Can I be on the Housing Authority Board, too?

The Oakland Housing Authority, much like the Port, AC Transit, and East Bay MUD, doesn’t receive anywhere near the amount of media attention it deserves. Read more

The 8.2 million dollar question

So on Friday, HUD released the allocations for funding from the Housing Rescue Package, and, sadly, Oakland didn’t fare particularly well. Instead of the $30 to $60 million some were expecting, we got a kind of sad $8.2 million. Read more

Despite what you may have heard

The City Council is not doing anything about affordable housing today, and they are also not considering a plan to fight crime that Dellums has submitted. Instead, they are going to listen to an hour of public speakers saying we need IZ or we don’t need IZ, then sit around and have the same conversation they’ve been having for years, then not do anything about it. Later, Dellums will ask for Measure Y reserve funds that we actually do need to pay police salaries and buy equipment so he can spend it on buying TV advertisements instead: this is is plan to fulfill his completely unrealistic goal of getting to 803 by the end of the year. Any small shred of optimism I had that this was possible was wiped out after getting Chief Tucker’s head-in-the-sand one line answers to a series of questions I asked about the specifics of the recruitment package. Follow-up questions have not been answered at all.

Anyway, I’m tired of writing about this stuff, and busy with other work, so that’s all I’m going to say for now. Maybe if I get my errands done quickly I’ll have more about the recruitment package up before the Council meeting starts, but it’s also possible that I won’t.

Dellums’s affordable housing proposal now available; De La Fuente proposes whistleblower protections

To call the document (PDF!) unambitious would be generous. The level of detail is in keeping with previous initiatives from the Mayor’s office.

Given that it has been 19 months since Ron Dellums was elected, over a year since he took office, and 5 months since we were told at a CED Committee meeting that the proposal would be ready “very soon,” I can’t help but wonder what on earth took so long? This is just bits and pieces culled from the BRC report and Oakland People’s Housing Coalition proposal presented in outline format - it looks like it was put together in an afternoon. Dellums doesn’t even attempt to provide justification as to why any of the programs offered will benefit anyone. Read more

Well, that was boring.

I have to admit, I’m a little bummed. Usually during meetings with anything even related to inclusionary zoning on the agenda, somebody at least says something absurd that I can make fun of. This time, I didn’t even get that. Instead, a bunch of people stood up and thanked Jane Brunner for raising the issue of affordable housing, and the discussion wasn’t so much of a discussion in the sense that anyone actually talked about anything, suggested anything concrete, or made an argument for or against anything, but more of a little rah-rah pep rally about how important it is that we do something about housing affordability, like, now. Which, duh, we already all knew and I thought the point of this extra hour of the CED meeting was that we would talk about what we were going to do. Apparently I was misinformed. Read more

IZ rears its ugly head again

My God. I am so incredibly bored with blogging about inclusionary zoning. I’d love to just ignore it forever, but I don’t feel like I can since it appears to be the primary focus (PDF!) of the Community and Economic Development Committee’s “comprehensive affordable housing discussion” today. Really, though - how much more is there to say?

There is no evidence anywhere that a policy like the one being considered in Oakland is successful at providing affordable housing in cities. IZ advocates’ own studies find that successful and productive IZ programs actually subsidize the cost of the inclusionary units (in addition to allowing density bonuses, etc.), and do not expect developers to shoulder the burden. Most cities in Alameda County that have IZ produce fewer units of affordable housing per capita than we do. The city’s own economic study shows that the introduction of an inclusionary zoning policy would halt development in most parts of the city, thereby reducing the amount of money available to fund affordable housing construction through the RDA set-aside. The City Council is exactly the same as it was last time we voted on IZ, and there’s no reason to think anyone has changed their minds in the meantime. This entire discussion is pointless, and writing about it is growing unbelievably tiresome.

I’ve said this all before. Over and over and over again ad nauseum. So instead of ranting about the extreme retardation of this proposal yet again, I’ll just fall back on what I do best - page through a report nobody else is going to bother taking the time to read and share some of the information it contains. Read more

Affordable housing trust fund - a dedicated revenue stream

Today, dto510 discusses the idea of floating a bond to fund affordable housing and rehabilitation. A bond is a good idea, and we should do it. But we should also look at other funding sources that will provide long-term dedicated revenue streams for our affordable housing needs. Read more

Encouraging targeted development through Master EIRs

In my last post, I noted that the easiest way for us to increase our supply of affordable housing funds is to encourage market rate construction in redevelopment areas. In this post, I’m going to discuss one way to do so - Master EIRs.

Market-rate development, both large and small scale, adds to the vitality of existing neighborhoods by eliminating vacant lots and bringing new residents, as well as increasing the redevelopment area’s revenue base, and by extension, our supply of affordable housing funds. But community opposition represents a substantial barrier to the feasibility of even the smallest projects, and we are seeing far less development in most neighborhoods than is ideal. One of the biggest barriers to development is the burdensome cost of endless appeals to nearly every project. Read more

Getting the affordable housing discussion back on track

At the September 18th meeting when the Council received the Blue Ribbon Commission report, Jane Brunner lamented our failure to adopt an inclusionary zoning ordinance, saying “We have been discussing this issue for 8 years, and we’ve never gotten the five votes….we’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting.” She acknowledged that the Council is split 4-4 on the issue, but then somewhat bizarrely concluded that since half of them want it, they should “just do it.” If only getting things done were so simple. IZ represents a serious ideological divide, and there is no compromise on the table that that negates concerns that IZ would actively hurt our ability to affordable housing production. Read more

Worthless reporting on a worthless report

I’m not sure exactly how this came to be, but somehow we reached a point quite some time ago where the metric for objectivity in political journalism shifted from reporting the actual truth about a situtation to giving equal time to both sides of an issue. Generally, this is accomplished by finding advocates of both pro and con positions and quoting them. So if you’re, say, Christopher Heredia, and you’re writing about an inclusionary zoning report from the disastrous Blue Ribbon Commission, you call up Greg McConnell and then you call up some IZ advocacy group, write down whatever they both say, and then BOOM! you’re done and you can go grab a beer or to your yoga class or whatever it is you like to do with your free time. Great.

Of course, the downside of that approach is that you end up with nonsense like this in your stories: Read more

Affordable housing = gentrification, apparently

When I read this in the Chronicle today, my immediate response was confusion. I realized my error after puzzling over the item for a few minutes and sending it to a friend for a second opinon, and I could have kicked myself. It was so simple! My problem was that I was assuming a news item printed in the local newspaper would be intended to reflect reality. Silly me!

A tiny street-corner park just north of downtown Oakland has become a casualty of a nasty mix of drug violence and the mortgage meltdown that has slowed the city’s once-rapid gentrification…Nadel said that as the neighborhood improved, residents thought it would be easier to keep the park clean and safe, but the gentrification process has stalled.

Can something stall if it never starts? Read more

For-sale affordable housing: who does it benefit?

People are constantly advising me to buy a home. They tell me that as a renter, I am simply throwing my money away every month. When I point out that between condo fees and property taxes, even a modest condo in Oakland that I owned outright with no mortgage payment would cost me more per month than I currently pay in rent, they say I am missing the point. The main reason to buy a home, I am repeatedly told by well meaning relatives and wealthy friends, is to build equity.

Okay. If they say so. I’m personally not entirely convinced of all the wonderful benefits of home ownership that seem to be widely accepted conventional wisdom in this country, but that’s really an issue for another day. Read more

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