I’m not trying to be crass in my previous comment by comparing demands for affordable housing to demands for affordable Porches, but they both work on the same logic as far as I can see. Patronizing does not mean empowering. I’m also not interested in saying “OK, that’s it, no more (artificially) affordable housing, goodbye.” I think we need to quit being distracted by creating affordable housing and instead focus on growth and increasing people’s capacity to be socially mobile.

Second, I’d like to see a discussion in Oakland about how we are going to avoid making the same mistake that San Francisco made when it failed, in policy and practice, to provide middle-class family housing. The failure to provide this type of housing lead to housing dislocation and the loss of low and middle income families in SF directly caused by an increase in the cost of housing by more than 113% between 2002-2008. http://tinyurl.com/4t4r39

Maybe San Francisco can plead it wasn’t aware of the problem until too late, but this can’t be the same excuse in Oakland. You can see a discussion on this point here: http://tinyurl.com/clpzdq As Mr. O’donoghue points out, developers and policy makers are now well aware of the problem and the solution.

With so much emphasis on bringing new housing downtown, I’d like to hear how Oakland plans to avoid the mistakes of San Francisco, which have made it so unaffordable for middle-income families. Frankly, I’m not sure Oakland is going to avoid those mistakes. A quick look at rents at the Uptown indicates that a one bedroom rents for $2,140 and three bedroom units go for $3,600 a month. Where is Oakland’s middle-class family advocate? http://tinyurl.com/c589ju

The response: “That’s nice, but we don’t have the resources to go after them”.
My response: “huh?!”
His response: “If we go after them, they lawyer-up, and we don’t have the resources to fight every jurisdiction in California.”

Government lesson #1: Path of least resistance prevails.

Then I came to the city of Oakland to work for city government and saw the other side of the arrangement: the Affordable-Housing Industrial Complex. Where rich jurisdictions bring out their lawyers to keep out affordable housing, poor jurisdictions like Oakland get slammed by bleeding hearts (I was once a bleeding heart so I can use this phrase) who mostly grew up in the rich jurisdictions saying “bring all the affordable housing here.”

They team-up with city leaders who represent mostly the richer areas of Oakland that aren’t all that impacted by the inundation of affordable housing in their voter rich neighborhoods, and the complex is complete. Housing Element be damned. It isn’t about policies. It’s about politics. The politics of feel-good.

The real solution, for a bleeding place like Oakland, is NOT to keep bringing in more poor people so we can trap them in permanent poverty programs and then under-serve them.

It’s to figure out how to help our existing low income populations become empowered to participate in the middle class, by getting good jobs, training in financial management, owning a home or learning to save and invest in something other than a home. In this way, we can begin to create a strong, multi-racial middle class, with strong business districts with mom and pop shops, where the kids have strong homes and get encouraged to go to college. It’s about empowering the poor, not institutionalizing the poor. Or as one person said it: it’s about teaching people to fish, not making them dependent on the fish we dole out to them.

It sure beats the hell out of creating a growing poverty population under-served by a city that can’t afford to pay for the basics, who have to live in dangerous communities because they city can’t afford enough cops. But this is exactly what will continue to happen as long as Oakland remains the path of least resistance for affordable housing in the bay area.

(Disclosure: I grew up poor, with a single mom. Son of immigrants. So, I speak from a place of experience on this one)

Government Lesson #2: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

please explain how and when the mandate for spending Redevelopment money was/is set? Its been mentioned here that lower income goals were mandatory and (i thought) set at the state level. or are there different goals set for Redevelopment funded projects and private development?

Assumedly the Redevelopment funded projects have to be positioned within the R district that provides the money? or is that subject to city policy decisions?

-len raphael
temescal