and also by working with the other cities there's a number of overlap so we're also saving money and in that way by collaborating and not having to do redundant work. This also is a timely, it helps to timely prepare Oakland to access much greater funding for the track two adaptation projects, which again are available in a first come first serve basis. And so that's where really the large amount of grant money is available and it's really important that we in Oakland be able to use those funds to build projects. And so the recommendation is for resolution, there's two different resolutions. For resolution one is to accept and appropriate the SB1 R7 track one grant award of $144,900 for the phase one and apply for accept and appropriate up to an additional $1,355,100 of SB1 grant track one funding. for the Oakland Reno shoreline adaptation plan phase to authorize the city administrator to represent the city in intergovernmental relations with neighboring jurisdictions with shared shoreline operation landscape units and then for resolution to to execute a cooperative agreement with CMG leveraging the city of Alameda's RFP and contract for a regional shoreline adaptation plan and using track one SB1 funding for the Oakland Regional Shortland Habitation Plan phase two upon award, and also adopt CEQA findings as needed.

Excellent, thank you so much for detailing this report. I did find that attachment A went on to further clarify just the scope of the project. And then I was also able to find more details about the Oakland Alameda Adaptation Committee on the City of Alameda's website and their meetings and the meeting notes. Can you share with me who specifically, who represents Oakland on that committee?

Yeah, for the city, the consultants, or? Well, in the meetings. Oh, in the meetings? Yeah. Yeah, so city staff has been going to those meetings. So Daniel Hamilton has been participating from the city administrator's office, as well as Michelle Matranga from the city planning department. Ed Manasseh has also been in a number of those meetings as well, because this has been going on for quite a number of years, this process. I've been in some of those meetings as well. So we've had a number of staff participating.

I see, and so as we move forward, as I mentioned, Attachment A literally lays out the scope of work that this firm, CMG, would need to move forward with, and with the resolutions written as is, where you have one where we're funding allocations that we've already received and the second version of that being hopeful to receive. How will the city council stay up to date on the progress and work on this very crucial project?

Yeah, so right now we're trying to Get additional grant money. And so and we're in the phase one process so We can be Coming back to committee with informational reports, you know as far as the progress is going we can also give briefings to council members as well and There is going to be quite a bit of public community meetings, so I think we would want to also have help with council members and getting the word out to their constituents through newsletters and so forth so that we have as many people as possible from the public that can participate in that process.

yes Laura that's exactly I guess like my point I know that this work is going to require a lot of community engagement because when you think about the partner cities Alameda Emeryville Albany maybe I miss one and then you think about Oakland right and all of its various constituencies and just really making sure that we have good community engagement, and then also all of my colleagues are also involved in hearing what the feedback is and if there's any key decisions that need to be made. I think I would be hopeful that we would have an informational report back to this body, especially as we move through phase two. So I think that that would be my ask on this, Director Gilchrist.

Thank you, Committee Chair, to the Committee, to the Committee Chair, to the CED. Yes, that was gonna be the recommendation that we can come back at milestones in addition to the engagement program, but as the progress is congealing around certain decision points or conclusions, we can bring informational reports back to this body to keep you all informed and also provide feedback.

Excellent, thank you so much.

Yeah, we're happy to do that.

Colleagues, any questions or comments on this item? Okay, we can hear from the public speakers.

Calling in the name that signed up to speak on item number three, Mrs. Sada Olabala.

I'm gonna have to leave this meeting because I couldn't sign up online. I twisted my ankle on Friday and I was trying to sign up. Y'all gotta fix that method, Madam Clerk. asked for my password, couldn't remember it, couldn't get them to give me the password. Anyway, I'm concerned whenever y'all do business with other cities. After seeing what you did with the Oakland Roots where you were in partnership with Emeryville and Berkeley to split the funding and you ended up paying all the funding. After having a contract that dissolved in 2008 with the city of Piedmont for use of our libraries, no contract for 20-something years. Y'all let Piedmont pay y'all whatever you wanted. Same thing with Emeryville, contract with them, and then recently you got a renewal of a contract to use our libraries. I don't have faith that when you're dealing with other people or other cities that you're going to look out for the best interests of Oakland. So I hope it works out that we don't get undermined in this process. That's all I have to say about that. I do want us to have relationships with other cities.

Thank you for your comments, Chair. That concludes all speakers on this item.

All right, thank you so much. And so I'll make the motion to move this item to the June 2nd City Council meeting.

Thank you, that was a motion made by Chair Brown, seconded by Council Member Ramachandran, to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward both pieces of legislation to the June 2nd City Council agenda. On roll, Council Members Five.

I had my hand raised to speak to this item. Sorry about that.

Council Member Fife.

That's fine. Through the chair, I just wanted to make the statement for the public and for my colleagues that West Oakland is particularly in the line of, or in the area, the geographic area that will be impacted by sea level rise. We're talking about this in other committees that I sit on, the Association of Bay Area Governments being the primary. and this has come up in those spaces and I intend to work with our planning and building department as well as those other agencies and other cities to prioritize the needs of my district as well as other parts of Oakland because this is a matter of potentially life and death if we don't get this right. So I appreciate the briefing that I had from Planning and Building and look forward to working collaboratively on making sure that our communities know that this is happening and where they can give input. I just wanted to state that. For the record, I will also, I don't know if you have to take the vote over again, but okay, sorry, go ahead and do what you do.

Thank you, that was a motion made by Chair Brown, seconded by Council Member Ramachandran to, sorry, Sorry. To approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the June 2nd City Council agenda on roll. Council Members Five. Aye. Ramachandran. Aye. Unger.

Aye.

And Chair Brown. Aye. Thank you. Item number three passes with four ayes to forward both pieces of legislation to the June 2nd City Council agenda on consent. Moving on to open forum. Calling in the names that signed up for open forum. In no particular order, you can come up to the podium. Ms. Assata Ollapalla, Samuel Ramey, David Boatwright, Robbie Ayala, and Anne McClain. If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand if your name was called.

Okay, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development took over the Little Rock Housing Authority in May of 2026, mostly because, and dissolved the board, dismissed the commission due to severe financial mismanagement and faulty performance scores. What's the performance score for our Oakland Housing Authority? Who has presented a report on the fiscal management that they're involved in? Who does that? HUD recently took over the Atlanta Citizen Housing Authority. In 2019, following a $30 million financial deficit and chronic mismanagement, HUD ordered the HUD facility agency to submit to a takeover by the city of San Francisco, which took full oversight of HUD. That's in 20. How do we know this HUD thing is going right? They got so many Yemeni people living in East, West Oakland, that the city, that the school, West Oakland Middle, has requested that they have dual language. So black kids have to speak Arabic and English to learn their core subject. That's gonna die. But they also have Arab programs at West Oakland Middle, because they have so many kids living in that West Oakland.

Thank you for your comments, Ms. Olaballa.

david boatwright this city cannot continue to fund grand new or reconditioned housing units and expect to house anywhere near the needed number of for residents we don't have the money or the time for this to continue reports are interesting but housing is more important residences versus reports please

Thank you for your comments, Mr. Boatwright. To the two students in the back, did you wanna speak on open forum still? Oh, okay. Thank you, Chair, at this time all names have been called.

Excellent, thank you so much. This meeting is adjourned.