Oakland

Prior research on the housing needs in Oakland prompted the Oakland City Council and the city’s Department of Housing & Community Development to commission an updated analysis of the city’s housing challenges and recommendations on comprehensive policy solutions. 

In partnership with PolicyLink and the Urban Strategies Council, the City of Oakland Department of Housing & Community Development’s Strategic Initiatives Unit produced “A Roadmap Toward Equity: Housing Solutions for Oakland, California.” The report describes Oakland’s housing crisis and contains information on the changing tenure and demographics of the city’s neighborhoods, as well as how the city’s affordability challenges impact the locality’s efforts to develop equitable and inclusive communities. The Roadmap revealed that “15 neighborhoods with different median housing costs show that the majority of both renter and homeowner residents would not be able to afford a median-priced home in their neighborhood.” Similarly, their research found that about 1,000 Oakland homeowners in foreclosure were long-time homeowners, and often elderly, disabled, or families with school-aged children. The report then recommends a number of strategies that can be implemented immediately to address Oakland’s unique housing challenges.  

Adopted by the City Council in September 2015 as a framework for addressing the housing crisis, the Roadmap identified three priority issue areas: 1) Preventing the displacement of current residents, 2) Producing new affordable housing, including housing for those at 15% percent area median income (AMI) or below, and 3) Improving habitability conditions. Each priority was supported by a number of policies and programs to advance the goal, to provide the housing infrastructure needed to enable long-time residents to remain and benefit from the area’s success, and to protect and serve the area’s most vulnerable residents, all while honoring the city’s historic diversity.  

The Roadmap’s policy and program guidance were developed with input from various stakeholders, including families facing displacement, public administrators, housing advocates, tenant groups, homeowners, developers, elected officials, and business associations. PolicyLink also reviewed best practices nationwide to better understand scalable solutions. 

While the Roadmap created a framework to understand the city’s housing crisis and suggestions for how to remedy it, it did not spell out policy or budgetary constraints or outline an action plan. To fill this gap, Mayor Libby Schaaf established a Housing Cabinet in 2015 to create a practical implementation plan for the Roadmap. The Mayor’s Housing Cabinet consisted of Councilmembers, City of Oakland staff, finance experts, mission-oriented developers, market-rate developers, advocates, and legal experts. 

Over an eight-month period, the Cabinet: 

• Conducted shortfall analysis, a disproportionate impact analysis, and a severe cost burden analysis to create numeric program goals, including how many homes needed to be protected and built over the next eight years. 
• Established a set of shared values and criteria for feasibility and impact. 
• Created nine working groups and reached out to stakeholder groups. 
• Outlined detailed next steps needed to advance key ideas.
• Confronted difficult trade-offs to prioritize actions.
• Recommended actions to protect and build housing, and considered action steps and strategies with strategic sequencing and realistic timelines. 
• Identified lead departments and organizations to help advance the strategies and to increase resources. 

The Housing Cabinet’s final report, Oakland at Home, was published in March 2016 and outlines implementation goals and strategies over an eight-year period. The Housing Cabinet also obtained city departmental and stakeholder commitments to effectively implement the strategy, ensuring that correct teams were looped into the implementation process.