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 in 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.
We're doing 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 role council members.
Thank you council member on the chondron is excuse excuse councilmember under 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 1 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,
councilmember five to accept the draft minutes from the
committee meeting of May 12, 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 12, 2026.
I'm sorry it passes with three ayes and one excused
Ramachandran.
Reading an item two determination of schedule of outstanding
committee items and we have no speakers on this item.
Excellent.
one that's on the agenda.
Thank you so much to the
administration any changes.
From the city administrator's
office I'm no change at this
time excellent thank you so
much.
I'll entertain a motion to move
the pending list.
So moved.
Thank you we have a motion made
by councilmember younger second
and by councilmember five to
accept the determination of
schedule about standing committee
items as is.
Okay.
Calling in the name that signed up to speak on item number two, Mrs. Sato Ola Bala.
Okay.
Sorry.
Back to...
She'll go ahead and skip then.
So that was a motion made by Councilmember Unger, seconded by Councilmember Fyfe to accept
the determination of Scudabile Standing Committee items.
On roll, Councilmember Fyfe.
Aye.
Ramachandran is excused.
Unger.
Aye.
And Chair Brown.
Aye.
Thank you.
Item number two passes with three ayes when 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 agreements
to extend contract terms through June 30th, 2027,
and increased funding in a total amount
not to exceed $584,109,
and three grants of WIOA contingency set aside funding
to support community-based outreach, referrals,
and workforce strategies in an amount
not to exceed $124,999.99
to Oakland Private and Industry Council
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.
Honorada Lindsay, Economic and Workforce Development
Department.
We are coming back today with a revised recommendation
for approval of the new WIOA services contracts
and an 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
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.
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 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, sorry,
these contracts will be supported
with LEOA 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.
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 CBO's. 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?
of the public.
If not we can go to the public speakers.
Calling in the names that sign 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.
Myra Ramirez, Angelica Garcia, Asada Ola Bala,
Richard de Jarraguy, sorry if I'm pronouncing
last names wrong, Jonathan Jones,
Jeffrey Watson Joyce M guy
Yeah, whoa tech but gay player cub 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
To continue 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 see my time to past the length of it past the length of it
Get my time to do the chair to the member of the public. He still had time on the clock. So
Good afternoon. I'm dr. 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
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 D. Howery. 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.
Just wanted to thank you for the support
that we have gotten from you in the past
and hope to continue to see 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 Yado 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 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 said, 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 hope to 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 wanna thank you for what you guys have been doing,
but I wanna be clear.
It is an honor, I'm humbled,
that we have the partnership with OPIC
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.
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
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 Langford 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 Langford 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 I would hope and I would hope that the contract is 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 stop the hate symposium where
a third of the lab next community third of the african-american community a
third of it Chinatown community to come together to learn so please continue
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. Okay. These people aren't
doing nothing for black people. Okay. We are unemployed, unhoused, uh, on the
street, 70%, whatever, whatever. But I don't understand what 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 neighbor neighbor's work, America funds.
You gave them the money to pay it back.
the Lao 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 gonna get up here and they gonna send
black people up here saying we doing stuff.
Why is our on it?
Thank you for your comments, Ms. Olibala.
If your name was called and you still wish to speak
on this item, please come over to the podium.
Chair, all names have been called at this time.
Excellent, thank you so much.
So once again, I just wanna thank city staff
and 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 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.
Thank you.
We have a motion made by 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, Council Members Fyfe.
Aye.
Aye.
Ramachandran.
Aye.
Aye.
Unger.
Aye.
And Chair Brown.
Aye.
Thank you.
Item number six passes with four ayes.
and for 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 sign 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.
Can 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 want to 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 dollars per month and 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 flatlands 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 health care 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 and 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 who is thrilled
to celebrate 98 of our students graduating last weekend during the
Promise Press 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 prop 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
who provides employment with folks who need an 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 disbursed 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 OHA PD, 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've 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 project sponsor and funder
for 77th and Bancroft, 92 units of senior housing
in partnership with the California
Affordable Housing Initiative,
Eden 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 SEDA.
Our strategic plan for our small apartment buildings is a multi-year transformation plan
for roughly 1500 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
and 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.
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
to those hundred thousand
people so I think that that's
part of the focus of the
funding for a person's
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 post focus I
mentioned that some of our
advocacy focus is on those one
hundred and fifty five million
dollars committed to those
fourteen hundred sites. Keeping
that money here in Oakland so
that we can continue to assist
those projects. And working on
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 2000 units put together through our housing
partners. Again I want to talk about the fact that at the Oakland Housing
Authority of 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
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 Young 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
You know just for your
You know willful in the willfulness and excitement and except accepting the invitation to present to the CED committee
I've had the the privilege of you know 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 we're happening in 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 and the presentation that you presented just
really showing I think sometimes in community we can get feedback where you
you know, 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 they're like,
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 or?
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 reception.
In fact, my first hire almost 28 years ago
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 our focus 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 could 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.
Excellent, thank you so much.
Colleagues, any questions or comments?
Council Member Fyfe.
Hello, thank you for being with us this afternoon.
I just have a couple questions.
Very general high-level information in the presentation,
but I appreciate having some of those details
that I was not aware of.
But 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,
that 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 a 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
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.
We talk about this all the time.
But can you share if the work requirements, what those are,
and 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, 3000 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
averages roughly about seven to nine years.
So that would definitely limit families.
And when we've 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 wanna 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 affordable.
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 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 continue partnership on that thing.
The jobs in the housing and great community
is set 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 councilmember 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 a lot to help those access housing obviously a very different federal administration.
I know the wait times now if you're applying for voucher fresh or you know darn near impossible but.
Are there programs for subgroups like TV survivors,
you mentioned trafficking, and other groups
to be able to access priority based on,
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 Dominica 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 households
so that they're able to retain that housing as well.
if there is someone that is
really in need daily then what we do is work with partner agencies or partner
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 waitlist. Thank you.
have him wait on a long-term waitlist.
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 to have 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 waitlist opening before last year was in twenty eleven. So it took us a long
time to get through ten thousand 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, thank you,
council member. 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 were 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 authorities 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 could stay housed.
Thank you. And those 474 was the result of federal.
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.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Excellent.
We can hear from the public speakers, if any.
Calling in the name that's 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 Zhongli, Assata Olliballa,
Samyal Ramey, and Jeff Levin.
I'm going to talk about the.
Right now, where I had to go to apply for a place in 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 a lie.
I don't wanna 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 thin-lipped lie again.
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 Zhang Li
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 Istvay 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 non-profits 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 Jimmy Raymond.
I'm with the national homeless union for independent mental health outreach.
I am a hit man for her.
They come to Oakland next.
They're going to ask you the decision of this country, and you're going to qualify for this program.
Right now, they're in Lura. I asked them to come to Lura. They're in Lura right now.
It's got to turn, tearing up. Everybody's top down with fire. They were crooks.
You think of all these top cities here? They're going to come to Lura through the whole country.
Because this is over with. This is over. There's no such thing as affordable housing.
Stop that. There's low income. The jury already said you can't change one word.
the state of the state of the-
No one in the matter gonna be homeless no more.
The three shelters put them back.
Told me tell everybody don't put nobody homeless.
Nobody.
Mr. Merriff, you're gonna make America great again.
The food program, I have you, I'm gonna do you.
Thank you for your comments, Mr. Ramey.
Thank you for your comments, Mr. Ramey.
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 spaces.
You got a waiting list of over 5,000.
Thank you for your comments, Mrs. Sada.
Switching to Zoom user, Jeff Levin,
you can unmute yourself and begin your comment.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, Jeff Levin
with East Bay Housing Organizations.
Really, we would just like to thank the Council
on 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,
you know, 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 yet 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 Fai?
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
for you, I'm gonna ask chair, 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 wait list,
help fill out the waitlist application together,
that sometimes helps.
What I would say is that it really is about numbers.
So we do a lottery, and so the more people
of a certain community or another apply for a waitlist,
if the numbers are higher than the statistically,
people may look similar.
But 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
to 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, if order in the chamber,
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
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
Domenica explained how marketing is done and the numbers of people that might
apply is it people are housed in the built environment based upon bedroom
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
subsidy.
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.
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 that, 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.
We 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
as their, essentially as their number gets pulled.
I see, excellent, thank you for clarifying.
and thank you so much for joining us
and we'll 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.
I 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
and 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 and 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, Council Member Fyfe,
Council Member Ramachandran, Council Member Unger.
My name is Faye Darmawi.
I'm the Deputy Director of Housing at HCD.
Thank you so much for the opportunity
to present the Annual Housing Program's
informational report, Fiscal Year 2526.
This is the second time we present this report.
The previous report was fiscal year 24-25.
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 own building, 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.
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 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 multifamily
affordable rental units, our R2H2 Home Key Program,
which is where we produce our homeless units,
our CAH 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 a 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 Tronch 1 and Tronch 2
to our funding programs, and of that,
we only have $16 million left to reward to projects,
which speaks of importance of accelerating Tronch 3.
We're gonna go drill down even more,
which is the HCD strategies in progress to date.
Our priority strategies this year
with increased efficiency in the process
within the organizational structure.
We've prioritized the 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
development progress. As in previous years, our funding allocation aligned
with our Strategic Action Plan and in terms of our NOFA's and awards, we
align our project selection with with the measure Uatrons 2 with the
allocation of County Measure W recently and also our state deadlines for tax
credits and taxes and funds. We've implemented a rolling NOFA process for
for our R2H2 is Home Key and ACAA projects,
and we've increased our efficiency for the ACAA 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 a CAH at 15% and our fourth priority is portfolio
preservation at 7% of all funding.
And this slide shows the progress for meeting those goals.
As you can see, we exceeded our target goal
for a permanent sport of 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 Tronch 3 to continue to pursue
meeting our housing goals under our strategic action plan.
This is an overview of our fiscal year 2526 accomplishment.
We produced, we have about 1,400 units under construction
of which 591 units will provide housing
for folks exiting homelessness.
We completed 700 units of housing,
of which 238s 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 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 with authorization to forward commit measure
you and other funding sources we were able to award 63.6 million
dollars to five Oakland developments. In addition we renewed our long-standing
collaboration with the Oakland Housing Authority on four projects here noted
with the asterisk. 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 Oak and Housing Authority.
We completed three projects this year
and we just celebrated the grand opening
of 3050 International Flickenberg Apartments
last week with Mayor Lee.
And this is a deep look at the ELISA,
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 3.
Our next funding program
is the Rapid Response Homeless Housing R2H2,
version and our partnership with the home state home key. Our 2-H2 funding
program results in projects with the deepest support affordability at zero to
30 percent 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 role and a rolling NOFA application
process as mentioned earlier which is a streamlining strategy. We have three
projects completed, three R2H2 projects completed in the fiscal year, and it
resulted in 120, these three projects results in 128 PSH units, including
Friendly Manor, which will have its grand opening in early June. That project will
offer 52 bets to chronically homeless youth. Our next printing program is the
acquisition and conversion affordable housing program called a CAH program
also has a rolling NOFA application process and we are in this year in
partnership with the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund to streamline
underwriting and loan closing 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. This is the HCD
portfolio survey and summary. So we didn't have a portfolio. We have 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 seven million dollar 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 HED 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 0 to 30% AMI.
Those are our PSH units 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.
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 you 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 you Tron Street to be sold as
soon as possible for new construction our biggest challenge is the rising cost
to the recent federal-level policies and ongoing need for operating subsidies for extremely
low-income units.
For our R2H2 program, we rely on staying 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 CAH is 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 HCD,
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 taxi faulted 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?
Uh-oh, what did I do?
This is Emily Weinstein through the Chair
to Council Member Fyfe. What did I say?
It was the wrong name, but it's okay.
Shh, I understand why it'd be top of mind.
the city. And so the city has a
there 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 and we come back to Council
to remove the liens that 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 lots that are occupied. Right. Right
now the county's focused on 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
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 Fyfe,
we have a total right now of sort of $16 million
left over of Measure U.
Seven million of those dollars
are going to the rehab portfolio nova
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 ACAA portfolio,
but you saw today, I'm sorry, R2H2.
No, ACAA, 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 are 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 $4 million.
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 the Tronch 3 at 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 budget office finance.
But they haven't indicated, this is annoying.
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,
we're really not, 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, you know,
we're the first money in for certain developments.
We have an opportunity with Potentially Measure W
coming down the pike that we want to 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 V-org
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 in,
I think I just looked at today, 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 you 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, you know,
which, how much money goes to affordable housing
versus roads and, you know, 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 is 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 where 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 sign up to speak on item
number four Jeff Levin a solder olavala David boat right and
Simeo Ramey David boat right 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 home key 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's 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 thousand dollars for one room units or 150 thousand to 230 thousand 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
and the city official estimates it will take two billion dollars in city investments alone
to construct these units, whereas current local, state and federal funding levels fall
short of that amount.
So how are you going to do it?
Then it says that you have a unit, and you didn't do a whole lot of discussion about
units that were developed for the homeless, but you had completion of the Phoenix Apartments
in West Oakland, and you had ribbon-cutting 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
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 a 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 Sammy Reagan with the National Homeless Union.
For four years, I've been sitting on $5.8 billion
because y'all won't act right.
I'm not going to stand up for nothing.
Your building is funded.
Get your paperwork together, get your papers figured,
and send it to her.
Scott Jones from Home and Checkout.
Send it to her.
You don't get the power to fix it in the city.
Send it to her.
You're funded.
But your paperwork got to be right.
Them shelters don't put noun parts on the street.
No more than home, in Oakland.
Nowhere in this country, no more.
they could take care of all of this,
house, education, all of that.
We couldn't do a whole new thing in this country.
We couldn't clean the house.
There's corruption that could 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, I'm sad.
I'm a CLD on the other side.
I have, as a matter of fact,
I have started these Oklahomans in 91.
I was originally an Oklahomans.
I've never been fighting houses for ever since.
this is the whole program about.
It's a new project.
I'm mad and they don't pay for it.
It's all they pay for.
You see how they pay for it.
They pay for it and they have no people on the street.
I'm sorry, I'm on the floor, see?
All the commission.
No, but now no person on the street.
I'm from National Homes in Chicago, Illinois.
Why?
Chicago got the largest housing in the world.
Cabrini Green, 23,000 plus family.
We're out here in the home.
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 the 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 of things we wanna 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 off.
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 move
that we forward this to full council on consent excellent thank you that's the
motion made by councilmember younger seconded by councilmember fight to
receive and forward forward this informational report to the June 2nd
city council agenda on rule council members five I Ramachandran hi younger
hi and chair Brown hi thank you item number four passes with four eyes
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
grants or grant funds from the California Ocean Protection Council in an
amount not to exceed one hundred forty four thousand nine hundred dollars 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 relationship relations
with neighboring jurisdictions
within shared shoreline operational landscape units
and to a resolution authorizing the city administrator
to enter into a cooperative agreement to purchase services
from Conger Moss Gileard, 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 Koninski,
I'm the Strategic Planning Manager for the City of Oakland.
K-Top, 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 collaborative 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 and 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
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 real shoreline adaptation plan up to tell million dollars per project
And so it's really important to note here is that the sooner the city can finish their regional short line adaptation plan
The sooner we can apply for this implementation funding for projects
Which is a larger much larger amount of money and this money is available in a first-come first-served basis
So we as a city want to 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 an adaptation effort that started in 2021
It's been led by the city of Alameda with the city of Oakland is a key partner and this covers Alameda plus most of Oakland
shoreline, including the Port of Oakland, Oakland Airport, Cal Transcorders, 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 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 Balamita builds a levee wall,
And 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.
And there's also a geographical area that aligns with the San Leandro operational landscape
unit and 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 Oak which was basically serves as a model for the Senate Bill
272 and 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 flow exposure and multi-building 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, andhan Sarayate
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 subregional 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 some to show go over the requirements of the Regional Shoreline 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 and 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
continuation of stakeholder and community engagement, but also in element D of
adaptation strategies and pathways, and element E of land use and policy plan,
and 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 surely adaptation plans and funds staff
coordination time to complete this phase one. So again elements B of existing
conditions and see 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 consultants
work and community engagement work and funds and 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
the 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 or regional
and Charlotte execution plans use the same contractor team
led by Conger Moss, Gilead Architects,
that has been under contract for the Oak since 2023.
For phase two funds, contractors
who 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 a war 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 Emery 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
elements D through G of the regional Charlotte adaptation plan and
Leverage the partner regional shortly adaptation plans import waterfront resilience plan
That's also going on and so we need council's approval to apply for the SP 1 grant in June of 2026
And that grant would fully fund phase 2 so we do not need additional funds from the city to
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 Department of Finance
Would use sb1 funding to complete phase two funding
So the rationale for this cooperative agreement is that would leverage alameda's RFP process and contract and that's been reviewed and approved by Department of Finance
finance would use SB1 funding to complete phase two with CMG leading adaptation planning
for Oakland and CMG is a small regionally based firm as subcontractor team for phase
one includes small disadvantaged women owned in Oakland based firms.
Department of Workplace and Employment Standards has reviewed this proposal and supports the
cooperative agreement.
In addition, this would build upon existing and long standing collaboration, technical
community engagement work through the Oak and Oakland RCEP phase one to complete phase two.
It would maintain a sub-regional collaboration and strengthening Oakland's position to receive
this SB one funding leverage limited truck one funding that may not otherwise be sufficient
to complete this RCEP. So it's really important for getting this 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 in that way by collaborating and not having
to do a redundant work. This also is a timely helps to timely prepare Oakland
to access much greater funding for the track to adaptation projects which again
are available in a first-come first-served 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 an appropriate sb-1
Our seven track one grant award of a hundred forty four thousand nine hundred for the phase one and apply for
accept an appropriate up to an additional one million three hundred fifty five thousand one hundred of sb-1 grant track one funding
for the Oakland regional shoreline adaptation plan phase 2 authorize the
city administrator to represent the city and intergovernmental relations with
neighboring jurisdictions with shared shoreline operation landscape units and
then for resolution 2 to execute a cooperative agreement with CMG
leveraging the city of alameda's RFP and contract for a regional shoreline
adaptation plan using track 1 SP 1 funding for the Oakland regional shoreline
an adaptation 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
on who represents Oakland on that committee?
Yeah, for the city 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 minister's office,
as well as Michelle Mitranga
from the city planning department.
Ed Manassie 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?
that we are looking at right now.
Yeah, so right now we're trying to get additional grant money
and so we're in the phase one process.
So we can be coming back to committee
with informational reports as far as the progress is going.
We can also give briefings to council members as well.
There is going to be quite a bit of public community meetings.
I mean I would like to 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 are going to be can
participate in that process.
Yes lower that's exactly I guess
like my point I know that this
work is going to require a lot
of community engagement because
maybe I missed 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,
as we move through phase 2 so I think that that would be my ask on this
director Gilchrist Thank You committee chair and through the committee to the
committee chair to the CD yes that was going to 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 information reports back to this body to keep you all informed and also
provide feedback. Excellent thank you so much. 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, Ms. Asada
Olavala. 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.
X for my password, couldn't remind me.
Couldn't remember it.
Couldn't get them to give me the password.
Anyway, I'm concerned whenever y'all do a 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 2018,
of 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 dealing with other people
or other cities that you're gonna look out
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. But 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
from 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 Fyfe.
I had my hand raised to speak to this item.
Sorry about that, Council Member Fyfe.
That's fine, through the Chair,
I just wanted to make a 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 Rama Chandrin.
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.
Mississauga Ola Bala, Samuel Ramey, David Boatwright,
Robbie Aiella, and Anne McLean.
If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand
if your name was called.
Okay, the US 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
We have a lot of people who are
going to be involved in the
fiscal mismanagement and faulty
performance scores.
What's the performance score for
our Oakland Housing Authority?
Who is, who has presented a
report on the fiscal management
that they're involved in?
Who does that?
Uh, Hudd recently took over the
Atlanta Citizen Housing
Authority.
In 2019, uh, following a 20,
30 million dollar financial
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 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 that core subject.
That's going to die.
But they also have our programs at West Oakland mini because they have so many
kids living in that West Oakland.
Thank you for your comments, Ms.
David boat, right?
This city cannot continue to fund grand new or reconditioned housing units and
expect the house anywhere near the needed number
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 forums still?
Oh, okay.
Thank you chair at this time.
All names have been called.
Excellent, thank you so much.
This meeting is adjourned.