Good afternoon and welcome to the community and economic development committee meeting of Tuesday, May 26, 2026.

The time is now 150 p.m.

and this meeting may come to order.

Before taking role, 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 clerk representative no later than 10 minutes after the start of this meeting or before the item is read into record, whichever occurs first.

Online speaker requests were due 24 hours prior to the start of this meeting.

This meeting came to order at 1 50 p.m.

and speaker cards will no longer be accepted 10 minutes after, making that time 2 p.m.

We'll now proceed with taking roll.

Council members five.

Present.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ramachandran is.

Excuse.

Excuse.

Councilmember Unger.

Still here.

And Chair Brown.

Present.

Thank you, Chair.

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

Yes.

Um, good afternoon, everyone.

Um, before we begin, uh, just a few announcements.

Um, public comment will be limited to one minute and thirty seconds.

And in addition, please note the updated order of the items that we will be considering today.

We will hear item six first, um, 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 twelfth, two thousand twenty-six, and we do not have any speakers on this item.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

So moved.

Second.

Thank you.

We have a motion made by a motion made by Council Member Unger, seconded by council member five to ex to accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting of May twelfth, two thousand twenty-six.

On roll council members five.

Aye.

Ramachandran is excused, Unger.

Aye.

And Chair Brown.

Aye.

Thank you.

Item number one passes with four eyes to accept the draft minutes from the committee meeting of May twelfth, two thousand twenty-six.

Oh, sorry, it passes with three eyes and one excused Ramachandran.

Reading in item two, determination of scheduled about standing committee items, and we have no speakers on this item.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Um, to the administration, any changes.

Um, we don't want from the city administrator's office.

Um, no changes at this time.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Um, I'll entertain a motion to move the pending list.

So moved.

Second.

Thank you.

We have a motion made by Councilmember Unger, seconded by Council Member Five, to accept the determination of scheduled by standing committee items as is.

Yes, that's okay.

Calling in the name that signed up to speak on item number two, Mrs.

Olabala.

Okay.

Sorry.

Back to she'll go ahead and skip then.

So that was a motion made by Councilmember Unger, second by council member five to accept the determination of scheduled about standing committee items.

On roll council member five.

Ramachandran's excused Unger.

Aye.

And Chair Brown.

Aye.

Thank you.

Item number two passes with three eyes, one excuse 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 dollars 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 YOAC WIOA agreements to extend contract terms through June 30th, 2027, and increase funding in a total amount not to exceed 584,109 dollars, and three grants of YOA contingency set aside funding to support community-based outreach referrals and workforce strategies in an amount not to exceed 124,999.99 cents to Oakland Private Industry Council in partnership with Spanish speaking Unity Council of Alameda County and in an amount not to exceed 125,000 to Lau 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.

Thank you so much.

Alright, 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.

Um 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 amendment of existing contracts.

So I'll go ahead and quickly recap items one and two and then just briefly share some background on item number three.

To establish service delivery for the next procurement cycle, the Department of Economic and Workforce Development and the Oakland Workforce Development Board released a competitive request for proposal for WIOA funded services for fiscal years 2026 to 2029.

The RFP solicited proposals that are detailed for you on page three across multiple service categories that are designed to support high quality and coordinated workforce services across the city.

Following proposal review and scoring, staff did develop funding recommendations for the new grant agreements with providers that are shown in table one, and that's on page four.

Now, in addition to the procurement cycle, staff did evaluate the need to maintain continuity of services under existing agreements, and so as part of the state's allocation for the current year, the city did receive a slight increase.

A portion of those funds, uh, 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 uh again support continuity of services and reduce uh disruption to participants and employers during the transition into the new procurement cycle.

Um and lastly, staff is recommending two limited uh scope partnerships, and those um are listed for you at the bottom of page five.

These funds are supported, sorry.

These contracts will be supported with WIOA contingency set aside, which was originally intended to respond to any potential legislative impacts, um, but ultimately the intent of these partnerships really is to strengthen equitable access, um, and in response to some concerns uh 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 uh balance not only the procurement integrity but also strengthen collaboration with trusted CBOs.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Um, thank you so much for providing the update.

And so, colleagues, the main kind of shift and change on this item is um item number three, ensuring that we have equity across the entire city of Oakland, where um two providers, both the Unity Council as well as Roots Community Health will come in as subcontract contractors under the grant agreement, supporting adults uh in this work.

Um colleagues, any questions or comments?

Um, if not, we can go to the public speakers.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number six in no particular order, you can come up to the podium, state your name for the record before beginning.

Um, and if you are sitting time, just let me know so I can adjust the clock for you.

Myra Ramirez, Angelica Garcia, Asado Olabala, Richard De Jaragui.

Sorry if I'm pronouncing last names wrong, Jonathan Jones, Jeffrey Watson, Joyce M.

Guy, Yawo Techva, Gay Plair Cobb, Tony Trin, 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.

Um Chair Brown and to the other council members, thank you.

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

I'm going to see my time to um Pastor Langford.

Pastor Langford.

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

So we'll do it.

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 uh 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 uh get new contracts and continue this forward because in less than a week, our program that the government has put in, HR1, is going to come into place, and every able-bodied individual who is able to work is going to have to work 80 hours a month.

And I think that the private industry council will be in a perfect place to help to support the new requirements that are going to be coming with HR1, and that will allow people to every able body 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 Dehauriggy.

I'm the uh Chief Operating Officer at the Oakland Private Industry Council.

I'm here to support the uh 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.

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 PIC.

I'm the manager for our West Oakland's office.

Because of the vital role that our program plays in the community.

Not uh a few days ago, you guys saw what we did outside here, and thanks to the support and the funding.

So we hope to continue doing that work to support the community.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone.

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

Sorry, uh please take your name for the record.

Mayra Ramirez.

So I'm Mayra Ramirez, I work with the Oakland Private Industry Council, so I'm the manager of the WIOA services.

So I I'm the one who work you know 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 uh the community of Oakland, because as everybody knows you know, everybody's struggling to find a job and they need our support.

A lot of clients come in because they need help with finding a job, they need support, they need the connections to be able to find a job and also training.

So we are there to help.

And like Richard say, we don't want to stop services and have them wait because believe me, I have a lot of clients who need our services.

So I thank you for your support again and and hope to you know just continue this uh help for our clients in the community of Oakland.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council.

My name is Joyce Guy, and the executive director of the West Oakland Job Resource Center, and I want to thank you for what you guys have been doing, but I want to be clear.

It is uh honor, I'm humbled that we have the partnership with OPIG to work with the job center because we've been working long and hard to get this.

The people of the West have been left out as destitute for a long, long time, 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 and just being supportive and being good stewards over the funding that we have, and now we have this partnership that we have to continue the services.

Once you take something away, it takes too long and too much to have a comeback to build up for the community to trust you.

So we have to continue this service, and I thank you guys for the time.

Hello, my name is uh Tony Trin, and I'm the executive director for the Oakland Chinatown Improvement Council.

Uh, I just want to speak on OPIC and Pastor Lankford and the incredible work that they're doing.

Uh, for the last two years, uh, we've been working together.

Uh we've been combining our uh communities, getting to know each other.

They've attended our Luna New Year, and uh, we're currently working on the Sixth Street encampment issues.

Pastor Lankford has came out and provided his expertise while we are also providing our expertise on ambassador training uh and also working within the community.

So I would I would hope and I would hope that the contract is continues July 1st.

I there's just not much more I can say that um that kind of resembles what we're doing together.

We're also holding a stop the hate um stop the hate symposium where a third of the lab next community, third of the African American community, a third of the Chinatown community to come together to learn.

So please continue the workforce.

So unemployment for black people in the United States is 7.5.

State of California is 9.1, and the city of Oakland is 9.9.

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 with all of this stuff going on with nonprofit fraud that you haven't decided to look at some of these nonprofits that you give money to.

Now, 2016, the Unity Council participated in fraud and spent five hundred thousand dollars on maintenance and operation from neighbor neighbors work America funds.

You gave them the money to pay it back.

The eight, the Lau family screwed up some money, a million dollar uh application for homelessness, you allowed them to reapply.

So you have these groups that constantly come in this room and you constantly give them money and you never verify anything.

But one thing is for sure.

No nonprofit in this city has eliminated the high unemployment of African Americans in this city.

None of them.

But they're gonna get up here and they're gonna send black people up here saying we're doing stuff.

Why is our unemployment?

Thank you for your comments, Ms.

Olabala.

If your name was called and you still wish to speak on this item, please come up to the podium.

Chair all names have been called at this time.

Excellent.

Um, thank you so much.

Um, so once again, I just want to thank you know city staff and our city team for their work on this item.

Also thank you to all of the providers that showed up um to speak about the amazing work that you all are doing to support workforce in our city, and we know that we have to uh continue uh to um just do an even better job, right?

To get out and connect with community members.

Um so I will make the motion to go ahead and move uh all three of the detailed items um forward to our June the second council meeting.

And if there is a second.

Second.

Thank you.

We have a motion made by council member or sorry, Chair Brown, seconded by Council Member Ramachandran to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the June 2nd City Council agenda.

On roll council members five.

There you go.

Aye.

Ramachandran.

Hi.

Unger, and Chair Brown.

Aye.

Thank you.

Item number six passes with four eyes.

To forward this item to the June 2nd City Council agenda on consent.

Moving on to item number five.

Receive an informational report from the Oakland Housing Authority on the status of their programs and current uh current projects, and we have five speakers that signed up to speak.

And come 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.

Um may we have the slide presentation up, please.

Again, uh 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 partner of five mixed finance mixed income sites totaling 823 units, and we are part of 80 plus partner managed project-based voucher properties, 3,300 units at an estimated $5.7 million per month in rental assistance paid to our partners.

Approximately $1,500 average monthly rental assistance is paid on behalf of those 18,000 plus families.

If you look at this citywide map, this shows the built environment for the housing authority.

Each of the clusters and colors represent a portfolio managed by a team of leasing property management and services staff.

And if we were to add all the housing choice vouchers in the color of lavender, it would complete the encompassing 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 partnership 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 in so many dynamic partnerships, including the Oakland Path Rehousing Initiative, which is a sponsor-based housing program serving special needs communities, including veterans, people formally 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 was 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 our smaller apartment complexes, we partner with the city on our own don't trash OHA illegal dumping renewal, where we basically invest almost $900,000 to do a seven-day-a-week removal of illegal dumping in front of properties where the housing authority owns them, and we do it seven days a week in partnership with a nonprofit known as CEO Works, who provides employment with folks who need a opportunity to start their employment path.

We also consider ourselves a force multiplier to all the great work here in the city of Oakland.

About 25 million dollars dispersed in rental assistance each month to our partners, our primary partners, 3,600 property owners who lease to our housing choice vouchers families.

Right now, annually, about 4,500 vendors are paid in the City of Oakland, excuse me, 1,700 from the City of Oakland out of 4,500 partners paid through vendor payments, and that shows you the amount of income that's going back into our city through the work that the housing authority has done.

Last year we actually removed 300 tons of illegal dumping through that program I mentioned earlier.

Our OHAPD 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.

Housing development and preservation, the housing authority, since we started development in the hope of six days in the year 2000, we've co-invested over 1 billion dollars 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 dollars committed in a various uh 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 at Bancroft, 92 units of senior housing in partnership with the California Affordable Housing Initiative, Eden and Housing and Black Cultural Zone.

We also have recently acquired a property at 401 Santa Clara Avenue, 104 units that will also be focused on senior affordable housing, and we are working on a strategy for public housing preservation and also part of the great partnership at Mandela Station Residences and SETA.

Our strategic plan for our small apartment buildings is a multi-year transformation plan for roughly 1,500 units of those small apartment buildings.

We're working on the strategy now.

Once it's in draft form and presented to our board of commissioners and our board of directors, we will be doing charrettes throughout the city of Oakland to get feedback from the residents that we currently serve as well as neighbors.

And the goal is to take these now 50-year-old properties and make them bought up to date and all needs that might have been unfunded in the past so that they can thrive for another 30 to 40 years.

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 is also proposed work requirements for persons receiving a subsidy as well as term limits for the amount of time that you can participate in a program.

That's part of our advocacy focus.

I mentioned that some of our advocacy focus is on those $155 million committed to those $1,400 sites, keeping that money here in Oakland so that we can continue to assist those projects and working on advocacy for the National Environmental Protection Act requirements.

What's uncertain about it?

Well, we all read the paper and we know it's going to be about funding our market here in Oakland and the growing need for different types of properties for different types of communities.

In our 88 years, one of the things I would say the Housing Act was passed in 1937.

Oakland lost no time, and the housing authority was funded in 1938.

So in one year we started our good work, and since that time, we've developed, as I mentioned, 925 units ourselves across 10 sites and been a part of over 2,000 units put together through our housing partners.

Again, I want to talk about the fact that at the Oakland Housing Authority with our seven commissioners who are part of the Oakland community.

Over 374 dedicated staff and a whole host of partners and community-based organizations.

Our focus is to not just provide affordable housing, but to be a part of Oakland's ability to provide safe, welcoming communities for all, and we do that not just by providing the housing piece but also opportunities for the families that we serve.

And with that, that concludes my report.

I should mention that I'm joined today by the chief of social impact, Domenica Henderson, who has been the leader in many of the innovations over the last uh 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 willfulness and excitement and accept accepting the invitation to present to the CED committee.

I've had 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 were happening in now to see the partnership with the partners and uh that will help create that senior housing, right?

Definitely what the community needs.

And so I've always been um in awe of your leadership and of of OHA and just really grateful for all of the work that you all are doing.

Um, and also um really appreciated uh in the slides and the presentation that you presented, just really showing.

I think sometimes in community we can get feedback where you know maybe we think that most of the OHA sites are maybe located maybe in deeper East Oakland, etc.

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 uh just some of the future planning as well.

Um I did have one uh 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 um like if 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 uh listen to the programs that the housing authority has traditionally uh put forth since our inception.

In fact, my first hire almost 28 years ago at the housing authority was working on employment, uh working with the workforce and development board.

Uh, many of our programs, including a jobs plus grant, as well as several other grants we have are focused on getting the families uh who are work-able into employment that includes uh those uh adults over the age of 21, but also we have a very robust program for our youth uh in employment.

So while the requirements are something that's out there, we are tracking it uh as advocates in our industry groups uh 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.

Uh so stay tuned for that.

Um, I'm often in engagement with uh different staff from the offices so that they know kind of what we're doing and what we're up to for advocacy, but you can be assured that we too want every person who's able and interested in working to gain employment that is uh 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.

Um, colleagues, any questions or comments?

Um council member Fife.

Hello, thank you for being with us this afternoon.

I just have a couple questions, um, very general high-level information in the presentation, but uh I appreciate having some of those details that I was not aware of.

Um, but I I one of the things that is really impactful, um, that I haven't seen a full solution to is um youth homelessness.

I just wonder how the housing authority deals with uh people who don't aren't of the age in order to qualify for housing that you they can't get on a list.

How do you deal with with unhoused youth?

No, thank you for that question, and it's a great question.

You're correct that you have to be of legal age in order to be an applicant for the housing authority.

We do have partnerships though for our false youth initiative and sponsor-based programs that will allow 18-year olds to go through specialized programs for subsidy in those cases.

Uh, one of the things that we also are part of is a partnership with UC Benioff, where families who have children in 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.

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 is defined by HUD standards.

I was remiss in not mentioning and uh looking at you, council members.

We just celebrated our 127th home buyer through our housing choice voucher home buying program.

And we also uh 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 and serving specifically youth.

But a lot of the partners that we have like Abode and NICI, 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 our larger sites.

Thank you for sharing that.

And then my other question was about the shifts that are happening at the federal level.

I know we we talk about this all the time.

Yes.

But the can you share if the right I mean the the work requirements, what those are, and have will they impact the city of Oakland and how?

The work requirements, if enacted, would impact every housing authority in the nation.

There are over 300, um, 3,000, excuse me, in the nation.

It would require recipients of federal funding, the housing choice voucher program as well as the public housing program to be mandated to get work within a specific time.

The details of that aren't necessarily um established yet, and it would be uh 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 uh 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 uh meeting and meetings before here at City Council of the uh 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.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

And lastly, I just want to thank you so much for the partnership with Suda and Mandela uh station.

I think that's going to be a phenomenal project, so I look forward to making sure affordable.

Now, I mean, we always fight for affordable housing.

The jobs is so critical, especially with the as we heard from one of our public speakers, the high level of unemployment for for black folks, and I'm saying that because it's West Oakland, right?

So we not only need affordable housing, but we need the jobs piece for the ability to afford.

And we know that's really hard to do in the Bay Area, so I I look forward to continue partnership on that.

Thank you.

The jobs in the housing and great community is set to 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 Ramashandran.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for presenting today and for everything you do for Oakland residents for 88 plus years.

Um in my past life, I used to work with domestic violence survivors and did a lot to help those access housing, obviously, in a very different federal administration.

Um, I know the wait times now if you're applying for voucher fresh are you know darn near impossible, but um, are there programs for subgroups like DV survivors?

You mentioned trafficking, um, and other groups to be able to access priority um based on it not just that but other factors.

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

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Domenica Henderson, I'm the Chief Social Impact Officer for the Housing Authority, and yes, so we have uh um a set of special programs, those are the local programs that that we highlight the 2,000 households in those programs.

We assist uh families who are exiting as uh executive director Wells mentioned, exiting sexual trafficking or human trafficking and labor trafficking in general.

We also assist families who are um experiencing domestic violence and and have a robust program to not only um assist them with the move but identify other um households so that they're able to retain that housing um as well, and our local programs are where we typically um where we typically assist those families, in addition to if a family has a voucher and they need to move, then we will expedite those um those moves.

But if there is someone that is really um in need daily, then what we do is work with partner agencies or partner uh community-based partners to get referrals to some of our local programs, and that's the way that we are able to assist families without having to have them wait on a long-term wait list.

Thank you.

Um 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?

We well, what I would say is that we did open the list last late uh early last year in 2025.

Um we got between 22 and 25,000 applications.

We had to lottery down to about 5,000 households.

Um, and so 5,000 households are on the wait list, and we will pull from that wait list until it's um 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, um, but I would ask what I can say actually is that our wait list, the last wait list opening before last year was in 2011.

So it took us uh a a long time to get through 10,000 households.

We are hoping to be able to um reduce that amount of time and serve the need more quickly.

Um, but it really depends on a lot of uncertainties, including the funding that's coming from the federal government.

Thank you, Dominican.

Council member, you could have stayed up right by my side.

One of the things I would mention is I I noted the 470 odd emergency housing vouchers.

Uh the housing authority is absorbing those vouchers because that program was terminated to absorb those program, those those four hundred and uh seventy-four 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 uh the core of the housing authority's mission.

While part of our mission is the production and preservation of new housing, we actually considered 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 um management, so that they could stay housed.

Thank you.

And these are that question.

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.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Excellent.

We can hear from the public speakers, if any.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number five in no particular order.

You can come up to the podium, state your name for the record before you begin.

Buffalo Sojourn, Lynette Zhang Lee, Asada Olabala, Samuel Ramey, and Jeff Levin.

Friends, enemies, and political operatives.

First, I'd better commend the city council for putting these people in the report.

There are five different versions of housing authority in Alameda County, one of them is countywide, and each one is their own thiefdom.

Right now, even as our housing authority perpetrates the slide from allotted low-income funds to affordable funds, right now, were I to go to apply for a place on one of their buildings, they would tell the manager, don't let that clown in.

And were you to ask them about the demographic breakdown of their clients, you would find out within the last five years, half of their new clients are speed breaks, 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 want to mess with your money.

These people here, they weren't here when their predecessors started.

The corruption, I don't know about you, but I know in what you've said, there are at least five things that can be proven to be an outright.

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 Chang Li, and I've been a member of the Oakland Housing Authority Commission for the past uh twelve or thirteen years.

Um formerly I was the executive director of Ebald Cation Local Development Corporation for 27 years.

Although I have some background in affordable housing and community development, I have to say that I have learned a lot being on the OHA commission because it is a large and complex organization.

It has been a great partner for many nonprofits, not only in affordable housing by providing vouchers and financing to ensure that we can serve very, very low income, including homeless residents and homeless veterans, but also working with nonprofits and government agencies on many service programs to build up the skills and opportunities for its residents and the surrounding neighborhood.

It has been um really staff, starting from Director Wells on down through the organization, has been really thank you for your comments.

Thank you.

My name is Simon Raymond.

I'm with the National Home for Mental Health Operations.

I am the hitman for her.

They come to Oakland next.

They're gonna ask you the decision of this country.

And you'd qualify for this program right now being in Lura.

I asked them coming around here in New York right now.

Start turning.

Everybody top down the fire, they were crooks.

You can come to all these top seats here, they can come around through the whole country.

And we because this is over with.

There's no such thing as affordable housing.

Stop that.

Low income.

The judge already said you can't change one word.

That's constitution.

Now going to you.

So get this together.

Oh, the shelter club, tell them to put them back, hood pay for all shelters across past this country.

No one in America's supposed to be homeless on a school B McKinley Act.

Okay.

I've been hosting 35 years in the city.

I'm going to program backwards.

I'm having a senior system and a middle health facility built, and you guys don't govern it.

I'll read that okay for it.

We have five point eight billion dollars.

Waiting on us.

Right now, I just need to.

Awesome.

No one in America will be homeless no more.

The shelter put them back.

So we tell you about don't put nobody home.

Nobody.

Unless the mayor.

We don't make merit grade again.

Who program?

I have you have gone to you.

Thank you for your comments, Mr.

Raimi.

Thank you for your comments, Mr.

Raimi.

People are not going to be able to do it.

Thank you, Ms.

Brown for bringing this item because I've been asking that this be brought to this body.

I'm very confused about what government agency has authority over the Oakland Housing Authority.

I know that they receive federal funds.

I'm gonna read you in Oakland Forum how HUD has taken over in several cities, Oakland Housing Authority for mismanagement, including in San Francisco.

So we have to have some accountability by this organization.

Who has the monitoring process over this agency?

Can anybody tell me?

Okay, I'll finish.

The other thing I'm saying, 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 chair came here and said that she couldn't get accommodations from this group because uh 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, and the Oak and the Oakland Housing Authorities housing.

That's why we have so many kids that are over there at wet uh West Oakland, because our Yemeni community is living in spaces.

You got a waiting list of over five thousand.

Thank you for your comments, Mr.

Sada.

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

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Jeff Levin of East Bay Housing Organizations.

Um really we would just like to thank um the council and the housing authority for bringing this report forward today.

Um, 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.

Um just to underline what's been said already.

You know, the city's uh housing programs and affordable housing programs address an array of incomes.

The housing authority historically has provided the bulk of the uh housing assistance for people at the lowest income levels, those um particularly um in the extremely low income category with less than 30% of median income, either directly through their uh 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 um, you know, a range of incomes from extremely low to very low to low, and we really appreciate the many years of uh partnership in that way.

But it's really important when we are looking at all the ways that the city is attempting to meet uh it's has had unmet needs for uh housing that the housing authority plays a really important uh role for uh serving folks that the city's programs alone um 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.

Um, well, thank you so much.

Um, colleagues.

Any additional questions?

Uh Councilmember Fife.

It one of the public speakers did raise something that I I've been curious about.

Are there special um so through the chair to Director Ison?

Are there special accommodations that people from uh war-torn areas of the world get to move forward on a list if it's publicized by the housing authority?

How does uh one particular ethnic uh the answer is no, but to be able to answer the question for you, I'm gonna ask uh Chair Chief uh Henderson to come up and talk about eligibility.

Thank you for the question.

Um, so we the we receive our funding from the federal government from HUD, and um so the vouchers that we receive are available to um 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 um may have received disaster vouchers specifically around an earthquake um in certain cities or in Katrina was a really most recent example where those recipients uh were moved all over the country, and so housing authorities were able to welcome them into their communities temporarily or permanently, um, but in terms of special uh demographic type of vouchers, we don't receive those from the government.

So, how how does how does it how does it occur that uh 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 w what I think that what we see is that the wait lists um that are advertised across the city, they're advertised in some communities um in different ways or marketed in different ways and that reach different communities.

We have seen um we have seen activities where where certain organizations will gather people together and fill out the waitlist, help fill out the weightless 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 wait list, if the if the numbers are higher than the statistically, people will may look similar, but um we are bound by fair housing uh regulations, and so we do a very affirmative uh marketing plan, and we vet those and 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 in our rooms to help us uh market out.

I'm sorry, order order, order in the chamber.

Or you will be asked to leave.

Order in the chamber, or we will ask you to leave.

All right, thank you.

Uh typically when we open up the wait list, we actually have uh sessions for community-based organizations, faith-based organizations to understand how the wait lists will work.

We do an online wait list opening as well as we'll host wait lists like this past wait list we hosted at several of the schools in partnership with only Oakland Unified School District as well as other community-based organizations.

So the answer is yes, and I will make sure that we get uh the information out to everyone uh in our elected here in the city, and one of the things that can happen as Dominica explained how marketing is done and the numbers of people that might apply, is it people are housed in the built environment based upon bedroom size?

So you have to be eligible for a bedroom size.

One of the things we know through the emergency housing voucher program, which uh was largely people who were experiencing homelessness at the time that we housed them, is that they were single, they were single household family members, and so a large number of those folks are single uh folks uh who are families.

Um, and the subsidy is um, 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 uh three people in it but only two are eligible for subsidies so the subsidies based upon a two-person household and so that that's where you might see um persons where you wonder how how the demographics okay okay um and so because of council member five's question it did spark um a question for me because I know I heard that the the amount of applicants at first was over twenty thousand but then it was narrowed down to five thousand and so um 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 all have all of the applicants we weed out double applications so somebody might apply twice or more than once um so we take those out and all unique applicants are about 22000 for this last weight list 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 um essentially as their number gets pulled I see excellent thank you for clarifying and thank you so much for joining us and we hope to see you soon again all right thank you.

And so I believe uh for this item um it's up to the body but we can um receive and file this in committee if we're interested just need a motion I will make a motion to receive and file second thank you.

Thank you that was a motion made by council member unger seconded by council member Ramachandran to receive and file this informational report in committee on role council members five aye Ramachandran and Chair Brown aye thank you item number five passes with four eyes to receive and file this informational report in committee moving on to item number four receive an informational report on housing development programs by the housing and community development department for fiscal year 2025 to 2026 and we have four speakers that signed up on this item excellent um thank you so much um so for the presentation and hoping to stay um uh get back on track for our committee meetings let's do um 15 minutes max okay thank you good afternoon chairperson brown council member fife council member ramachandran council member unger my name is Fay Darmaui I'm the deputy director of housing at HCD thank you so much for the opportunity to present the annual housing programs informational report fiscal year 2526 this is the second time we present this report the previous report was fiscal year 24 25 the agenda for today is to set the context to go through our strategies in 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 Almeda County state of California for public sector subsidies as well as private sector partners like um commercial banks and community development financial institutions we also enforce regulatory agreements on affordable housing produced as a result of inclusionary zoning incentives such as impact fee waivers and density bonuses HCD's mission is to dedicate is dedicated to improving Oakland's neighborhoods and ensuring all Oaklanders have safe and affordable housing we have the focus of the three piece 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 uh Oakland Regional housing needs allocation, which states that um 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 affordable house uh extremely low income households.

Because of limited funding, we have 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 more permanent supportive housing.

And due to the need of operating subsidy, which is in short supply, we next focus our efforts on creating housing for low-income residents, and then further down in terms of our equity framework priority.

We further invest in the preservation of the city's existing affordable housing and the acquisition of housing in the open market to be converted into deed restricted affordable homes.

Again, to go over our funding programs, our main funding programs is new construction, which is the creation of multifamily affordable rental units, our R2H2 home key program, which is where we produce our homeless units, our CA program, which is where we acquire market rate rental units and convert them into affordable housing under rent restriction for 55 years.

We also have an asset management team where we preserve preserve our portfolio.

So this is a really important slide to implement the funding programs.

From the previous slide, we rely heavily on measure you funding.

Thank you to the city council for approving seven resolutions over the three past years to authorize 248 million dollars in measure you funds plus approximately 60 million in other local funds.

It's very important to note that we have allocated all of measure U Tranche 1 and Tranche 2 to our funding programs, and of that, we only have 16 million dollars left to reward to projects, which speaks to the importance of accelerating tranche three.

We're gonna go drill down even more, which is the HCD strategies in progress to date.

Our priority strategies this year was increase efficiency in the process within the organizational structure.

We've prioritize 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 and project funding and development project progress.

As in previous years, our funding allocation aligned with the our strategic action plan, and in terms of our NOFAs and awards, we align our project selection with the measure of U Tranche 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 our R2H2 home key and ACA projects, and we've increased our efficiency for the ACA project by partnering with the Housing Accelerator Fund, a community development financial institution.

As stated earlier, in HED strategic action plan, we prioritize the funding of permanent supportive housing.

Our target is 39% of all funding or 188 million dollars 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 ACA 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 permanent supportive housing production.

We have reached 46% of total funding versus our goal of 39%.

We produce a thousand 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 Tranch3 to continue to pursue meeting our housing goals under our strategic action plan.

This is an overview of our fiscal year 2526 accomplishment.

We have about around 1,400 units under construction of which 591 units will provide housing for folks exiting homelessness.

We completed 700 units of housing, of which 238 are units to provide an exit to homelessness.

Of the 700 units completed construction, it's important to note that 300 were a result of inclusionary zoning.

Next year, this number will be substantially lower as market rate development has decreased substantially, while HCD projects will increase in comparison for completion rate next year.

Comparing our productivity relative to other cities in Alameda County for the calendar years 24 and 25 combined, Oakland represents 42% of all permits issued for affordable housing in the county of Alameda.

How am I doing time?

We're going to drill down to new construction.

Okay, the no 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 U and other funding sources.

We were able to award 63.6 million dollars to five open developments.

In addition, we renewed our long-standing collaboration with the Oakland Housing Authority on four projects here noted with the asterisk.

The housing, the Oakland Housing Authority provides valuable rent subsidies that allow for the deepest affordability.

Here are some examples of our affordable housing developments.

The projects on this slide have all received low-income housing tax credit awards.

And the three projects that have red stars have started construction.

This is from our 2024 new construction NOFA.

This slide is from the projects in our recent 2025 New Construction Pipeline Award round, and you can see that already three of them have received low-income housing tax credit allocations, which means they will start construction in late fall.

This slide shows the projects that are under construction.

There are actually seven new construction projects under construction, including the three that I just mentioned.

Again, the asterisk show the projects that we have ongoing partnership with the Oakland Housing Authority.

We completed three projects this year, and we just celebrated the grand opening of 350 international Flickle Bird apartments last week with Mayor Lee.

And this is a deep look at the Eliza, which is under construction just down the street, a couple blocks from here.

It broke ground in December 2025.

And you can see the first few floors already jutting out of the ground of this 97 unit project by Mercy Housing.

Even with all the projects that we've been able to fund, we still need almost 250 million dollars in city funding for future projects, again underscoring the need for tranche three.

Our next funding program is a rapid response homeless housing R2H2, a version of and our partnership with the home state home key.

R2H2 funding program results in projects with the deepest support affordability at zero to 30% AMI.

There are six projects under construction providing 422 permanent supportive housing or PSH.

The city funds both capital and operating funds in this funding program and uses a roll and uh 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 includes it resulted in 128.

These three projects resulted in 128 PSH units, including Friendly Manor, which will have its grand opening in early June.

That project will offer 52 bets to chronically homeless youth.

Our next printing program is the acquisition and conversion affordable housing program called ACA.

The ACA 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 closings so that developers can meet marketplace timing.

This program is designed for developers to purchase apartment buildings off the speculative market and convert them into affordable housing with rents at 80% AMI and below.

Of note is the 33 unit Adora apartments, which are local nonprofit rooted purchase to convert into affordable educator housing.

And this is highlighting the work of the asset management team with this is the HCD portfolio survey and summary.

So we didn't have a portfolio we have North 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.

Yes, coming to it.

In addition, our demographic information revealed that 52% of heads of households self-identify as black or African American, 26% identify as Asian, 13% self-identify as white.

This is the range of household size.

And it shows that 55% of the household consists of one-person household, and 19% are two-person households, and so on.

I will look forward to some challenges and opportunities.

So HCD does face some challenges in the coming year, the greatest being our funding limitations since Measure KK and Measure U Tranches 1 and 2 have been awarded to all of it has been awarded to programs and projects to fund our existing project pipeline.

We really need Measure U Trans 3 to be sold as soon as possible.

For new construction, our biggest challenge is the rising cost due to recent federal level policies and ongoing need for operating subsidies for extremely low income units.

For our R2H2 program, we rely on state home key subsidies, but the state's current focus is on veterans housing.

However, in Alameda, there's very little need for homeless veterans' housing.

In addition, all our s experienced service providers are operating at maximum capacity.

For our CA 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 dollars, which will capitalize this new state age 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.

Homeownership projects we haven't had funding for a while now.

Um and we're also continuing to monitor uh two smaller uh ongoing initiatives uh infill development toolkit and the redevelopment of tax-develop 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.

Oh well, thank you so much.

Um the uh staff report was very detailed.

Um, and it also clearly outlines and shows just all of the amazing work that the HC, the entire HCD team, does on behalf of the entire city, Oakland residents, and so just a huge thank you.

Um I have a few questions, um, but I will um open it up to my colleagues first.

Um, council member Fife.

I just have two primary questions.

Um I've been trying to work with the county on tax defaulted lots in Oakland since 2017.

Um, I was able to get the tax assessor to um hire staff to help with the program, but kind of lost track of where uh things are right now.

Um I'm happy that in the last one to two years, things have moved forward significantly, but through the chair to perhaps Director Epstein.

Uh, where are things right now?

Uh oh, what did I do?

This is uh Emily Weinstein through the chair to council.

It was the wrong of the wrong name.

But it's okay.

She can I understand why it'd be top of mind, um, so to answer the question um about tax defaulted properties.

We are working with the county, um, and there's kind of a number of different ways to approach it in terms of the city's role.

One of the first things we can do is to remove uh liens from the properties that the that the city has.

And so um the county has a list of properties, and they've gone out with some RFPs for a few of the larger part parcels.

Um they're also looking at some of the smaller parcels, and um 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'd 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, tax default.

So there's there's the empty lots, and then there's the uh lots that are occupied.

Right, right now the county's focused on uh empty lots.

Oh, okay.

I don't have that many in my district.

Okay, they're really really small, not developable.

But I have to say that I was just reading an email from my professor.

I apologize for that.

It's not the person you were thinking of.

And my second question was about the money right now that you currently have for projects.

How much is it?

Seven million.

So uh through the chair to Councilmember Fife, um, we have a total right now of sort of sixteen million dollars left over of measure you.

Seven million of that of those dollars are going to the rehab portfolio NOFA that's coming out this fall.

So that's money that's already been allocated or awarded to a program but not yet in projects.

Um we have about seven million left in the ACA portfolio, but what you saw today, um, I'm sorry, R2H2.

No, ACA, we're out.

Sorry.

Um for R2H2, we have about 7 million.

Uh it is a rolling NOFA.

Um, and so actually a portion of that right now uh we're looking at a project that that may take up um a portion of those funds within the next couple weeks to make an award.

Uh so we're really down to probably about four million dollars.

Um, and then there's about one about 1.7 to 2 million dollars left for new construction, and that's it.

So, you know, the second tranche of measure you 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 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, um, but we will have a gap in terms of projects that we can award funding to until we sell tranche three at Measure U.

Is there anyone that can answer when that might be?

Do you know when that might be?

Uh that would have to come from the budget office finance.

But you haven't, they haven't indicated this is annoying.

Um, 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.

Um and what one of the things that's really important, you know, we 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.

Um, and one of the concerns we have is that we often need to put, you know, we're the first money in for certain 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 reorg that's happening at the state, the new housing development finance committee just had its first meeting today, and they are uh putting together the so the regs uh 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's like in April.

So the NOFA would open in January of 2027.

So we would need to line up our 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 uh the resources to help continue what has been an amazing run of units on the market in Oakland?

What what can we do?

So I think there's a a larger conversation about um when the third tranche of measure you will be sold, how much of the of the bonds will go towards the different infrastructure needs.

Um 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 um 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 I agree that potholes are one of the biggest issues that we have to face, and transportation issues are are major, but people are leaving Oakland because there's not the affordable housing available to meet the need.

So thank you for that.

Excellent.

Um, so thank you so much.

Um a lot of the questions that I had were actually answered.

I got my answer about the um housing development and finance uh committee where they met today and um those uh um funding awards um or that application will open January of next year.

Um so that was great.

Um 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, um, so that we have that top of mind.

Um, I was looking at the table um on page 30 where it showed the 1.7 million where it says new construction TBD.

Um, I imagine that um amount is too low to um allocate out to any of the new construction, so those were some of my questions.

Um, colleagues, any additional questions on this item?

Okay, we can hear from the public speakers.

Thank you.

Calling in the names that signed up to speak on item number four, Jeff Levin, Asada Olawala, David Boltwright, and Simuel Raimi.

David Boltwright.

Is there a reason the 40 uh 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 uh 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.

Um work has been uh begun on any of these four projects and are estimated to be completed in 2028.

Shouldn't the city at least try to fund some more cost-effective and timely housing such as modular at 350,000 per unit or 3D printed homes that can be fabricated and installed in less than two weeks for 70,000 for one room units or a hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred and thirty thousand for two to three room units.

I'll keep the rest of my comments for the open session.

So Oakland needs ten thousand two hundred and sixty-one affordable housing units by 2031.

That's a state mandate.

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 you're gonna do it.

Then it says that uh you have a unit, and you didn't do a whole lot of discussion about the uh the units that were developed for the homeless, but you had completion of the Phoenix Apartments in West Oakland, and you had Ridden cutting in February, I'm sorry, November, but in February it was announced that the developer, the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation was in a dispute with the contractor, so it wasn't open, and it says the contractor is getting ready to sue the East Bay, I'm sorry, uh developer for two million dollars.

So why y'all don't bring that up in the discussion?

We got an issue.

Now that those units were a hundred and one units for homeless and low income.

See that's what y'all do.

You tell you you tell people what you want to tell them.

You don't tell them everything.

We have a we have a facility.

Thank you for your comments.

For four years, I've been sitting on five point eight billion dollars.

Oh, y'all won't add it.

I'm not standing off of nothing.

Your building is funded.

Get your paperwork together.

And send to her stock Jones from Home Jay, send it to her.

You don't get the politics and see, send it to you.

See you.

You have fund.

Your paper will gotta be right.

The shelters.

No, no, put no personalist street.

No, no, no, no.

In Oakland.

Nowhere in this country.

No more.

Take care of all of this.

How education?

Oh, yeah.

We've been doing a whole new thing in this country.

We've been cleaning out.

Is corruption got to go.

People owners free.

Should be in the should be on the street.

Yeah, no, people walk around and get old people on the street.

Come on, yeah.

I'm the COD on the other.

I have a matter of fact I have started Oak Home in 91.

I'm all the original movement five hours for ever since.

I'm the whole program back.

Senior project to admine.

And they don't pay for.

They pay for teleporting and all the people on the free.

Unfortunately, all information.

I'm from National Home.

Wow.

Chicago got the large house in the world.

For Brand Green, 23,000 plus family Robert 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 uh in future years.

Um the accomplishments that they have cited are um quite significant.

Uh uh very encouraging.

There's obviously a lot more to do, um, but I think uh a lot of praise goes to HCD staff for all that they have done here.

Um we particularly appreciate um 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.

Um, couple things we want to highlight.

There have been uh statements in the past from at least some council members about um black people not being served by the city's housing.

The data here shows uh that over 50% of the residents of the city's portfolio are black.

Um, there are still many people who are unserved, but I 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 options.

Thank you for your comments.

Chair, that concludes all speakers on this item.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Okay, excellent.

Um, so Director Weinstein, did you have a preference to have this item go to the full council?

Uh uh through the chair or to the chair.

Uh I prefer that it go on consent.

Okay, excellent.

Sounds good.

Um, I'll entertain a motion on that, and thank you.

So move that we forward this to full council on consent.

Excellent.

Second.

Thank you.

That's a motion made by council member unger, seconded by council member five to receive and for forward this informational report to the June 2nd, 2026 City Council agenda.

On roll council members five, aye, Rama Chandrin, aye, Unger.

Hi.

And Chair Brown.

Aye.

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 144,900 to fund staff time to work on the existing conditions and vulnerability assessment analysis for the regional shoreline adapt adaptation plan to authorizing the city administrator to apply for accept and appropriate Senate additional Senate Bill 1 grant plans from the Ocean Protection Council to in an amount not to exceed 1,355,100 for completion of the sub-regional shoreline adaptation plan and authorizing the city administrator to represent the city in intergovernmental intergovernmental relationship relations with neighboring jurisdictions within shared shoreline operational landscape units and two a resolution authorizing the city administrator to enter into a cooperative agreement to purchase services from Conger Moss Gleeard 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.

Let's just do 10 minutes for the presentation.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Council and the public.

My name is Laura Kaminsky.

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 one, which is to fund the planning for the Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan of up to 1.5 million, and track two for implementation funding for projects included in the regional shoreline adaptation plan up to $10 million per project.

And so what's really important to note here is that the sooner the city can finish their regional shoreline 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-serve 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 adaptation effort that started in 2021.

It's been led by the City of Alameda with the City of Oakland as a key partner.

And this covers Alameda plus most of Oakland shoreline, including the Port of Oakland, Oakland Airport, Caltrans Corridors, East Bay Regional Parks District, and what's really important to note with this process is that when you're talking about sea level rise, sea level does rise does not know jurisdiction boundaries.

So it's very important that we're doing our planning that we're collaborative with our neighboring cities because, as an example, if the city of Alameda builds a levee wall, then that means that water goes on to Oakland and makes our flooding worse or vice versa.

And so we want to work together, which is a 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.

The technical work has been done by Conger Moss Gilead Architects or CMG and Pathways Climate Institute.

The key outputs have been an existing conditions report, a flow exposure and vulnerability memo, and several adaptation projects in Oakland and Alameda.

There's been engagement led by Greenville Alliance and local community partners, including Casa Hood Planning and Saregate 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 trilogy adaptation plan guidelines since that was adopted after this initial work was done, and also for eligibility for project two tracked two implementation funding, as I mentioned earlier.

So just to show on a map here, the sub-regional adaptation planning context maps has the Oakland shoreline, which includes two of these operational landscape units, which has the East Bay Crescent, which has the cities of Albany, Berkeley, and Emoryville, 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, an element B of looking at existing conditions, element C for vulnerability assessment, and then what we're wanting to apply for more grant funding for is for the phase two part, which will have a continuation of stakeholder and community engagement, but also an element D of adaptation strategies and pathways, an element E of land use and policy plan, an element F of implementation plan and funding strategy, and element G, which includes a project list.

So for the phase one strategy, it leverages the partners for the regional shoreline adaptation plans and funds staff coordination time to complete this phase one.

So again, elements B of existing conditions and C for vulnerability assessment is being worked on, and also stakeholder community engagement is taking place.

The City of Oakland regional shoreline adaptation plan, which updates the original Oak Consultants work, and community engagement work and funds the completion of phase one deliverables for Oakland's Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan.

And in addition, there's also an East Bay Crescent Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan that's led by the SF Estuary Partnership and includes the city and port of Oakland, Emoryville, Berkeley, and Albany, and completes phase one deliverables for a small area within the port jurisdiction.

Both of these partner led regional shoreline adaptation plans are use the same contractor team led by Conger Moss Gilead Architects that has been under contract for the Oaks since 2023.

For phase two funds contractors to complete the remaining RCEP elements, the staff requests a cooperative agreement to leverage Alameda's RFP solicitation process and contract and use SB1 funding upon award to complete phase two with CMG leading adaptation planning for Oakland.

So this is just an overall timeline, kind of shows how all these different processes are happening at once and really the importance of the coordination amongst all these different cities when we're trying to plan for our shoreline adaptation plan.

So for the timeline in phase one, spring of 2026 through fall of 2028, this is coordination with the City of Alameda and Emery Bay Crescent to complete the elements B and C.

And this is fully funded funded already and it's in progress and it's aligned with the partner RCEPS timelines.

We do need city council approval to accept phase one funds, grant funds and appropriate for staff time as part of this, so this is a small amount of money.

In addition, then we need for phase two, which is spring of 2027 through winter of 2028.

Staff with consultant support wants to complete the elements D through G of the Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan, and leverage the partner regional shoreline adaptation plans and port waterfront resilience plan.

And so we need council's approval to apply for the SP1 grant in June of 2026, and that grant would fully fund phase two.

So we do not need additional funds from the city to um to complete this plan.

And we also need council approval to apply, accept an appropriate phase two grant funding, and execute a cooperative agreement to enter into contract with CMG using the phase two grant funding.

And again, as part of this element A, what will be going on during the whole time of community engagement?

So the rationale for this cooperative agreement is it would leverage Alameda's RFP process and contract and that's been reviewed and approved by Department of Finance.

We'd use SB1 funding to complete phase two with CMG leading adaptation planning for Oakland and CMG is a small regionally based firm.

Is subcontractor team for phase one includes small disadvantaged women owned and Oakland based firms.

In addition, this would build upon existing and long-standing collaboration, technical and community engagement work through the Oak and Oakland RSAP phase one to complete phase two.

It would maintain a sub-regional collaboration and strengthening Oakland's position to receive this SB1 funding leverage, limited track one funding that may not otherwise be sufficient to complete the this RCEP.

So it's really important for getting this you know grant money.

There's limited amount, and by having this uh cooperative agreement, we're we're saving a huge amount of money from of cost efficiencies, building upon the 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 um collaborating and not having to do a redundant work.

This also is a timely helps timely prepare Oakland to access much greater funding for the track two adaptation projects, which again are available in a first-come first serve basis.

And so that's where really the large amount of grant money is available, and it's really important that we in Oakland be able to use those funds to build projects.

And so the recommendation is um for resolution.

There's two different resolutions for resolution one is to accept an appropriate the SB1 uh R SEP track one grant award of 144,900 for the phase one and apply for accept an appropriate up to an additional one, three hundred and fifty five thousand one hundred of SB1 grant track one funding for the Oakland Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan Phase Two, authorize the city administrator to represent the city in intergovernmental relations with neighboring jurisdictions with shared shoreline operation landscape units, and then for resolution two to execute a cooperative agreement with CMG leveraging the city of Alameda's RFP and contract for a regional shoreline adaptation plan using track one SB1 funding for the Oakland Regional Shoreline Adaptation Plan phase two upon award and also adopt uh CEQA findings as needed.

Excellent.

Um thank you so much uh for uh detailing uh this report.

Um, I did find that attachment A went on to further clarify just the 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.

Um can you share with me who specifically on who represents Oakland on that committee?

Um for the or the city um the consultants or well in the meetings, oh in the meetings, yeah.

Yeah, so city staff um has been going to those meetings.

So um Daniel Hamilton has been participating from the city administrator's office as well as Michelle Matronga from the City Planning Department.

Um Edmanasse has also been in a number of those meetings as well because this has been going on for uh quite a number of years.

This process, um, 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, um, as I mentioned, the catchment A literally lays out this the scope of work that this firm CMG would need to move forward with, um, and with the resolutions written as is, where you have one where we're funding um, you know, allocations that we've we've already received, and the second version of that being hopeful to receive.

Um, how will the city council um stay up to date on like the progress of uh the progress and in work on on this very crucial project?

Um yeah, so right now we're trying to um get additional grant money and so and we're in the the phase one process.

So um, you know, we can be uh coming back to committee with informational reports, you know, as far as the progress is going, we can also give briefings to council members as well.

Um there is gonna be you know, quite a bit of public community meetings.

So I think we would want to also have um help with uh council members and getting the word out to their constituents through newsletters and so forth, so that uh we have as many people as possible from the public that are gonna be can participate in that process.

Um yes, Laura, that's exactly um, I guess like my point.

Um I know that this work is going to require um a lot of community engagement, because when you think about the partner cities, Alameda, Emoryville, Albany, uh maybe I miss one.

Um, 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.

Um I think I would be hopeful that we would uh have an informational report um back to this body, especially as we move through phase two.

Um so I think that that would be my ask on this uh director Gilkiss.

Thank you, uh committee chair and uh through the committee to the to the uh committee chair through uh to the CED.

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.

Um, 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, Miss Asada Olabala.

I have to leave this meeting because I couldn't sign up online.

I twisted my ankle on Friday, and I was trying to sign up.

Y'all gotta fix that method, uh Madam Clerk.

X, I asked for my price word, 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 business with other cities.

After seeing what you did with the Oakland roots, where you were in partnership with Emoryville in 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 Emoryville contract with them, and then recently you got a renewal of a contract to use our libraries.

I don't have faith that when you're dealing with other people or other cities that you're gonna look out for the best interests of Oakland.

So I hope it works out that we don't get undermined in this process.

Um that's all I have to say about that.

But uh I do want us to have relationships with other cities.

Thank you for your comments, Chair.

That concludes all speakers on this item.

Alright, thank you so much.

Um, and so um I'll make the motion to move this item to the June 2nd um City Council meeting.

Thank you.

That was a motion made by Chair Brown, seconded by council member Ramachandron to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward both pieces of legislation to the June 2nd City Council agenda.

On roll council members five.

I had my hand raised to speak to this item.

Uh sorry about that, Councilmember Fife.

That's fine.

Through through the chair, I I just wanted to make the statement for the public and for my colleagues that West Oakland is particularly in the line of or in the area, the geographic area that will be impacted by sea level rise.

We're talking about this in other committees that I sit on the Association of Bay Area Governments being prime uh 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 of my district as well as other parts of Oakland because this is this is a matter of potentially life and death if 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 um 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 Councilmember Ramachandran to uh sorry.

Sorry.

Uh to approve the recommendations of staff and to forward this item to the June 2nd City Council agenda on roll, Council members five.

Aye, Ramachandron.

Hi.

Anger, and Chair Brown.

Aye.

Thank you.

Item number three passes with four eyes.

Support 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 Olabala, Samuel Raimi, David Boatwright, Robbie Ayala, and Ann McLean.

If you're on Zoom, please raise your hand if your name was called.

Okay.

The U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development took over the Little Rock Housing Authority in May of 2026, mostly because and dissolved the board, dismissed the commission due to uh severe financial 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 involved in?

Who does that?

Uh Huddle recently took over the Atlanta Citizen Housing Authority.

In 2019, uh following a twenty thirty million dollar financial deficit and chronic mismanagement, HUD ordered the HUD uh facility agency to submit to a takeover by the city of San Francisco, which took full oversight of HUD.

That's in 20.

How do we know this HUD thing is going right?

They got so many Yemeni people living in East uh West Oakland that the city of that the school West Oakland Middle has requested that they have dual language, so black kids have to speak Arabic and English to learn their core subject.

That's gonna die.

But they also have Arab programs at West Oakland Minnie because they have so many kids living in that West Oakland.

Thank you for your comments, Ms.

Olobala.

David Bowright.

This city cannot continue to fund grand new or reconditioned housing units and expect to house anywhere near the needed number of for residents.

We don't have the money or the time for this to continue.

Reports are interesting, but housing is more important.

Residences versus reports, please.

Thank you for your comments, Mr.

Boatwright.

To the two students in the back.

Did you want to 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.