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Oakland 2045

Oakland Environmental Justice Element

Adopted September 26, 2023

Resolution #: 89907 C.M.S

Prepared by:

DYETT & BHATIA Urban and Regional Planners

With Contributions From:

E/J Solutions PolicyLink

Table of Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................... ES-1

1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 1-1

1.1 Purpose and Requirements........................................................................................................ 1-1

Statutory Requirements ......................................................................................................................................................1-1 Racial Equity Goals for the City of Oakland + Previous Ongoing Efforts .................................................... 1-2 Relationship to Oakland’s General Plan Elements.................................................................................................. 1-3 Connection to Vision and Guiding Principles ...........................................................................................................1-6

1.2 Environmental Justice Planning Process.................................................................................... 1-7

Environmental Justice and Racial Equity Baseline Report ................................................................................. 1-7 EJ Element Racial Equity Impact Analysis .................................................................................................................1-8 Revision of EJ Communities Mapping..........................................................................................................................1-8

1.3 Community Outreach ................................................................................................................... 1-9

2. ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM AND HEALTH INEQUITIES IN OAKLAND................................................................................................................................ 2-1

2.1 Historical Context / Root Causes..................................................................................................2-1

Environmental Racism as a Historical Process.........................................................................................................2-1

2.2 Land Use and Health ................................................................................................................... 2-8

Health Inequities................................................................................................................................................................... 2-8 How Planning and Land Use Impact Health .......................................................................................................... 2-9

2.3 Identifying Environmental Justice Communities...................................................................... 2-11

Purpose and Definition...................................................................................................................................................... 2-11 Methodology.........................................................................................................................................................................2-12 Results .....................................................................................................................................................................................2-15

3. REDUCING POLLUTION EXPOSURE AND IMPROVING AIR QUALITY ...... 3-1

3.1 Issues and Disparities .................................................................................................................. 3-1

Pollution Burden ................................................................................................................................................................... 3-1 Sensitive Land Uses............................................................................................................................................................. 3-2 Air Quality ............................................................................................................................................................................... 3-2 Water Quality....................................................................................................................................................................... 3-10 Solid Waste Sites ................................................................................................................................................................ 3-14 Illegal Dumping .................................................................................................................................................................. 3-14

3.2 Goals and Policies........................................................................................................................ 3-19

4. SAFE, HEALTHY, AND AFFORDABLE HOMES....................................................... 4-1

4.1 Issues and Disparities .................................................................................................................. 4-1

Cost Burden and Evictions................................................................................................................................................ 4-1 Code Enforcement ............................................................................................................................................................. 4-2 Older Housing....................................................................................................................................................................... 4-2 Lead............................................................................................................................................................................................ 4-4 Indoor Air Quality................................................................................................................................................................ 4-4 Healthy Housing Locations.............................................................................................................................................. 4-6

4.2 Goals and Policies........................................................................................................................ 4-8

5. EXPANDING HEALTHY FOOD ACCESS..................................................................... 5-1

5.1 Issues and Disparities .................................................................................................................. 5-1

Food Access............................................................................................................................................................................ 5-2 Food Distribution and Recovery................................................................................................................................... 5-2 Food Assistance and Education ................................................................................................................................... 5-2

5.2 Goals and Policies........................................................................................................................ 5-6

6. EQUITABLE PUBLIC FACILITIES ............................................................................ 6-1

6.1 Issues and Disparities ................................................................................................................... 6-2

Community Facilities .............................................................................................................................................. 6-2 Public Art, Cultural Infrastructure, and Facilities ............................................................................................. 6-2 Public Infrastructure ................................................................................................................................................ 6-2 Public Services and Utilities.................................................................................................................................... 6-5

6.2 Goals and Policies........................................................................................................................... 6-6

7. PROMOTING PHYSICAL ACTIVITY.......................................................................7-1

7.1 Issues and Disparities ...................................................................................................................7-1

Mobility and Safety.....................................................................................................................................................7-1 Park Access and Maintenance .............................................................................................................................. 7-8 Urban Forest and Urban Greening...................................................................................................................... 7-8

7.2 Goals and Policies.......................................................................................................................... 7-13

8. ENGAGED COMMUNITIES....................................................................................... 8-1

Engagement Best Practices .................................................................................................................................. 8-1

8.1 Issues and Disparities ................................................................................................................... 8-2

Linguistic Isolation ................................................................................................................................................... 8-2 Internet Access .......................................................................................................................................................... 8-2 Economic Well-Being ............................................................................................................................................... 8-5

8.2 Goals and Policies...........................................................................................................................8-8

9. IMPLEMENTATION ACTIONS AND PROGRAMS ..................................................9-1

9.1 Prioritizing Improvements and Programs that Meet the Needs of EJ

Communities ................................................................................................................................ 9-1

List of Figures

Figure EJ-1: Racial Concentration 1940-2019 ........................................................................................................ 2-5 Figure EJ-2: Median Household Income 1940-2019 ......................................................................................... 2-6 Figure EJ-3: Prevalence of Poverty ........................................................................................................................ 2-7 Figure EJ-4: Life Expectancy .................................................................................................................................... 2-10 Figure EJ-5: CalEnviroScreen Score Components ............................................................................................. 2-11 Figure EJ-6: Structure of EJ Communities Screening Indicators .................................................................. 2-12 Figure EJ-7: Environmental Justice Communities ............................................................................................ 2-17 Figure EJ-8: Sensitive Land Uses, 2021 ................................................................................................................... 3-3 Figure EJ-9: BAAQMD Modeled Diesel Emissions ........................................................................................... 3-6 Figure EJ-10: BAAQMD Modeled PM2.5 Emissions ......................................................................................... 3-7 Figure EJ-11: NO2 and Health Effects ................................................................................................................... 3-8 Figure EJ-12: Air Quality Topic Score .................................................................................................................... 3-9 Figure EJ-13: Groundwater Threats, 2021 ............................................................................................................ 3-11 Figure EJ-14: Hazardous Materials Sites ............................................................................................................. 3-16 Figure EJ-15: Calls for Illegal Dumping ................................................................................................................ 3-17 Figure EJ-16: Pollution Exposure of Sensitive Uses ......................................................................................... 3-18 Figure EJ-17: Code Enforcement Complaints ................................................................................................... 4-3 Figure EJ-18: Childhood Lead Risk .......................................................................................................................... 4-5 Figure EJ-19: Food Access .......................................................................................................................................... 5-3 Figure EJ-20: Head Start Locations ........................................................................................................................ 6-3 Figure EJ-21: Healthcare Locations ........................................................................................................................ 6-4 Figure EJ-22: Oakland Existing and Proposed Bicycle Network, 2019 ........................................................ 7-2 Figure EJ-23: Oakland Transit Network, 2017 ..................................................................................................... 7-4 Figure EJ-24: Sidewalk Gaps in Oakland (2004-2007) .................................................................................... 7-5 Figure EJ-25: Crashes in Oakland 2016-2020 .................................................................................................... 7-6 Figure EJ-26: Parks Walkability ................................................................................................................................ 7-9 Figure EJ-27: Urban Tree Canopy .......................................................................................................................... 7-10 Figure EJ-28: Climate Change Category Score ................................................................................................ 7-12 Figure EJ-29: Community Engagement Spectrum ............................................................................................. 8-1 Figure EJ-30: Limited English-Speaking Ability, Population Ages 5 and Over, 2019 .......... 8-3 Figure EJ-31: Internet Access at Home, 2019 ....................................................................................................... 8-4 Figure EJ-32: High-Wage Jobs by Census Block Group, 2017 (EPA Smart Location Database 3.0) ......................................................................................................................................................................... 8-6

List of Tables and Charts

Table EJ-1: Relationship of other Element Policies to Environmental Justice Topic Areas ... 1-4 Chart EJ-1: Citywide Differences in Health Outcomes by Race, 2020 .............................................. 2-9 Table EJ-2: Environmental Justice Communities Summary ....................................................................... 2-15 Chart EJ-2: Citywide Census Tract Average of CalEnviroScreen 4.0 Pollution Burden Score by Race, 2021 ........................................................................................................................................................... 3-1 Table EJ-3: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Air Quality ......................................................... 3-5 Table EJ-4: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Water Quality .................................................. 3-12 Table EJ-5: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Hazardous Materials/ Illegal Dumping ................................................................................................................................................................... 3-15 Chart EJ-3: Code Enforcement Complaints by Census Tract Racial Majority, 2020 ................ 4-2 Table EJ-6: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Safe, Healthy, and Affordable Homes ............................................................................................................................................................... 4-7 Table EJ-7: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Expanding Healthy Food Access ..... 5-5 Chart EJ-4: Median Percent of Household Income Spent on Energy Costs by Race, 2018 ... 6-5 Table EJ-8: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Equitable Public Facilities ......... 6-5 Chart EJ-5: High Injury Network Crashes by Census Tract Racial Majority, 2018 ........... 7-7 Table EJ-9: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Promoting Physical Activity ...... 7-11 Table EJ-10: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Civic Engagement .................................... 8-7 Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions .................................................................... 9-2

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Executive Summary

Historical and ongoing governmental and industrial practices have led to, and continue to generate racially inequitable outcomes, and longstanding environmental injustices in Oakland. This General Plan outlines actions to work toward undoing the impacts of these past practices and creating a fair and just city. An environmental justice approach seeks to rectify these issues, improving the environmental health of those most harmed by pollution burdens and impacted by historic disinvestment and disenfranchisement by investing in these communities to create opportunities that will allow its residents to live long, healthy lives.

This document, the Environmental Justice Element of the City of Oakland’s General Plan, serves as the foundation for achieving equity and environmental justice when planning for future growth and development in Oakland. The Environmental Justice Element identifies communities that are disproportionately impacted by inequitable and unjust environmental harms, and proposes goals, policies, and objectives to reduce the unique or compounded health risks in these communities, referred to as Environmental Justice Communities.

This document builds upon Oakland’s current regulatory setting for equity and environmental justice, including Oakland Municipal Code Section 2.29.170, which specifies that “the City of Oakland will intentionally integrate, on a Citywide basis, the principles of ‘fair and just’ in all the City does in order to achieve equitable opportunities for all people and communities,” as well as City Council Resolution 89249: Declaring Racism A Public Health Crisis, which states “That the City of Oakland declares racism a public health crisis and recognizes the severe impact of racism on the well-being of Oakland residents and the City overall.”

California law requires that each city and county adopt a general plan to guide its physical growth and development. A jurisdiction’s general plan is its official policy document to create a blueprint for the future of the jurisdiction and guide its development. In California, all cities must adopt a General Plan composed of at least seven elements, including either an Environmental Justice Element or Environmental Justice goals and policies integrated into related elements. Because environmental justice is a cross-cutting topic, Oakland has chosen to adopt a standalone Environmental Justice Element, while integrating environmental justice strategies into policies, goals, and actions across other elements of the General Plan. This approach will enable the City to coordinate interdepartmental efforts to effectively address environmental justice and racial equity. The Environmental Justice Element, as do the other General Plan Elements, uses an equity lens throughout its analysis and focuses on burdened census tracts in the development of its goals, policies, and actions. Therefore, the Environmental Justice Element is rooted in an equity framework in accordance with the General Plan’s Vision Statement and Guiding Principles.

The Environmental Justice Element contains nine chapters. Following the introduction and history sections, the Environmental Justice Element summarizes baseline conditions within Oakland’s communities through the lens of six environmental factors. In general, each of these six chapters contains an overview of an environmental condition, a summary of disparities and communities vulnerable to the factor, and a set of goals and policies specific to that factor. The communities that are highlighted in

each chapter are the highest-scoring census tracts identified by the Environmental Justice Communities screening analysis and Environmental Justice Element Racial Equity Impact Assessment processes as the places that experience the greatest disparities and/or vulnerabilities. Chapter 9 concludes with a comprehensive table of actions to achieve the goals and policies set forth in the preceding chapters. Below are brief descriptions of the contents under each chapter:

• Chapter 1, “Introduction,” presents the background and purpose of the Environmental Justice Element, including statutory requirements. It also outlines the City of Oakland’s process and community engagement efforts undertaken to develop the Element. Further, the chapter outlines the racial equity goals of the Environmental Justice Element and considers the Element’s relationship to other elements of the City’s General Plan and guiding principles.

• Chapter 2, “Environmental Racism and Health Inequities in Oakland,” provides an overview of the historical development and planning decisions of Oakland which have shaped current conditions of environmental disparities. This chapter includes a description of health inequities that have resulted from past planning decisions and defines Oakland-specific Environmental Justice Communities (disadvantaged communities).

• Chapter 3, “Reducing Pollution Exposure and Improving Air Quality,” analyzes the pollution burden, especially on sensitive land uses, in Oakland from air pollution, water contamination, hazardous materials and toxics, and illegal dumping.

• Chapter 4, “Safe, Healthy, and Affordable Homes,” details housing disparities in the City of Oakland, including code enforcement, age of housing stock, and indoor air quality.

• Chapter 5, “Expanding Healthy Food Access,” analyzes Oakland’s food network, including availability of food outlets, food availability, and food quality.

• Chapter 6, “Equitable Public Facilities,” details the distribution of and investment in Oakland’s public facilities, such as infrastructure, school facilities, parks, and transportation and emergency services.

• Chapter 7, “Promoting Physical Activity,” analyzes the barriers to physical activity and health in the city, such as mobility and safety, park access maintenance, and urban forest and greening.

• Chapter 8, “Engaged Communities,” details the City of Oakland’s community engagement efforts and challenges experienced, including an overview of the community engagement spectrum, linguistic isolation, internet access, and employment.

• Chapter 9, “Implementation Actions and Programs,” provides a summary table of the goals, policies, and actions relevant to each of the environmental factors that address the unique needs of Environmental Justice Communities as identified in this Element.

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1. Introduction

Oakland strives to be a city where all neighborhoods thrive, and community members have what they need to lead healthy and productive lives. This includes clean air, land, and water; quality, affordable housing located near jobs and amenities; an enjoyable, accessible network of parks, recreation, and community facilities; access to nutritious food; and other community assets distributed equitably throughout the city. To achieve this goal, the city must respond effectively to the resounding consequences of institutional and systemic discrimination that are reflected in Oakland’s uneven geography of opportunity. This has largely meant that predominantly lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color unfairly and disproportionately experience higher exposure to pollution, greater negative health impacts, and less access to health-promoting resources.

To chart a path forward toward a more equitable city, Oakland has created its first Environmental Justice Element (EJ Element) for the Oakland 2045 General Plan Update. The Environmental Justice movement arose to address our history of unjust governmental actions, find remedies to disproportionate impacts, and builds decision-making power among groups most affected by these harms.¹ Consistent with State requirements, the EJ Element addresses community-identified environmental justice issues related to reducing pollution exposure and improving air quality; promoting safe, healthy, and affordable homes; providing equitable public facilities; expanding healthy food access; promoting physical activity; improving civic engagement; and prioritizing improvements and programs that meet the needs of Environmental Justice Communities (EJ Communities).

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1.1 PURPOSE AND REQUIREMENTS

STATUTORY REQUIREMENTS

The City of Oakland is updating its General Plan, a visionary blueprint for the City’s future over the next 20 years. Senate Bill (SB) 1000,² the Planning for Healthy Communities Act, requires general plans to “identify objectives and policies to reduce the unique or compounded health risks in disadvantaged communities” by means that include, but are not limited to:

• Reducing pollution exposure, including the improvement of air quality;
• Promoting equitable access to public facilities,³ healthy food, safe and sanitary homes, and physical activity;
• Reducing barriers to inclusive engagement and participation in the public decision-making process; and
• Prioritizing improvements and programs that address the needs of disadvantaged communities.

How are “Disadvantaged Communities” defined?

SB 1000 defines a “disadvantaged community” as “an area identified by the California Environmental Protection Agency pursuant to Section 39711 of the Health and Safety Code or an area that is a low-income area that is disproportionately affected by environmental pollution and other hazards that can lead to negative health effects, exposure, or environmental degradation.”¹

Further, SB 1000 defines “Low-Income” as “an area with household incomes at or below 80 percent of the statewide median income or with household incomes at or below the threshold designated as low income by the Department of Housing and Community Development’s list of state income limits adopted pursuant to Section 50093.

What is Equity?

In Oakland, equity means all people have full and equal access to opportunities that enable them to attain their full potential. It means that identity—such as race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation or expression—has no detrimental effect on the distribution of resources, opportunities, and outcomes for Oakland’s residents. Equity differs from equality, which focuses on giving everyone the same thing, regardless of outcomes.

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SB 1000 requires that jurisdictions with “disadvantaged communities” adopt environmental justice goals, policies, and objectives as either a stand-alone Environmental Justice Element or as a set of objectives and policies integrated into other elements. In recognition of the cross-cutting nature of environmental justice topics and the interaction between various elements of the General Plan, the City of Oakland has opted to pursue a combination of both options by creating a standalone element as well as interweaving environmental justice into the policies, goals, and actions of all elements.

While State law uses the term “disadvantaged communities,” the City of Oakland has opted to use the term “Environmental Justice Communities,” (or “EJ Communities”) in line with recommendations from the California Environmental Justice Alliance.2 This is based on the recognition that, in addition to identifying the problems and areas that are unfairly impacted (i.e., “disadvantaged”) by cumulative burdens, gaining equitable access to environmental benefits, investments, and other resources for low-income communities and communities of color is also an important aspect of environmental justice.

RACIAL EQUITY GOALS FOR THE CITY OF OAKLAND + PREVIOUS ONGOING EFFORTS

A guiding principle of Oakland’s General Plan update is to advance the City’s mission to “intentionally integrate, on a Citywide basis, the principle of ‘fair and just’ in all the City does in order to achieve equitable opportunities for all people and communities.”³ This means working to eliminate the root causes of inequity, understanding barriers to achieving greater equity in communities, and working with these communities to develop solutions for long-term and systemic changes. That process begins by undertaking a full acknowledgment of the systemic racial inequities that have shaped the City of Oakland.

The EJ Element builds on the City’s ongoing efforts to achieve racial equity in Oakland. It is based on the frameworks established by the City’s 2018 Oakland Equity Indicators Report, the 2020 Racial Equity Impact Assessment and Implementation Guide for Oakland’s 2030 Equitable Climate Action Plan (ECAP), and other previous studies that have laid the foundation to ensure that the City integrates equity and social justice into its policies, practices, and actions.

In 2016, the City established the Department of Race and Equity to advance racial equity, with a mission “to create a city where diversity has been maintained, racial disparities have been eliminated, and racial equity has been achieved.”⁴ The Department of Race and Equity is particularly concerned with making a difference in the determinants of equity that lead to creation of a fair and just society – including community economic development, community and public safety, the law and justice system, early childhood development, education, equity in City practices, food systems, health and human services, healthy built and natural environments, housing, job training and job opportunities, neighborhoods, and parks and natural resources. The Department of Race and Equity’s goals are:

1. Eliminate systemic causes of racial disparities in City government;
2. Promote inclusion and full participation for all residents of the city; and
3. Reduce race-based disparities in Oakland’s communities.

These goals are based on the following race and equity working assumptions. These assumptions are adapted from the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Race Matters Toolkit,¹ and lay the framework for the Department of Race and Equity’s Race and Equity Change Process.²

• Race matters: Almost every indicator of well-being shows troubling disparities by race.
• Disparities are created and maintained through institutionalized policies and practices that contain barriers to opportunity.
• It’s possible, and only possible, to close equity gaps by using strategies determined through an intentional focus on racial disparities and their root causes.
• If opportunities in all key areas of well-being are equitable, then equitable results will follow.
• Given the right message, analysis, and tools, people will work toward racial equity.

The City recognizes that determinants of equity are the drivers of achieving a fair and just society. Access to the determinants of equity is necessary to have equity for all people regardless of race, class, gender, or language spoken. Inequities are created when barriers exist that prevent individuals and communities from accessing these conditions and reaching their full potential.

RELATIONSHIP TO OAKLAND’S GENERAL PLAN ELEMENTS

The City of Oakland’s General Plan Update project is being undertaken in two phases. Phase 1 focuses on the creation of this new EJ Element, as well as updates to the Housing and Safety Elements, and preparation of a Racial Equity Impact Assessment, Zoning Code and Map update. Subsequently, Phase 2 will update the Land Use and Transportation; Open Space, Conservation and Recreation; and Noise Elements, as well as create a new Infrastructure and Facilities Element. Phase 2 is slated to be completed by 2025.

Because environmental justice topics touch all aspects of Oaklanders’ daily lives, the EJ Element serves as a foundational roadmap to the city becoming a more equitable and healthier place for all. The EJ Element will also inform and give direction to all other elements. The following Table EJ-1 illustrates the EJ topics included in Phase 1 elements and those that will inform policies in the Phase 2 elements. This means Phase 2 is an opportunity to develop additional implementation actions and programs, as well as conduct more in-depth analysis on EJ issues as they relate to the Phase 2 elements and refine the policies in the EJ Element with further study. For example, this Element identifies community needs for additional healthy food outlets, solutions to address pedestrian collisions, and ways to reduce impacts of industrial pollution. In addition to the goals and policies in this EJ Element, the Land Use and Transportation Element could include several additional policies and actions to incentivize grocery store development, improve roadway safety through specific design, and address land use compatibility to protect residents and reduce pollution.

While the EJ Element will be adopted in Phase 1, any additional EJ issues or solutions that arise during Phase 2 can be addressed through follow-up amendments to the EJ Element in Phase 2.

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Table EJ-1: Relationship of other Element Policies to Environmental Justice Topic Areas

Table EJ-1: Relationship of other Element Policies to Environmental Justice Topic Areas

CONNECTION TO VISION AND GUIDING PRINCIPLES

The Environmental Justice Element seeks to create a city where all people have a chance to live a healthy and opportunity-filled life, no matter their identity. The purpose of this Element ties closely with the following portions of the General Plan’s Vision Statement:

We are housed, healthy, and safe. Oakland has high-quality accessible housing for everyone who needs it, and each person is housed with dignity. Every neighborhood, home, school, and park has clean air and fresh water, and Oakland’s children breathe that fresh, clean air as they run, play, and grow. Cool shade from mature trees, scents of flowers, and sounds of birds chirping and bees buzzing enrich lush residential areas. The city’s many grocery stores, farmer’s markets, and garden farmstands offer fresh, healthy food to nurture tables and bodies in all different cultural traditions. Oakland’s homes and communities have healed from historic violence, and crime-free, clean streets and public spaces are safe for people to walk and linger.

We see ourselves reflected in Oakland. Residents shape and craft the City’s processes and outcomes through equitable, transparent, and inclusive processes. The City of Oakland works for its residents, prioritizing their quality-of-life concerns, recognizing and celebrating the contributions of Oakland’s multiple distinct communities of color, including Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous peoples, and actively partnering with community groups and residents. Youth, elders, people with disabilities, immigrants, and people who speak different languages actively participate in government and are empowered to craft a city that meets the needs of all residents; community members can see progress towards their goals through continuous monitoring and feel a sense of ownership of their culturally rich city. The built environment responds to and reflects this richness: its public art, play spaces, and buildings showcase Oakland’s unique diversity and multicultural histories.

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We support meaningful opportunities for residents and businesses to prosper and contribute. Oakland is a beautiful city where people want to live and work, with thriving local businesses and a growing equitable economy that offers high-quality, climate-positive jobs for many different skillsets. New businesses are welcome, and Oakland is a hub for entrepreneurs and companies attracted to Oakland’s skilled workforce and its location at the geographic center of the Bay Area. The city is an incubator of new ideas and green solutions, training the next generation of business leaders through robust workforce development programs. Throughout Oakland, flourishing neighborhood commercial streets are lined with trees and greenery, small businesses, restaurants, and services residents patronize daily, and visitors come from all over to enjoy the local food, art, sports, natural environment, and culture.

We are rooted in Oakland and all neighborhoods have what we need to grow. Oakland’s public facilities are hubs of community activity, as schools, libraries, parks, and open spaces spark connections and inspiration and bring people together for learning, play, growth, and resilience. Children play in clean, safe and accessible parks and spend summers splashing in sparkling lakes, pools, and beaches. Neighborhoods thrive as small villages within the city, where neighbors can support each other, children grow up, elders age in place, and those that were displaced return to their communities. Diverse arts and culture flourish in Oakland, from art and music to food and festivals, and a sense of belonging permeates public spaces filled with gatherings, celebration, and wellness. As residents walk down the street they can hear many languages, see different places of worship, and feel the swell of many people coming together to build something greater. The City’s roots grow stronger every day.

The EJ Element furthers the following General Plan Guiding Principles:

We are housed, healthy, and safe.

1. Facilitate housing production and maintenance throughout Oakland to meet the housing needs of people at all income levels including low- and very-low incomes, workforce and moderate-income households, and shelter for the unhoused.
2. Ensure that every home, neighborhood, school, and park has clean air, water, and land.
3. End community violence and crime through a collaborative and community-led public health approach to violence and healing.
4. Design streets that are safe for walking, biking, rolling, and playing.
5. Ensure that people have access to fresh food, water, and restrooms.
6. Foster quiet neighborhoods that are not impacted by excessive noise from streets, highways, and machinery.

We see ourselves reflected in Oakland.

7. Use equity and results-based accountability to drive decision-making and investments in Oakland, working to overcome intentional and unintentional barriers to fairness, justice, and opportunity.
8. Co-develop solutions with community groups, community members, and the Ohlone people, such that all people of Oakland feel ownership of the city.
9. Fully integrate youth, elders, and persons with disabilities into the community, ensuring that they can access resources and represent their own interests.

We support meaningful opportunities for residents and businesses to prosper and contribute.

10. Promote a thriving and sustainable economy that attracts and retains a diversity of jobs and future-oriented industries that provide opportunities for all Oaklanders.
11. Foster local small businesses as the heartbeat of Oakland.

We are rooted in Oakland and our roots run deep.

12. Strengthen schools, libraries, childcare, and community spaces to support, inspire, and partner with families.
13. Cultivate lush active parks, recreation areas, and quiet green spaces that are accessible, safe, clean, drought-resistant, and well-maintained.
14. Foster Oakland’s neighborhoods as villages within the city that enrich residents with resources, culture, and strong social ties.
15. Work toward a reversal of historic and ongoing displacement.
16. Promote Oakland’s diverse cultural richness, allowing it to thrive and grow through its people, music, gardens, art, history, murals, languages, food, and festivals.

1.2 ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE PLANNING PROCESS

ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND RACIAL EQUITY BASELINE REPORT

The City of Oakland prepared an Environmental Justice and Racial Equity Baseline (EJ Baseline Report) to identify and delineate existing social, economic, and environmental disparities by race and geography that can be influenced directly or indirectly by the General Plan. The findings of the EJ Baseline Report serve to establish a baseline of existing conditions pertaining to environmental justice and racial equity to inform conversations throughout the General Plan Update process between City staff and members of the public, particularly those in communities most impacted by racial inequities that make them vulnerable to the consequences of climate change and other environmental effects.

The EJ Baseline Report is consistent with Oakland’s Results-Based Accountability framework, “a disciplined way of thinking and taking action” to create measurable change in people’s lives. “Results-Based Accountability” is a data-driven decision-making process oriented toward actionable outcomes. This framework starts by defining desired results or goals and works backwards, step by step, toward those means to set a clear path to achieve those outcomes. Indicators measure the extent to which a result is being achieved and help keep track of the City’s progress over time.

The Results-Based Accountability framework is an important aspect of the City’s Race and Equity Change Process, which requires establishing baseline disparity data, targets/benchmarks, and processes to track and report outcomes. The EJ Baseline Report synthesizes recent efforts to paint a comprehensive picture of where the City currently stands along its trajectory toward environmental justice and racial equity and helps to define where policies in the EJ Element can further those objectives.

EJ ELEMENT RACIAL EQUITY IMPACT ANALYSIS

The City of Oakland conducts a racial equity impact analysis (REIA) alongside all emerging or revised plans and policies to support development of equitable, concrete, data-driven, outcome-oriented, and problem-solving actions. The REIA educates about racial disparities; informs about root causes of disparities; engages impacted communities; provides a set of specific recommendations for achieving equitable outcomes; and includes a framework for evaluating the equity impacts of implementation over time.

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A REIA has been prepared in parallel with the EJ Element to guide practices and inform policies that effectively advance racial equity in Oakland. The first stage of the EJ Element REIA focused on the SB 1000 Screening Analysis methodology and results of the EJ Baseline Report. The assessment grades the indicators included in the screening analysis from A, most equitable, to F, most disparate/inequitable to highlight the issues with the most racially disparate outcomes and the neighborhoods facing the greatest disparities within each issue. Applying the REIA to the screening analysis resulted in recommendations for refining the methodology and adjusting indicators to better reflect:

• The City’s top equity issues,
• Community priorities that have been identified through the outreach process,
• Actionable metrics that directly inform planning decisions, and
• Availability of data.

Further, the REIA and recommendations helped determine a more suitable threshold for identifying EJ Communities, as discussed in the following section.

REVISION OF EJ COMMUNITIES MAPPING

Identifying low-income communities most impacted by environmental justice issues (EJ Communities) is a core component of SB 1000 and one of the primary objectives of an EJ Element. The EJ Baseline Report was an important first step in presenting a preliminary screening methodology to identify EJ Communities. This kicked off the iterative process of modifying and refining the methodology to ensure that the final EJ Communities map in this Element is representative of the on-the-ground conditions people experience in their daily lives. In addition, the methodology has been revised using the recommendations from the REIA (described above). The changes that have been incorporated into the final analysis include minor adjustment or replacement of certain indicators from the preliminary screening analysis in the EJ Baseline Report, addition of new indicators, restructuring of indicators into new categories or topics, and removal of two indicators due to data inconsistencies. Section 2.3: Identifying Environmental Justice Communities describes the final methodology and provides a full discussion of the changes that were made to the indicators. A full description of the final indicators is included in Appendix A.

In addition, the criteria and threshold for identifying EJ Communities were expanded to increase the final number of EJ Communities. Using recommendations from the REIA and based on community feedback, including from the West Oakland Community Action Plan (WOCAP) Steering Committee, EJ communities include: (1) census tracts in the top quartile (25 percent) of the screening methodology composite score; (2) census tracts in the top decile (10 percent) of the Pollution Burden, Climate Change, Sensitive Population, and Built Environment category scores; and (3) any Disadvantaged Communities designated by CalEPA pursuant to SB 535. More than one of these criteria may apply to an EJ Community. The results of the EJ Communities mapping process are presented in Section 2.3: Identifying Environmental Justice Communities.

Note: The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), in partnership with Communities for a Better Environment and community members from East Oakland, initiated the first Community Steering Committee meeting for the East Oakland AB 617 Community Emissions Reduction Plan (CERP) process on September 15, 2022. The committee will meet monthly to develop a CERP to improve air quality and public health in the impacted communities of East Oakland. Once the community boundary for the East Oakland CERP is defined by the committee, the EJ Communities Map will be updated to include those communities.

Environmental Justice Communities: A Note on Terminology

The State defines “disadvantaged communities” as “an area identified by the California Environmental Protection Agency, pursuant to Section 39711 of the Health and Safety Code, or an area that is a low-income area that is disproportionately affected by environmental pollution and other hazards that can lead to negative health effects, exposure, or environmental degradation.”

In this EJ Element, we opt to use the term “Environmental Justice Communities” to refer to “disadvantaged communities.”

Although “Environmental Justice Communities” are identified and mapped in the EJ Element to help the City focus on where and how to implement EJ policies and actions, this distinction does not mean EJ issues do not exist in communities elsewhere in the city. The term “EJ Communities” is used in this Element to refer only to census tracts that have been identified as EJ Communities through the SB 1000¹ screening analysis. Communities that experience EJ issues (and may or may not be an EJ Community) are separately referred to as “impacted communities” in this Element.

1.3 COMMUNITY OUTREACH

Proactive and meaningful community engagement from the start of a planning process to the implementation of goals and policies is critical to achieving the goals of environmental justice. A key environmental justice (EJ) principle is involving the communities most impacted by environmental justice issues, and those who could be adversely impacted from policy implementation, so that they can have a say in the decisions that impact their health and well-being. Community engagement in developing this Element included a range of activities intended to meet people where they were. In many instances, community members shared their firsthand knowledge of environmental issues in their neighborhoods, as well as existing community-led efforts and strategies to address these issues. Engagement activities included:

• Community Organization Interviews. Equity facilitators from E/J Solutions interviewed 12 environmental justice advocacy organizations for input on draft actions and the Environmental Justice Element’s topic areas of focus:
  1. Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)
  2. Communities for a Better Environment (CBE)
  3. Cocina del Corazón
  4. The Greenlining Institute (GLI)
  5. New Voices Are Rising (NVR)
  6. Oakland Parks & Recreation Foundation (OPRF)
  7. Oakland Climate Action Coalition (OCAC)
  8. Saba Grocers Initiative
  9. Save the Bay (STB)
  10. Sugar Freedom Project (SFB)
  11. The Village in Oakland (The Village)
  12. West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP)

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• Neighborhood Workshops. On April 30 and May 28, 2022, staff held General Plan open houses in East and West Oakland. At the East Oakland workshop, participants discussed environmental justice concerns in small groups with staff or added sticky notes to boards addressing environmental justice, safety, and housing. At the West Oakland workshop, participants marked up maps with stickers representing key environmental justice issues and discussed EJ issues in small groups with a facilitator.

• EJ Hub and Online Survey. City staff created an online, interactive, educational platform (“GPU Environmental Justice Hub” or “EJ Hub”) to support community engagement and data ground-truthing process for the EJ Element. The EJ Hub showcases information from the EJ and Racial Equity Baseline through an interactive and engaging platform. Using the EJ Hub, residents explored the initial draft Map of Potential Environmental Justice Communities, shared their visions for a healthy neighborhood, and documented local environmental justice issues and solutions. The EJ Hub can be accessed here: https://arcg.is/00iuLT

• Community Tours. On August 29, 2022, Ms. Margaret Gordon, Co-founder and Co-director, and Brian Beveridge, Co-director, of the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP), led the planning team on a tour of West Oakland, a special and instructive opportunity to learn from WOEIP’s extensive community knowledge of environmental justice conditions in West Oakland.

• Cultural Events and Pop-Ups. Between November 2021 to March 2023, the GPU team conducted community events in Eastmont, Fruitvale, San Antonio, Chinatown, West Oakland porch chats, Hoover Elementary in West Oakland, and at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center’s (OACC) Asian Pacific New Year Celebration and the Black Joy parade. Information about these events can be found on the General Plan Update website (https://www.oaklandca.gov/topics/meetings-and-events) and the community engagement collaborative’s website (https://www.deeplyrooted510.org/). Eleven organizations within the collaborative have hosted and conducted community engagement and outreach with their networks at large outdoor or virtual events and pop-ups

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in addition to through social media, with a focus on reaching individuals from communities of color.

• Equity Working Group. The Equity Working Group (EWG) is comprised of individuals who have been highly engaged in Oakland housing, safety and environmental justice, land use issues and solutions. The EWG met 9 times to provide input on the 2023-2031 Housing Element. At 17 meetings throughout 2022, the EWG discussed equity considerations for the Safety and EJ elements. See https://www.deeplyrooted510.org/ewg for more information.

• Stakeholder Interviews. At eight discussion groups held in May 2022, representatives from over 50 agencies, businesses, and community groups participated in small group discussions with project staff.

• Neighborhood Councils. Staff are working with Neighborhood Service Coordinators to present and receive feedback at Neighborhood Council (NC) meetings on topics including housing, environmental justice, industrial lands, and safety and natural hazards.

Some of the key themes from community outreach included the following:

• Industrial Land Use and Air Pollution. One of the most pressing environmental justice issues in Oakland is the disproportionate pollution burden that West and East Oakland neighborhoods face, largely due to proximity to the Port of Oakland, industrial land, and its associated uses, such as truck transport. Coupled with Oakland’s economic history, these land use patterns were created by zoning choices, racial exclusion, and urban renewal. This has resulted in a legacy of polluting uses right next to sensitive uses such as homes, schools, and parks. In times of growing wildfire threat, smoke has also become another burden that adds to existing pollution. A growing body of research indicates that these polluting industrial land uses increase rates of asthma, cancer, and other health issues, as well as decreased life expectancy. The impacted communities are disproportionately communities of color. Related to industrial land uses, input also indicated a lack of enforcement of nonconforming or unpermitted uses, desire for change to zoning or shortening of conditional use permitting timelines, and recommendations for a moratorium on polluting facilities, phasing out certain uses, urban greening, greener employment replacements for these industries, and provision of air filters for existing neighbors. Many of the strategies suggested have greenhouse gas reduction and climate resiliency co-benefits.

• Exposure to Toxics and Hazardous Substances. Even after industrial land uses are discontinued, they may leave behind toxic chemicals and other hazardous substances. There are several Superfund or brownfield sites throughout areas of West Oakland as well as along I-880 that are either undergoing or still require cleanup, known as “remediation.” Active remediation may directly expose on-site and nearby inhabitants to hazardous substances through land, air, and water contamination. Such activities and intermediary uses of Superfund and brownfield sites should consider both the short- and long-term potential for harmful health effects on current and future users.

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• Transportation Safety and Noise. Urban renewal and past land use decisions have also resulted in disproportionate impacts due to freeways and railroads. I-880 and I-980 differ vastly from I-580 in terms of truck traffic and subsequent pollution and road safety because of decisions regarding goods movement that were largely influenced by the more affluent residents living in the hills. Community members voiced concerns about pedestrian and bicyclist safety in neighborhoods near I-880 and I-980, citing traffic collision hot spots like Chinatown as places that need immediate improvement. In addition to air pollution emitted by vehicles along these roadways, noise pollution is another key concern impacting the communities living near freeways and railroads.

• Housing Issues. Some of the top housing issues identified by community members included the homelessness crisis, housing quality issues, and housing affordability. Groups suggested a wide variety of strategies to house the unhoused community, including treating unhoused populations with dignity; stopping the current encampment management policy; facilitating more flexible building types, temporary units, permanent supportive housing, RVs/safe parking zones, tiny homes, manufactured housing; and working with the unhoused community to understand their needs and priorities. The disproportionate representation of Black Oaklanders among unhoused individuals was also emphasized as a key equity issue. Producing new affordable and deeply affordable housing options was identified as a key strategy to prevent displacement. Groups discussed a wide range of strategies to build more inclusive neighborhoods and add more affordable housing units in Oakland, including legalizing existing nonconforming housing units, adopting inclusionary zoning, increasing density in primarily single-family areas such as Rockridge, supporting homeowners in the construction of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), acquiring land to build new permanently affordable housing and community land trust-managed projects, and reducing the amount of discretionary review required for new housing projects. Finally, many Oaklanders described facing housing quality issues such as overcrowding and unsafe building conditions, as well as lack of maintenance resulting from landlord neglect, lack of funds for upkeep, or fear of reporting these issues. Inequitable lead paint risks were also identified as part of the 2021 Racial Equity Impact Analysis: Eliminating Lead Paint Hazards in Oakland and Alameda County. Community-recommended strategies to address these issues included programs/grants to landlords and homeowners to make repairs; universal design improvements to allow all Oaklanders to remain in their homes as they age and to help mobility-impaired residents; and tax credits or programs to address other housing habitability concerns such as indoor air quality. Other issues and recommended strategies are summarized in Chapter 2 of the 2023-2031 Housing Element.

• Equitable Climate Resilience. Oakland’s frontline communities are hit first and worst by environmental injustice and the climate crisis. Although these communities vary in vulnerability to climate issues such as sea level rise, flooding, and energy cost burden, many of these same people and places experience the compounded effect of other environmental justice issues such as lack of access to healthy food, affordable homes, or well-maintained parks. Several community members have emphasized that there is immediate need to implement solutions that strengthen frontline communities’ climate resilience.

• Gentrification and Displacement. Concerns about gentrification and displacement associated with new investment were top of mind for many Oaklanders, especially in light of a significant loss (30 percent) of Oakland’s Black population from 2000 to 2019. People who have generational roots in Oakland have been displaced but continue to come to Oakland to work and be with community. While displacement issues relative to housing costs are discussed in the Housing Element, community members also expressed alarm at displacement of Oakland’s cultural institutions and local businesses, an essential part of Oakland’s culture. Others indicated that this displacement was not new; for example in West Oakland, construction of the BART Station, post office distribution center, and freeway construction destroyed existing black businesses along the 7th Street corridor. Several community members suggested providing targeted support to existing small businesses, and establishing cultural or arts districts to prioritize, promote, and preserve Oakland’s culture.

• Cultural Spaces and Art. Preservation of community culture and diversity was one of the most frequently referenced goals among community members. More than half of all Oakland Visioning Survey respondents mentioned Oakland’s diversity—including race, culture, economics, gender, neighborhoods, and perspectives—as one of its greatest strengths, and around a quarter of respondents also mentioned the Oakland’s wealth in terms of culture, including diversity in art, music and creative spirit. Focus groups and popup interview input also reflect this priority. Oakland is home to a wide array of cultures, and the City seeks to ensure that these diverse practices, expression,

and creativity are seen, respected, and supported. A central goal of environmental justice is to allow everyone to prosper in a healthy community, not by removing the differences between the city’s communities but rather, by fostering welcoming environments for people of all identities and backgrounds to thrive. Community members recommended that the City promote and/or support public and community spaces, programs, and events for cultural learning and acceptance throughout Oakland, and create policies that support Oakland artists, culture makers, and organizations.

• Illegal Dumping and Lack of Public Works Maintenance. Community input also indicated that presence of trash, blight and illegal dumping, and infrequent trash collection and other lack of maintenance were other important environmental justice issues. Beyond being a visual eyesore, community members indicated that illegal dumping has larger public health consequences, forcing some to veer off sidewalks into dangerous roadways, raising concerns about hazardous materials, blocking creeks and worsening flooding, starting fires, and leading to general feelings of neglect and abandonment by the City. Illegal dumpers often target and leave waste in homeless encampments, where unhoused residents may be less likely to report for fear of “sweeps.” Illegal dumping and lack of waste receptacles or maintenance in public areas such as parks and sidewalks also reduce people’s ability to enjoy public spaces and to access them for physical activity that promotes health and well-being. Recommended strategies included more stringent enforcement of illegal dumping, more frequent pickup in “hot spots,” amnesty programs such as free disposal days for bulky and hazardous waste, and incentives for recycling, education, and community ambassador programs.

• Pedestrian and Bicyclist Comfort and Safety. Some community members indicated that they or someone they knew had been involved in a collision with a vehicle as a pedestrian or bicyclist. Others noted that roads in some areas are poorly maintained and suffer potholes. Potential solutions included a suite of transportation improvements, including speed bumps, more bike lanes and stations, improved public transit, street improvements to make walking and biking safer, reducing car traffic overall, and maintaining roads.

• Need for Health-Promoting Resources in Neighborhoods. Many community members pointed out the inequitable investment in community health assets, such as high-quality parks, clean and well-maintained public restrooms, schools, and community facilities; local retail that meets daily needs; arts and cultural facilities; affordable and quality housing; and accessible healthcare. They also pointed to inequitable distribution of health harms, such as polluting facilities, proximity to freeways or truck routes, and illegal dumping. Consistent with SB 1000 guidance and the City’s racial equity goals, community members emphasized that City improvements, investments, and policies should specifically focus on prioritizing needs of communities that have suffered the most harm due to past planning decisions.

• Tree Canopy and Green Infrastructure. The importance of addressing equity in Oakland’s urban tree canopy was emphasized, as well as the urban forest’s role in mitigating negative effects of climate change. Urban forestry resources have many co-benefits including providing shade and reducing urban heat, filtration of some air pollutants, serving as visual and sound buffers, supporting natural habitats and ecosystems, and boosting economic value of neighborhoods. Tree canopy can vary substantially due to tree species, age, and maintenance. Lack of proper maintenance can hinder a tree’s ability to provide its many benefits. Additionally, urban greening projects have been identified as the highest priority in the East Oakland Neighborhoods Initiative Community Plan. Recommended considerations include development of a maintenance plan for all public trees along streets and sidewalks and in parks, as well as expansion of urban greening projects in EJ Communities, and equitable implementation of the Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) Plan.¹

• Food Access. An absence of affordable options for healthy, nutritious food in combination with a concentration of retailers such as liquor stores and fast food outlets that do not offer such choices can lead to an unhealthy food environment that limits the ability to make healthy food choices. The high cost of food was identified as one of the biggest barriers to good nutrition. Community members voiced a need for an equitable distribution of affordable grocery stores, farmers markets, and community gardens to enable food sovereignty in all neighborhoods. Participants also spoke of need to support smaller independent grocers, smaller vendors, and other organizations who are already located in communities underserved by food retail.

• Accountability and Community Empowerment. While Oakland has made strides in addressing racial equity and adopting policy to remedy environmental justice issues, many community members felt like the City could do better in building and maintaining relationships with community groups. Some felt distrustful that an institution that perpetuated past harms would seek to truly turn community input into action. Others emphasized the importance of developing solutions with community, rather than just for the community, as a power-building mechanism. Solutions included active, paid partnerships with community organizations; feedback loops during outreach processes that communicate any current City limitations and identify actions to reduce/remove these barriers; and mechanisms to track how effective policies are and how they are being implemented.

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2. Environmental Racism and Health Inequities in Oakland

2.1 HISTORICAL CONTEXT / ROOT CAUSES

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM AS A HISTORICAL PROCESS

Past land use planning and zoning decisions have played a large role in shaping current environmental justice problems. Setting a course from the present to the future calls for an understanding of our current conditions, which in turn requires an understanding of historical trends in population change, land use, housing, economic opportunity, transportation, and other factors that have made Oakland the city it is today.

Oakland was founded in 1852¹ on unceded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, the native stewards of the land dating back thousands of years. After arrival of Spanish missionaries in the 1760s, Ohlone peoples were forced into labor camps at missions and baptized into the Catholic faith. During and after this time, Oakland expanded and urbanized at the further expense of the Ohlone people, their sacred sites, tribal cultural preservation, and tribal political status.¹ Nevertheless, this land continues to be of great importance to the Ohlone people.²

Disparities in social, physical, and economic environments and conditions continued in eras of industrial growth, which brought about significant change to the urban environment and increased residential segregation. Oakland was historically a destination for working people and immigrants due to the abundant industrial jobs and relatively affordable neighborhoods. Many neighborhoods often became cultural and ethnic enclaves when residents of color were barred from living in other parts of the city by segregationist policies, enforced with violence.

In Oakland, as in cities across the nation, communities of color were impacted by the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s federal housing redlining policy, the practice of identifying majority-white areas as sound and profitable real estate investments and heavily subsidizing them through the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), while simultaneously refusing to insure mortgages in and near majority-Black neighborhoods and other communities of color. These areas were rated as “D”, or “Hazardous,” and color-coded as red on the infamous “Residential Security” maps created by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC). Residents of these “redlined” neighborhoods, including West Oakland and East Oakland, were denied access to credit, resulting in a cycle of disinvestment and poverty and creating the circumstances for long-term racial segregation. To prevent their own neighborhoods from being redlined, majority-white private developers, realtors, and homeowners were encouraged to write racially restrictive covenants into their deeds that further inhibited Black residents and other residents of color from moving into these areas.

Research shows that neighborhoods that were historically redlined are today more likely to suffer greater poverty, increased heat, lower life expectancy, higher incidences of chronic diseases, increased prevalence of poor mental health, and lower life expectancy at birth.³

Using Redlining to Help Identify EJ Communities

The City can begin to redress the inequities brought about by discriminatory actions and practices by acknowledging the harm they have caused and perhaps more importantly, by recognizing that they continue to cause harm especially to low-income communities and people of color. For this reason, redlining is an indicator used in the SB 1000 Screening Analysis methodology to help identify EJ Communities in Oakland. Specifically, the methodology uses the grades that the Home Owners Loan Corporation assigned to various neighborhoods throughout Oakland in the 1930s to compare the places that benefited most from their grade A (“Desirable”, shown in green on the image to the right) versus the areas that continue to face the repercussions of redlining (grade D, “Hazardous”, shown in red on the image to the right).

Industrial growth during the World War II era further established Oakland as a hub for economic opportunity and jobs, which attracted an influx of Black and African American populations from the South (one of the waves of “Black migration”), many of whom settled in neighborhoods near their jobs, such as by the railroad in West Oakland. Following the war, federal policies like the GI Bill sponsored returning white veterans to settle into suburbs by providing low interest mortgages and loans, enabling what is known as “white flight.” These same financial incentives were denied to veterans of color, and the continued practice of redlining and racially restrictive covenants further delineated economic disparity and racial segregation.¹

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In the 1950s, eminent domain, a process in which local redevelopment agencies condemned areas as “blighted” and seized properties from homeowners and tenants to facilitate demolition, severely undermined and led to drastic displacement in major centers of Black culture and community, such as West Oakland, in addition to other historic communities settled in the 19th century such as Chinatown. These communities were devastated in the 1950s and 1960s by the demolition and construction associated with freeways, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) facilities, and urban renewal. When neighborhoods were divided, families lost their homes, businesses closed, and neighbors left – all of which undermined a community’s ability to thrive.²

Spotlight: Urban Renewal in West Oakland

By 1958, the Oakland Planning Commission had declared that all of West Oakland was blighted. This action set the stage for the displacement and reconstruction of predominantly Black neighborhoods. Many West Oakland residents did experience poor housing conditions. However, these conditions directly resulted from systemic racism, disinvestment, and discriminatory lending practices that restricted access to home improvement and maintenance loans.³

In West Oakland alone, government agencies used eminent domain to build the West Oakland Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station, elevated tracks along 7th Street, three major interstate highways (the Nimitz/I-880, Grove Shafter/I-980, and MacArthur/I-580), and a sizeable postal facility. While the plans for the highways were designed by the State Department of Public Works, the Oakland City Council selected the exact routes. Clearing land for those projects destroyed entire blocks of homes and thriving commercial districts, displacing many residents and small business owners permanently.⁴

About 8,000 housing units were razed in West Oakland between 1960 and 1966, contributing to the displacement of nearly 14,000 low-income residents from this historic center of Black culture and community.⁵

While greater areas of East and North Oakland became open to Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Asian families beginning in the 1950s, many of these same areas were experiencing disinvestment and deterioration of housing and public spaces, along with a massive loss of employment in nearby industrial sectors. This disinvestment led to innumerable abandoned and underutilized business properties along Oakland’s main corridors, which suffered greatly as purchasing power fell and consumers, particularly wealthier white residents, went elsewhere to live and shop.

Lack of investment was Oakland’s dominant economic story from the 1950s into the 1990s. Through waves of plant and store closures and redevelopment sites standing vacant for decades after demolition, the City searched for private investment wherever it could be found. Most of the major projects that were built, whether downtown high-rises or in transportation infrastructure, were led by the public sector. At the same time, disinvestment in Oakland’s flatlands neighborhoods became apparent in the high levels of abandonment of single-family homes in the 1970s, deterioration of public housing developments, persistent redlining, and denial of loans or insurance in communities of color. This period of public and private disinvestment also reflected in communities’ physical and social infrastructure—such as crumbling streets, under-resourced schools, lack of jobs, limited healthcare infrastructure, and increases in crime—alongside growing social unrest. Contemporary hardship and tensions escalated as serious health problems were sensationalized by the War on Drugs and the crack cocaine epidemic that disproportionately targeted Black Oaklanders.¹,² During this period, resistance to oppression also shaped the city, and community groups born in the 1960s such as the Black Panther Party, Oakland Community Organizations (OCO), Unity Council, Intertribal Friendship House, and many others continued to organize and demand protections and equal access to jobs, housing, employment, transportation and services.³

Since the late 1990s, Oakland has seen an increase in real estate investment, which has had both positive and negative effects. In the years leading up to the 2008 housing crash and Great Recession, banks engaged in a process referred to as “reverse redlining” through which predatory lending practices and subprime loans were targeted in the same neighborhoods that were once marked as off-limits for borrowers.⁴ This resulted in waves of foreclosures in East and West Oakland. A significant number of these foreclosed properties were then acquired by investors, and once-affordable and stable homes were flipped overnight into market-rate rentals.

An influx of private capital, partly due to efforts like the City’s 10K Initiative to revitalize the urban core, has reinvigorated downtown and uptown.⁵ At the same time, rising housing prices and a lack of new affordable options created waves of residential and commercial gentrification, especially in North and West Oakland and Chinatown, with a growing pattern of displacement in East Oakland.⁶ Massive regional job growth, particularly in the technology sector, coupled with inadequate housing supply in other cities, sent waves of new residents to the East Bay in search of more affordable homes.⁷ The impacts of the lack of regional housing supply rippled through other residential areas of the city, where communities of color faced greater vulnerability to rising housing costs than white residents.⁸

Types of Neighborhood Change: Gentrification and Displacement

The relationship between gentrification and displacement is complex.

Gentrification is a type of neighborhood change that occurs when new investments in a historically disinvested neighborhood lead to socioeconomic change.⁹ When policies and community involvement adequately support the process, these investments can be a positive force of change such as more housing, increased home values for those who are able to be homeowners, and improved amenities like street trees and lighting that enhance safety and comfort in public spaces. Gentrification can also be a negative force, however, when the economic and cultural changes that come with gentrification make existing residents and local businesses unable to afford increased taxes or feel uncomfortable or unwelcome among new neighbors.

Displacement, or the forced relocation of residents and businesses,¹⁰ can occur when lack of investment in sufficient housing in neighborhoods creates competitive pressure that leads new residents to displace existing ones rather than move into new homes. There are also different types of displacement, as explained by the Uprooted Project¹¹:

• Direct displacement: Residents can no longer afford to remain in their homes due to rising housing costs or other actions like lease non-renewals, evictions, landlords not maintaining homes, etc.
• Indirect displacement: Units being vacated by low-income residents are no longer affordable to other low-income households (also known as ‘exclusionary displacement’).
• Cultural displacement: Changes in the aspects of a neighborhood that have provided long-time residents with a sense of belonging and allowed residents to live their lives in familiar ways.

The direct and indirect displacement of residents, driven by the inequitable housing market, threatens not only households but the cultural identity and viability of existing communities. Nowhere has the impacts of these changes been more visible than on Oakland’s streets, as homelessness increased 83 percent between 2017 and 2022 (from 2,761 to 5,055 individuals).¹ The Black/African American racial group has continued to be disproportionately represented, making up about 60 percent of all sheltered homeless individuals – nearly three times the proportion that Black/African Americans represent in Oakland’s total population.² Although the individual causes for homelessness are complex, there are key structural reasons why Oakland has one of the worst homelessness crises in America, namely a catastrophic shortage of deeply affordable homes on top of salient issues including structural racism, unstable rental markets for tenants, systemic barriers to housing for the formerly incarcerated, a lack of living wage job opportunities, and inadequate mental health services.

From 2000 to 2019, Oakland lost nearly 30 percent of its Black population and significant numbers of long-time Asian communities residing in ethnic enclaves including Chinatown.³ The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated racial and economic disparities in housing security; the pandemic has also shown the public health outcomes of Oakland’s housing disparities.⁴ Figures EJ-1 and EJ-2 map the geographic change in racial and economic makeup of Oakland through time. It is noted that the definitions of race/ethnicity and measures of income have also changed to reflect social changes; these maps are limited to available data by census tract. Figure EJ-1 shows how patterns of racial segregation have evolved, with increasing diversity along I-580, but have also maintained a majority-white concentration in the western Oakland hills and majority-non-white concentrations in the flatlands. This map also demonstrates how the makeup of communities of color have changed; majority Black neighborhoods in West and East Oakland (in blue) have turned majority Hispanic/Latinx (in orange) between 2000 and 2019, which is especially true in East Oakland. Figure EJ-2 shows how median household income also follows a similar spatial pattern. The areas in light green represent neighborhoods with the highest income, which generally overlap with areas that have white majorities. In the same manner, areas with the lowest income shown in dark blue are generally clustered in West Oakland, San Antonio, and East Oakland. These patterns of inequity are further demonstrated by the disparity in current (2019) poverty level by race shown in Figure EJ-3.

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Figure EJ-1: Racial Concentration 1940-2019

Notes: Historic Census Tracts from Decennial Census. All other features (e.g., streets, city limits) are as existing (2021). Asian/Pacific Islander and Hispanic/Latinx populations were not distinguished from "other" races until 1980, and Asian and Pacific Islander were not separated until 2000. Tracts mapped by racial plurality (majority or greatest proportion). Port of Oakland/OAK airport areas masked out from 1960 onwards as low population areas.

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*Includes Pacific Islander 1980-90.

SOURCE: IPUMS NHGIS, University of Minnesota, 2021; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA County GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

Figure EJ-2: Median Household Income 1940-2019

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Distribution of Median Household Income*

Percentile Range

*1960 and 1970 reflect average household (families and unrelated individuals) incomes rather than median due to data limitations.

Notes: Historic Census Tracts from Decennial Census. All other features (e.g., streets, city limits) are as existing (2021). Port of Oakland/OAK airport masked out from 1960 onwards as low population areas.

Figure EJ-3: Prevalence of Poverty

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Percent Households below Federal Poverty Level
Natural Jenks

Base Map

SOURCE: ACS 5-Year Estimates, 2019; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2022

2.2 LAND USE AND HEALTH

HEALTH INEQUITIES

"There is increasing recognition that the environments in which people live, work, learn, and play have a tremendous impact on their health. Re-shaping people’s economic, physical, social, and service environments can help ensure opportunities for health and support healthy behaviors. [Because] health and public health agencies rarely have the mandate, authority, or organizational capacity to make these changes, ... responsibility for the social determinants of health falls to ... housing, transportation, education, air quality, parks, criminal justice, energy, and employment agencies."

- Adewale Troutman and Georges C. Benjamin, American Public Health Association

Health in All Policies: A Guide for State and Local Governments, 2013

Health inequities are differences in health outcomes “that are a result of systemic, avoidable, and unjust social and economic policies and practices that create barriers to opportunities.”¹ As described the previous section, a history of structural racism has contributed to persistent inequities that are exacerbated by an increasing gap in social and economic inequalities.

Varying levels of access to opportunities and resources across neighborhoods, combined with disproportionate exposure to threats such as air pollution, soil contamination, traffic congestion, substandard housing, and increased social and generational trauma, comprise what SB 1000 refers to as “unique or compounded health risks.” To a large extent, land use decisions determine how both environmental health threats and public health resources are distributed. For example, adjacent incompatible land uses, such as industrial and residential, can expose residents to higher levels of pollution and noise. Such proximity can increase the risk of asthma or other respiratory diseases, while constant, excessive noise can increase stress, anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, heart disease, and more.

What are “unique or compounded health risks”?

A “health risk” is a hazard to human health. Some hazards (such as lead, asbestos, floods, and heat waves) may be dangerous enough to harm human health on their own. Other hazards are less acute on their own but become harmful when they coincide with other health risks. This is a compounded health risk.

Today, people are often exposed to multiple health risks, such as asbestos and air pollutants, while experiencing poverty and living in neighborhoods with poor access to fresh and affordable foods. These overlapping conditions are experienced more often by EJ Communities. The inequitable distribution of resources that promote health, coupled with the concentration of environmental pollution and other hazards, is what SB 1000 refers to as the unique or compounded health risks that impact EJ Communities.

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The Link Between Racism and Poor Health Outcomes

On June 7, 2022, the Oakland City Council adopted Resolution 89249 officially recognizing and declaring that “racism is a public health crisis in the City of Oakland and throughout the United States and the world.” The Resolution also accentuated the City’s commitment to address and alleviate the ongoing impacts of racism. In doing so, the City of Oakland joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Medical Association, and the American Public Health Association in explicitly recognizing racism as a threat to public health.

The Resolution reaffirms a growing body of research on the problematic relationship between systemic racism and the social determinants of health. Structural racism shapes the distribution and quality of the social determinants of health, such as housing, neighborhood conditions, income, employment, public safety, and education, which significantly impact individual and community health. Thus, racial and ethnic health disparities are primarily due to inequities in exposure to environmental risk factors and access to health-promoting resources rather than biological differences between racial groups.²

As described in Section 2.1, a history of discriminatory policies and land use decisions has also shaped who lives where in the city, creating differences in health outcomes that are correlated with (or follow similar patterns to) race. Chart EJ-1 shows how white populations have a much lower average rate of coronary heart disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease than Black, Asian, and Hispanic/Latinx populations. In fact, the average incidence of these health outcomes for white people is lower than the population-wide average, while Black, Asian, and

Chart EJ-1: Citywide Differences in Health Outcomes by Race, 2020

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Hispanic/Latinx populations experience higher rates than the citywide average. These findings are also supported by data from the Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD), which show that there are racial disparities in health outcomes for cancer-related deaths, rate of low-birth-weight infants, and life expectancy at birth.

These factors, along with others, affect life expectancy overall based on geography: data from the Alameda County Public Health Department (ACPHD) show a nearly 20-year difference between the Oakland census tract with the highest and lowest life expectancy at birth. As shown in Figure EJ-4, tracts in East Oakland generally have lower life expectancies, and the tracts with the lowest life expectancies are Fitchburg/Hegenberger and Brookfield Village, both at less than 72 years – more than 10 percent lower than the citywide average.

HOW PLANNING AND LAND USE IMPACT HEALTH

Land use regulation is an essential determinant of health because it shapes the physical environment of neighborhoods, and in turn, can expand or restrict access to opportunities for everyday physical activity, healthy foods, economic growth, social connections, and more. Further, the protection of residents’ public health, safety, and welfare is the legal basis for land use regulation.

The section below summarizes how land use planning and the built environment influence health outcomes.

Reducing Pollution Exposure, Improving Air Quality

In virtually every community, people may be exposed to pollution daily through direct contact with air, food, water, and soil contaminants. This is especially true for those who live near highly polluting land uses. Certain types of pollution exposure disproportionately impact those with higher risk factors such as age or underlying health conditions. Socioeconomic conditions that increase stress, decrease access to health care, or make healthy living difficult further compound the adverse health effects of pollution. In times of growing wildfire threat, smoke is another burden added to existing pollution.

Exposure to multiple sources of pollution, such as freeway traffic, the Port, and industrial sites, disproportionately burdens many EJ Communities in Oakland. These communities are also on the front lines facing the challenges associated with adapting to the impacts of climate change. Identifying the sources, types, and quantities of pollution across Oakland neighborhoods, as well as their change over time, is essential to determine the best solutions.

Promoting Safe and Healthy Homes

Many homes in Oakland, particularly in lower-income areas where renovations have either not occurred or are substandard, are likely to contain lead-based paint, mold, mildew, asbestos, unvented biproducts of methane (“natural”) gas combustion, and other toxic materials. These conditions put adults and children at risk of conditions including lead poisoning and asbestosis, which can result in lifelong detrimental health impacts. Despite the risks, many low-income families cannot afford to move out of or remediate these conditions.

Housing location is as impactful as structural conditions. For example, proximity to pollution sources, such as freeways or industrial facilities, worsens indoor air quality. In addition, some housing may not have adequate access to economic opportunities or public services and facilities.

Promoting Healthy Food Access

Food access refers to a person’s ability to access nutritionally adequate, culturally appropriate, and affordable food. Having a sufficient income to purchase healthy food and the proximity or ability to travel to a food source that offers nutritionally adequate, culturally appropriate, and affordable food are essential elements of equitable access.

Promoting Physical Activity

Differences in the quality of and access to safe and well-maintained places to walk, play, and exercise in Oakland’s communities lead to a range of adverse health outcomes. Land use choices that do not consider how far jobs, parks, schools, healthy food resources, and other community facilities are from neighborhoods can result in increased reliance on cars and less active transportation, which in turn contributes to higher rates of diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.

Environmental justice policies must promote physical activity and address the equitable distribution of active transportation (i.e., pedestrian and bicycle) networks and the distribution of parks, open spaces, and urban green spaces.

Figure EJ-4: Life Expectancy

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Life Expectancy (years) Natural Jenks

Base Map —— Major Roads ⬬⬬ City of Oakland —— Alameda County

SOURCE: Alameda County Public Health Department, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

Promoting Public Facilities

Many EJ Communities in Oakland do not have adequate access to a wide range of essential facilities such as libraries, health centers, or parks. If the facilities exist, they may be neglected or in poor conditions, creating safety hazards.

SB 1000 refers to "public facilities" as "public improvements, public services, and community amenities." These may include transit facilities, public restrooms, parks, open spaces, health centers and clinics, schools, daycare centers, libraries, museums, community centers, community facilities, and recreational facilities (such as senior or youth centers).

Civic Engagement/Reducing Barriers to Inclusive Engagement and Participation

Ensuring that all community members—especially those most impacted by environmental pollution and other hazards—can meaningfully participate in any civic decision-making process is key to planning for environmental justice.

Creating accessible and culturally appropriate opportunities for low-income, underrepresented, and linguistically isolated stakeholders to engage in local decision-making will help identify and resolve EJ issues.

Prioritizing Improvements and Programs in EJ Communities

Environmental justice seeks to improve the environmental health of those most harmed by pollution burdens by intentionally investing in the most impacted communities to create opportunities for their residents to live long, healthy lives.

EJ Communities may have specific needs requiring singular actions to ensure that existing conditions are improved and not exacerbated. In addition, effective prioritization would ensure that policies and programs benefiting EJ Communities are implemented promptly.

Lastly, prioritizing improvements and programs for EJ Communities may also help the City access public funding dedicated to benefiting EJ Communities.

2.3 IDENTIFYING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE COMMUNITIES

PURPOSE AND DEFINITION

Environmental Justice (EJ) Communities (referred to as “disadvantaged communities” in SB 1000) are low-income areas that are disproportionately impacted by environmental pollution and other hazards that can lead to adverse health effects. EJ Communities are eligible for special funding considerations, as well as targeted environmental justice efforts and investments. EJ Communities should also be recognized by the City and uplifted in order to equitably allocate opportunities and resources.

State law (SB 1000) requires jurisdictions to identify EJ Communities. This can be as simple as identifying the census tracts that the State designates pursuant to SB 535, which relies on the CalEnviroScreen methodology developed by the California Environmental Protection Agency Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA). Alternatively, local jurisdictions have the option to refine this process using a more locally responsive methodology such as by including local and hyperlocal datasets. Oakland has chosen to take this second approach to identifying EJ Communities.

CalEnviroScreen

The California Communities Environmental Health Screening Tool, or CalEnviroScreen, is a mapping tool developed by CalEPA’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) to help identify California communities that are disproportionately burdened by multiple sources of pollution. Last updated in October 2021, the methodology currently uses 21 indicators measuring cumulative pollution burden and population characteristics that make communities particularly vulnerable to pollution. As illustrated below, each of the indicators falls under one of four components that are grouped, weighted, and combined to calculate the final CalEnviroScreen score.

The overall CalEnviroScreen score is often used to describe the interaction between cumulative pollution burden and population vulnerability, but each of the indicators that make up the score are also important pieces of information. Some of these topics are mapped and discussed in this Element to show how individual EJ issues affect communities throughout Oakland.

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METHODOLOGY

The first step in the process of identifying and mapping Oakland's EJ Communities began with the EJ Baseline Report. In line with State law requirements and objectives, the EJ Baseline Report included a preliminary screening analysis that evaluated whether low-income areas are disproportionately affected by environmental pollution and other hazards that can lead to adverse health effects, exposure, or environmental degradation. It does this by broadly analyzing possible disproportionate burdens according to all topic areas required by SB 1000. The screening analysis also considers issues unique to Oakland, such as illegal dumping, and issues not reflected in CalEnviroScreen, such as local vulnerability to climate change and redlining.

As mentioned, the preliminary screening analysis combined a series of indicators, or quantitative metrics that evaluate environmental justice issues, to identify disproportionate impacts across each of the eight SB 1000 topic areas: (1) pollution exposure, (2) public facilities, (3) food access, (4) safe/sanitary homes, (5) physical activity, (6) unique/compounded health risks, (7) civic engagement, and (8) prioritization of environmental justice communities' needs. From there, each of the indicators were scored using a methodology that ranks all 113 census tracts in the City from highest (1.00, representing the most burdened) to lowest (0.00, representing the least burdened). This is referred to as a "percentile ranking" because the relative rank of each tract corresponds with a composite score on a scale of 0.00 (0 percent, or 0th percentile) to 1.00 (100 percent, or 100th percentile). By calculating the relative ranks/scores, this methodology is suitable for highlighting the places that are comparatively most burdened by environmental justice issues in the City.

The preliminary methodology from the EJ Baseline Report used 50 indicators grouped into four categories: race and poverty, pollution burden, sensitive populations, and built environment. Each category is made up of two to four topics, as illustrated in green below. Revisions to the preliminary methodology are shown in orange and are discussed in the following section.

Figure EJ-6: Structure of EJ Communities Screening Indicators

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Note: Climate Change was a topic under the Pollution Burden category in the preliminary methodology but has been revised as a separate category in the updated methodology.

Individual indicator scores were calculated using the percentile ranking methodology described above. Topic scores are calculated from the sum of the individual indicators that make up the topic. For example, the Water topic is comprised of the Groundwater Threats and Impaired Water Bodies indicators, which are added together and translated into another percentile score for Water. The same process is repeated at the topic-level to calculate category scores, and category scores are combined using this method to calculate the overall composite score. In other words, each level of the hierarchy "rolls up" to the final composite score. Finally, this score was used to identify the top 25 census tracts with the highest cumulative burden scores as potential EJ Communities in the EJ Baseline Report.

An initial REIA assessed this methodology, highlighted gaps in the analysis, and provided recommendations for improvement. The final methodology used to identify EJ Communities in this Element has consequently been refined based on these recommendations, including the removal, addition, and adjustment of indicators to better align them with a focused set of selection guidelines, including the following considerations:

• How well does the indicator measure an SB 1000 topic, such as health disparities?
• Does the indicator/metric reflect community priorities for change?
• Is the indicator actionable, and can City policy directly or indirectly impact it?
• Is the data currently available?

The final methodology includes 53 indicators, maintaining many of the same categories and topics as the preliminary screening analysis. Since the Baseline Report, the following changes have been made to the set of indicators which include revisions in response to REIA recommendations:

• The following indicators have been replaced:
  • Low-Income Area Indicators. The preliminary screening analysis included low-income area indicators that aligned with State definitions of “low-income areas.” These categorical indicators undermined the percentile ranking system used to compare Oakland’s census tracts because of the limited number of categories. In other words, areas with similar median household incomes all received the same score even if the proportion of low-income households differed. The new low-income indicator was created to better illustrate the concentration of low-income households in each census tract. The new indicator measures the percentage of households making less than 30 percent of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Area Median Family Income (HAMFI).¹
  • Asthma Indicators. The preliminary analysis included two indicators for asthma: a “Pediatric Asthma Attributable to Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2)” indicator and a “Rate of Adult Asthma” indicator. The former indicator was sourced from the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP) and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) partnership studying hyperlocal air quality in West Oakland.² The latter indicator was sourced from the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) PLACES dataset. To more comprehensively capture the health impacts of air pollution on asthma outcomes for all ages, the updated analysis replaced these two indicators with “Asthma Emergency Department Visits” data from CalEnviroScreen (version 4.0). It is noted that hyperlocal data is used in the screening analysis when the data is currently available and complete for the entire city. The indicator “Mortality Attributable to NO2” (within the Health topic) is one such hyperlocal indicator.
  • Urban Heat Island Indicators. The preliminary screening analysis included an “Urban Heat Island Index” indicator developed by California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) in 2015. To use a more locally specific dataset for a period relevant to the 2040 General Plan, the updated analysis replaced this with an indicator on “Projected Average Maximum Temperature during Future Heat Health Events” from the California Heat Assessment Tool (CHAT). The CHAT was developed as part of California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment published in 2018. The new indicator is a more understandable metric over which the City has direct influence through changes to the built environment.
  • Park Access. The preliminary analysis measured low park access as the percentage of population that is not within a 10-minute walking distance of a park. This indicator was revised to account for updated information regarding park access such as including regional parks and removing parks that are closed or not publicly accessible. In addition, the updated indicator is more spatially precise because it measures the number of housing units by parcel that are located outside a 10-minute walking distance of publicly accessible, open parks instead of estimating the percentage of population by census block group. See Appendix A for full data dictionary and more information about data sources.
• The following indicators have been added:
  • Proximity to Industrial Zones. Represents how close certain communities live to industrially zoned areas, which are common sources of pollution.
  • Proximity to Farmers’ Markets. Measures how far communities live from farmers’ markets, which can be an alternative source of food as well as a cultural asset through its function as a community gathering space.
  • Proximity to Existing Community Gardens. Measures distance to the closest community garden, which not only serves as a local food source but also helps provide access to green spaces in the city.
  • Energy Cost Burden. Measures how much of their income a household spends on energy costs. It represents vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, which can increase energy costs such as greater need for air conditioning as temperatures increase.
  • Extreme Commutes. Measures the percentage of workers whose commutes are 90 minutes or longer. It represents a low-level of jobs-housing fit (lack of affordable housing near jobs) as well as increased transportation burden.
  • Incomplete Plumbing or Kitchen Facilities. Measures the percentage of households that lack complete plumbing or kitchen facilities. Both of these indicators are used by HUD as a proxy for substandard housing conditions.
  • Free or Reduced Price Meals (FRPM). Measures the proportion of students enrolled at each school receiving FRPM, representing food insecurity.
• The following indicators and topics have been restructured:
  • Redlining. The Redlining indicator, previously under the Neighborhood Disinvestment topic of the Built Environment category, has been moved to the Race topic in the Race and Poverty category. Because the Race topic has fewer indicators than Neighborhood Disinvestment contributing to its score, moving Redlining into Race places greater weight to the indicator — meaning that it has more impact on the overall composite score.

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• Climate Change. The Climate Change topic was promoted to a category, independent of the Pollution Burden category. The methodology now accounts for five distinct, equally weighted categories rather than four.

• Green Space. The indicators for Park Access and Lack of Tree Canopy were grouped into a new topic, outside of the Neighborhood Disinvestment topic, but still part of the Built Environment category.

• Toxic Releases. This indicator was moved from the Hazardous Materials topic to the Air Quality topic (both within the Pollution Burden category) after closer review of the CalEnviroScreen 4.0 measure for toxic releases from facilities, which measures the extent to which facilities that make or use toxic chemicals can release these chemicals into the air.

• Lead Exposure. This indicator was moved from the Air Quality topic (Pollution Burden category) to the Housing topic (Neighborhood Disinvestment topic, Built Environment category) after closer review of the CalEnviroScreen 4.0 measure for children’s lead risk from housing, which estimates the percentage of low-income households with children in older housing structures that have a higher likelihood of containing lead-based paint hazards.

Other revisions made in response to REIA recommendations include “flipping” some indicators, including Life Expectancy, Median Household Income, Active Commutes, and Community Facilities so that they measure negative outcomes. This means that higher scores indicate greater burden/impact for all indicators. Additionally, the evictions indicator was revised to measure the number of evictions per renter rather than for all residents to better control for areas that are predominantly owner-occupied.

A few indicators were removed entirely from the EJ Communities screening methodology: Distance to Healthcare Facilities and Lack of Vehicle Ownership. Distance to Healthcare Facilities was omitted because of the complexity of factors that contributed to its anomalous outcomes. In particular, tracts with the farthest distances to healthcare facilities were predominantly located in the Oakland hills, which tend to have higher median incomes, less populations of color, and lower rates of negative health outcomes. Rather, the geographic distribution of low-density neighborhoods increases distances to services such as healthcare facilities that are generally located closer to civic centers like Downtown. Moreover, inequitable access to healthcare is often impacted by financial rather than geographic barriers. For example, mapping lack of health insurance generally aligns with patterns of poor health outcomes (according to the CDC's PLACES dataset), both of which have higher values in lower-income areas despite nearby health facilities. Similarly, the Lack of Vehicle Ownership indicator was initially revised to measure households that do not own two or more vehicles (i.e., own zero or only one vehicle) to help account for voluntary lack of vehicle ownership, which tends to occur in places well-served by transit such as Downtown; however, this metric was ultimately removed due to its interdependence with transit access and in light of the City’s climate objectives to reduce reliance on driving. Nevertheless, inclusion of certain indicators over others does not preclude them as issues that should be considered in the EJ Element. The Element explores a robust range of topics that are all assessed in combination with the findings of the EJ Communities mapping process. Ultimately, this approach allows the EJ Element to serve as the keystone and guiding resource for integrating environmental justice in the General Plan, especially for elements that will be prepared in subsequent phases (as noted in Section 1.1).

After calculating scores for all 53 indicators and combining these into the topic, category, and overall composite score, criteria and cutoff thresholds were applied to determine which census tracts are formally identified as EJ Communities. These criteria and thresholds have been informed by the REIA. Similar to the CalEnviroScreen methodology, which identifies the most impacted communities as those in the top 25th percentile of census tracts statewide, the EJ Baseline Report identified preliminary EJ Communities as the top 25 highest-scoring census tracts in Oakland (corresponding to the top 22nd percentile in the city) by overall composite score. Community input voiced concerns that this initial approach did not capture enough areas to reflect the on-the-ground conditions and lived experiences of the most impacted and burdened communities in the city. Based on this feedback and recommendations from the REIA, the number of identified EJ Communities has increased from 25 census tracts to 48 census tracts, based on the following, in order of consideration:

1. Is the census tract among the top 25th percentile of overall composite scores (i.e., greater than or equal to 0.75)?

2. Is the census tract among the top 10th percentile of any of the category scores (i.e., scoring 0.90 or higher for Race/Low Income, Pollution Burden, Climate Change, Sensitive Population, or Built Environment)?

3. Is the census tract designated as a Disadvantaged Community per SB 535?

If any of these criteria are met, the census tract is included in the final list of EJ Communities, presented in the next section.

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RESULTS

As summarized in Table EJ-2, there are 48 total census tracts that have been identified as EJ Communities in the City of Oakland: 29 are in the top 25th percentile by composite score, 12 additional census tracts are in the top 10th percentile of any one of the category scores, and seven additional census tracts have lower scores, but are designated by CalEPA as SB 535 Disadvantaged Communities (as of May 2022). These census tracts are mapped on Figure EJ-7.

Among EJ Communities, the top contributing category is Sensitive Populations, for which there are 26 census tracts that score among the top 25th percentile, and the average score is 0.74. Meanwhile, the individual indicators that have the greatest number of EJ Communities scoring in the top 25th percentile include Very-Low Income (26 tracts, 0.734 average), Proximity to Industrial Zones (26 tracts, 0.729 average), and Lack of Health Insurance (23 tracts, 0.731 average).

While the purpose of the screening tool is to identify the most cumulatively burdened census tracts, each indicator on its own reveals geographic disparities. Each section of this Element lists the neighborhoods (by census tract) that score in the top decile for related indicators, and EJ Communities included among these neighborhoods are prioritized for related City action and investment.

A full table of scores for each indicator is included in Appendix A.

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Table EJ-2: Environmental Justice Communities Summary

Table EJ-2: Environmental Justice Communities Summary

1. Some census tracts may meet more than one criterion, but table shows only the first one met, in order of: (1) Top 25% Composite (Top 25%), (2) Top 10% Category (Category), and (3) SB 535 Disadvantaged Community (SB 535).

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Figure EJ-7: Environmental Justice Communities

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SOURCE: City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA County GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2022

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3. Reducing Pollution Exposure and Improving Air Quality

Clean air, water, and land are some of the building blocks for healthy neighborhoods. However, Oakland’s urban setting, economic history, and past policy and land use choices mean that communities in West and East Oakland, primarily communities of color, experience some of the highest pollution levels in the state. As discussed in Section 2.2, high pollution exposure has a direct impact on human health, leading to disproportionate levels of negative health outcomes like asthma, cardiovascular disease, or cancer in communities burdened by pollution. This section covers existing environmental factors such as pollution and other natural and human-made environmental hazards that affect Oakland residents. It identifies baseline conditions related to the SB 1000 topics of pollution exposure, air quality, and unique or compounded health risks. In addition to environmental justice, these topics correspond most closely with the Land Use and Transportation, Open Space, Conservation, and Recreation (OSCAR) and Safety Elements of the General Plan.

3.1 ISSUES AND DISPARITIES

POLLUTION BURDEN

Oaklanders experience pollution of various kinds: air pollution, water contamination, and exposure to hazardous materials. Exposure to these pollutants varies significantly, with higher concentrations in EJ Communities. Pollution exposure occurs when people come into direct contact with air, food, water, and soil contaminants. While Oakland has a relatively lower CalEnviroScreen 4.0 Pollution Burden score than the rest of California, this relatively low citywide value hides the disproportionate pollution burden experienced by some Oakland communities. Chart EJ-2 below shows that there are higher concentrations of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities living in census tracts that have higher pollution burden scores, meaning that they are more at risk than white populations. Residents living in EJ Communities often live close to polluting industrial uses or adjacent to freeways and major truck routes. This disproportionate exposure directly impacts the health of vulnerable populations.

On average, census tracts in Oakland have an overall CalEnviroScreen 4.0 Pollution Burden percentile score of 44.3, meaning that census tracts in the city are less impacted by environmental effects and exposures than more than half of tracts in California. However, four of Oakland’s tracts rank in the top 10th percentile in the entire state for pollution burden: Port Upper, Jingletown/Kennedy, Melrose, and Brookfield Village/Hegenberger – all of which are identified as EJ Communities in this Element.

Chart EJ-2: Citywide Census Tract Average of CalEnviroScreen 4.0 Pollution Burden Score by Race, 2021

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Note: Race is assigned to the racial group with the plurality (highest proportion) within a census tract.

Source: CalEnviroScreen 4.0, CalEPA, 2021

SENSITIVE LAND USES

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) defines sensitive receptors as “children, elderly, asthmatics, and others who are at a heightened risk of negative health outcomes due to exposure to air pollution,” and the locations where these sensitive receptors congregate, such as schools and schoolyards, parks and playgrounds, daycare centers, nursing homes, hospitals, and residential communities, are considered sensitive receptor locations (also referred to as sensitive land uses).¹ In the short and long term, an individual’s exposure to pollution of any kind (air, water, or land) in their community can lead to chronic conditions or negative health outcomes including asthma or increased risk of cancer. Communities of color are at higher risk for exposure to pollution and hazards in neighborhood environments at an early age. Exposure to these conditions, particularly during sensitive developmental stages, contributes to health disparities later in life.² As discussed earlier in Section 2.1, a history of racially discriminatory policies and practices have created inequitable development patterns in Oakland that expose BIPOC communities and low-income communities to greater concentrations of pollution and other health risks.

Data from the Alameda County Public Health Department shows that residents of West Oakland and Downtown Oakland have higher rates of asthma emergency room visits as well as stroke and congestive heart failure compared to the rest of the city. On the other hand, residents of the Oakland hills are expected to live up to seven years longer than those from the flatlands in West Oakland and downtown.³ These outcomes are not a coincidence; legacy land use decisions based on racially discriminatory practices (discussed in Section 2.1) have resulted in and perpetuated environmental injustices such that Oaklanders with the least ability to pay for and recover from environmental health threats are also the most impacted.

Land use incompatibility is one of the most important contributors to environmental burdens on an EJ Community. Mixing sensitive land uses with known or foreseeable pollution or natural hazards can create or compound health risks. According to WOEIP’s 2002 report, “Neighborhood Knowledge for Change”, 10 percent of sensitive sites in Oakland, like schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters were located within one-eighth of a mile of industrial facilities at high risk for chemical accidents. Figure EJ-8 maps the location of existing sensitive land uses in Oakland, with residential areas shown in yellow. Since 2002, the proportion of sensitive uses other than residentially zoned areas shown in Figure EJ-8 that are within one-eighth of a mile of high- or very-high hazard ranking industrial facilities has increased to over 30 percent.

AIR QUALITY

Outdoor air pollution comes from many sources, such as vehicle exhaust, construction and industrial activities, smoke from fireplaces and wildfires, and pollen from local plants. Transportation and industrial sites can release exhaust and chemicals that contribute to increased rates of asthma, congestive heart failure, and stroke. These pollution sources exacerbate health impairments and increase the economic burden from hospitalizations and healthcare. In Oakland, the concentration of sites that release chemical pollution is four times higher in high-poverty neighborhoods than that of more affluent neighborhoods.⁴ Census tracts in West and East Oakland are particularly affected by air pollution due to their proximity to traffic and industrial uses.

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Figure EJ-8: Sensitive Land Uses, 2021

SOURCE: California Department of Social Services, 2021; Oakland Unified School District, 2021; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA County GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

Types of Air Pollutants

Following the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tracks six common air pollutants, called "criteria air pollutants" that are found all over the U.S. and have been shown to harm human and environmental health as well as cause property damage. These criteria air pollutants are ground-level ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide (CO), lead, sulfur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). EPA calls these pollutants "criteria" air pollutants because it sets National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for them based on the latest scientific information regarding their effects on human health or welfare. In addition to the NAAQS, criteria air pollutants in California must meet State standards established by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Both the national and State standards help protect the public from harmful pollutants.

Of criteria air pollutants, particulate matter finer than 2.5 micrometers in size (PM2.5) poses the greatest health risk because they can penetrate deep into the lungs or even get into the bloodstream, resulting in a wide range of health effects.¹ PM2.5 commonly comes from combustion sources of all fuel types, including diesel, along with particulates such as from road dust.

Certain air pollutants are known to increase the risk of cancer and/or other serious health effects. These are classified as "toxic air contaminants" (TACs, known federally as "hazardous air pollutants"), some of which do not have a safe level of exposure (i.e., any amount of exposure is considered substantially harmful). One of the most concerning TACs is diesel particulate matter (DPM), which is a type of PM2.5 that is emitted as exhaust from diesel fuel combustion.

The West Oakland Community Action Plan (WOCAP) identifies 89 potential community-level strategies and control measures intended to reduce criteria pollutant and TAC emissions and decrease West Oakland residents' exposure to TAC emissions.

Mobile Sources

Mobile air pollution sources include on-road motor vehicles (cars and trucks) and off-road vehicles and equipment (such as aircraft, trains, and ocean-going vessels) and are Oakland’s primary source of air pollution. Exhaust and chemical outputs from the transportation and industrial sectors, including the Port of Oakland, contribute to the climate crisis and increased rates of asthma, congestive heart failure, and stroke, as well as as increased economic burden from hospitalizations and health care.² Ocean-going vessels and trucks serving the Port bring disproportionate levels of diesel pollution and fine particulate matter to West Oakland and communities living along the I-880 and I-980 freeway corridors. In addition to degrading local air quality, these toxic pollutants are absorbed in soils and contaminate groundwater. Heavy rains and floods bring pollutants to the surface, contaminating streets and waterways.

New regulations from CARB will require, starting in January 2023, that every vessel coming into a regulated California port, such as the Port of Oakland, use either shore power (e.g., plug in to the local electrical grid) or a CARB-approved control technology to reduce harmful emissions, such as diesel particulate matter and nitrogen oxides (NOx). The Port of Oakland is also in the beginning stages of designing infrastructure that would help transition to carbon-free, heavy-duty trucks and cargo-handling equipment, including the replacement of a substation and electrical infrastructure for generating solar power.

Stationary Sources

Stationary air pollution sources include industrial facilities, gasoline stations, power plants, dry cleaners, waste disposal, and sites of other commercial and industrial processes. Stationary sources resulted in 26 percent of the city's total PM2.5 emissions in 2018. The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD or "Air District") is the local air pollution control district for the San Francisco Bay Area Air Basin and regulates stationary sources of air pollution. Permitted stationary sources of TACs in Oakland include industrial facilities, gasoline stations, power plants, dry cleaners, waste disposal facilities (such as landfills and wastewater treatment plants), and other commercial and industrial processing sites (such as metal processing and chemical manufacturing facilities).

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Utilizing Local Data to Map Block-by-Block Air Pollution

Conventional air monitoring is conducted by a network of stationary air quality monitors dispersed throughout an area. Agencies such as CalEPA and BAAQMD operate their own networks. Private and non-profit partners can help supplement air quality monitoring data by providing additional monitors throughout their communities. However, estimating local levels of pollution is difficult because air monitoring stations are typically located many miles away from each other, and the data from these stations has to be averaged and/or estimated at a level that can mask out significant levels of pollution in certain neighborhoods.

Community groups in West and East Oakland have partnered with researchers at the Environmental Defense Fund and the University of Texas at Austin and technological companies like Google and Aclima to map, measure, and analyze pollution data at the neighborhood level, where pollution can be eight times higher at one end of a block compared to the other.

The Planning and Building Department has partnered with WOEIP to incorporate data from this study into this EJ Element. The EJ Communities screening analysis and maps included in the Baseline Report and this Element have utilized this hyperlocal data wherever feasible. This EJ Element directs the City to further incorporate more finer-grained community data to inform City programs and policies.

Diesel particulate matter, primarily emitted by industrial sources such as container ships and ocean-going vessels, cargo-handling equipment, railyards, trucks, and industrial operations of Port tenants, is concentrated in the industrial areas of West Oakland and along western portions of I-880, as shown in Figure EJ-9. Many of these industrial uses depend on truck transport on designated routes, which bring disproportionate levels of diesel pollution, fine particulate matter, and black carbon to West and East Oakland along the I-880 and I-980 freeway corridors due to the truck ban on I-580. As a result, PM2.5 is concentrated primarily along the I-980 and I-880 freeways in the southern half of the city, as shown in Figure EJ-10. Nitrogen oxides (NOx), a precursor to ground-level ozone (a criteria air pollutant tracked by CARB), are also generally concentrated in the industrial parts of West Oakland and the Oakland International Airport. Policies in the EJ Element seek to reduce concentrations of particulate matter and air pollutants and protect sensitive uses from pollution’s existing effects. In partnership with the West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project (WOEIP), the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) conducted a Health Impact Assessment of Oakland that further refined the localized health risks of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations to Oakland residents.¹ Using data from this study, Figure EJ-11 shows where the mortality (proportion of annual deaths) attributable to NO2 is greatest in Oakland. Figure EJ-12 shows how Oakland neighborhoods are affected by air quality overall, with the census tracts in blue and dark blue being the most burdened according to our Air Quality topic indicators. The Air District is leading a coordinated regional effort to generate community-based solutions for improving air quality and public health in impacted communities, pursuant to Assembly Bill (AB) 617. AB 617 requires local air districts and CARB to reduce air pollution in the most impacted communities through several methods, including development of Community Emissions Reduction Plans in collaboration with community members. In 2018, West Oakland was selected for this program. WOEIP partnered with BAAQMD to develop the West Oakland Community Action Plan, which focused on reducing exposure to pollutants from sources such as Port-related activities, trucks, industrial sources, road dust, and residential burning. In 2021, East Oakland was selected for the program. The Air District, in partnership with Communities for a Better Environment and the East Oakland community, initiated the first Community Steering Committee meeting for the East Oakland AB 617 Community Emissions Reduction Plan process on September 15, 2022. The committee will meet monthly to develop a Community Emissions Reduction Plan to improve air quality and public health in the impacted communities of East Oakland.

The City will support these efforts through land use or zoning changes to limit additional air quality burden in EJ Communities shown in Table EJ-3; prioritizing air quality improvements, such as distribution of air filters, priority urban greening or buffering, or other strategies to protect existing residents; using BAAQMD tools² in assessing impacts and requiring higher air filtration ratings in new development, continuing to implement recommendations in the 2030 ECAP, and coordinating with community groups.

Table EJ-3: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Air Quality

Note: Bolded census tracts in blue are EJ Communities. * Indicates census tract with low population.

Figure EJ-9: Modeled Diesel PM Concentrations

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DPM Concentrations (micrograms/m3) 1-km Grid by Decile Range

Base Map

SOURCE: BAAQMD, 2021; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA County GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

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SOURCE: BAAQMD, 2021; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

Figure EJ-11: NO2 and Health Effects

Note: Data provided courtesy of EDF as published in the Bay Area Air Pollution HIA (2021).

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SOURCE: West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project/Environmental Defense Fund, 2021; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA County GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

Figure EJ-12: Air Quality Topic Score

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SOURCE: City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA County GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2022

Building Resilience: West Oakland Community Action Plan (WOCAP)

In 2018, WOEIP partnered with BAAQMD to develop the West Oakland Community Action Plan (WOCAP): “Owning Our Air.” The plan was adopted by BAAQMD and CARB in 2019 and set ambitious goals to protect the community’s health. The WOCAP sets targets to reduce disparities in air quality and ultimately achieve improvements that match today’s cleanest air quality for all neighborhoods in West Oakland by 2030.

The 2020 Annual Report highlights progress on implementation, including 29 replacements for low-emission equipment, four Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value (MERV) 16 air filters installed at schools, and incorporation of relevant strategies in the West Oakland Truck Management Plan, among other early implementation wins.

The EJ Element includes several policies that support implementation of the WOCAP to continue reducing air emissions in the West Oakland AB 617 Community. The Element also directs the City to support similar processes and outcomes in other areas of the city that are disproportionately affected by air pollution.

WATER QUALITY

The quality of the water that people drink, use, and play in has a direct effect on their health, and when the sources of this water are compromised, the contamination can make people sick. The quality of water infrastructure—or the services through which residents obtain their water—also plays a pivotal role in public health. However, all too often, infrastructure investments align with the geography of wealth, resulting in underinvestment and disinvestment in low-income communities and communities of color. As a result, people of color are more likely to live in areas with higher rates of contaminated water, stormwater and wastewater overflows, and increased risks of flooding.¹

GeoTracker is a statewide data management system for sites that impact, or have the potential to impact, water quality in California, with emphasis on groundwater. This database contains records for sites that require cleanup, such as leaking underground storage tanks (LUSTs), Department of Defense Sites, and Cleanup Program Sites. GeoTracker also contains records for various unregulated projects as well as permitted facilities including irrigated lands, oil and gas production, operating permitted underground storage tanks, and land disposal sites. Additionally, the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) maintains the California Integrated Water Quality System (CIWQS) to monitor and regulate environmental places of interest such as agricultural facilities and operations that may affect water quality. CalEnviroScreen assesses threats to groundwater quality based on these two databases.

While most Oakland residents have access to high-quality drinking water, groundwater threats like LUSTs, gasoline stations, military cleanup sites, and industrial sites including the airport are some of the water quality issues that affect many parts of Oakland. According to CalEnviroScreen 4.0, more than half of Oakland’s census tracts score in the 80th percentile or higher for groundwater threats. As mapped in Figure EJ-13 these census tracts are generally located closer to the waterfront, whereas census tracts with lower scores (i.e., that are less exposed to groundwater threats) are generally located in the Oakland hills. As sea level rise and climate change affect Oakland into the future, rising groundwater tables could worsen groundwater contamination threats.² Several policies and actions in the Safety Element direct further study of the potential impacts of sea level rise on groundwater contamination.

An example of recent local groundwater contamination occurred in 2020, when the Oakland Unified School District shut down McClymonds High School in West Oakland for a week after officials found trichloroethylene, a cancer-causing chemical, in the groundwater under the school. The source was likely the five active cleanup sites within half a mile of the school. The City will continue to support the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board and California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to assess cleanup sites in EJ Communities with high groundwater contamination threat.

A consortium of cities and agencies, including Oakland, work to protect water quality in the county through the Alameda County-wide Clean Water Program. This program regularly monitors and conducts special studies of the county’s creeks, wetlands, and the San Francisco Bay to assess the watershed; inspects industrial and commercial business facilities; provides public information and engages the public; ensures municipal maintenance; regulates new construction development; and prevents stormwater pollution from illicit discharges, pollutant spills, and construction activities. Additionally, the City will continue to support implementation of the Port of Oakland’s Sanitary Sewer Management Plan, which aims to prevent sanitary sewer overflows in Port-owned infrastructure, and the Port’s Clean Water Program, which helps keep contaminants out of the Bay through permits, public education, development requirements, testing and monitoring, and illicit discharge detection and elimination.

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Figure EJ-13: Groundwater Threats, 2021

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SOURCE: CalEPA Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, 2021; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

In 2019, the City of Oakland developed a Green Stormwater Infrastructure Plan¹ that complies with SWRCB’s Municipal Regional Stormwater Permit², helps implement the Alameda Countywide Clean Water Program, and seeks to protect and restore Oakland’s watersheds. “Green stormwater infrastructure” refers to a variety of practices and engineered facilities designed to detain and clean, capture and reuse, or infiltrate stormwater runoff to reduce the volume of runoff and improve water quality. In accordance with the City’s Resilient Oakland Playbook, Oakland will use green stormwater infrastructure to manage stormwater and reduce minor localized flooding risks, as well as provide urban greening benefits, such as improved air quality and reduced urban heat island effects, especially for neighborhoods that have limited access to parks and green space.

To address water quality issues, the City will continue to collaborate with water providers, support residents and businesses in avoiding stormwater and groundwater contamination, and prioritize implementation of green stormwater infrastructure projects in EJ Communities shown in Table EJ-4 in partnership with community groups. EJ Communities are shown bolded and highlighted in Table EJ-4.

Table EJ-4: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Water Quality

Note: Bolded census tracts in blue are EJ Communities.

1. Only includes 11 tracts in top decile due to ties. Next highest score for Impaired Water bodies is 0.68.

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HAZARDOUS MATERIALS AND TOXINS

Industrial activities and related transportation and logistics infrastructure, including freeway and rail corridors, have been a central part of the city’s economic history and development. Though regulation and oversight of these sites have become more stringent over time, the historic and current use, storage, or transport of hazardous materials as part of these industrial and commercial operations have resulted in soil and groundwater contamination from spills or leaks of hazardous materials or petroleum products, even recently.

People may be exposed to hazardous materials through three possible pathways:

• Breathing: When contaminants attach to small dust and soil particles or occur as a vapor, breathing can expose people.
• Eating or Drinking: Exposure can happen when people eat or drink contaminated water, food, specks of dust, or soils. Children that suck their fingers or chew toys contaminated with dust or soils may be exposed.
• Direct Contact: Skin can absorb some contaminants from direct contact with contaminated dust and soil particles, the contaminants themselves, or vapors.

There are several types of hazardous sites in Oakland: cleanup sites, hazardous waste sites, and solid waste sites. Toxic release sites and threats to groundwater may also result in exposure to hazardous materials and are described in the preceding sections.

The Safety Element includes goals, policies, and actions related to hazardous materials and toxins, such as review of proposed facilities, enforcement of standard conditions of approval for investigation of remediation, and coordination with other agencies. The EJ Element expands on these policies and actions to help further reduce impacts of hazardous materials on sensitive receptors.

Cleanup Sites

Superfunds are sites that are part of an environmental program established to address abandoned hazardous waste sites. Superfunds have levels of contamination that may pose a threat to human life. Superfund cleanup involves placing sites in a National Priorities List and establishing an appropriate cleanup plan. The EPA is responsible for removal actions, enforcement, and community involvement.

Other cleanup sites that are not federally owned are regulated by a cleanup program conducted by SWRCB or any of the nine Regional Water Quality Control Boards. Examples include rail yards, ports, equipment supply facilities, metals facilities, industrial manufacturing and maintenance sites, dry cleaners, bulk transfer facilities, refineries, landfills, and some brownfields. Unauthorized releases detected at cleanup sites vary but could include hydrocarbon solvents, pesticides, perchlorate, nitrate, heavy metals, and petroleum constituents, among others.

A brownfield is a property where contamination is present and may complicate future use of the site. Generally, these sites are cleaned up by the owner, previous owner, or state governments. Brownfields can indirectly and directly impact public health in many ways. Brownfields can affect community cohesion and morale, for example, due to the presence of abandoned and derelict structures, especially in EJ Communities that suffer from a disproportionate number of brownfield sites. Brownfields can also have negative economic impacts if continued operation of existing on-site infrastructure including roads, sewer, and electricity diverts City funds that could be used for services elsewhere.¹ Brownfields can also directly impact public and environmental health due to contamination that can pollute soil, air, and water resources on- and off-site.² Contaminants often found at brownfield sites include lead, petroleum, asbestos, arsenic, and volatile organic compounds from manufactured chemicals such as degreasers and paint strippers. These contaminants can cause serious health problems, including mesothelioma, lung cancer, kidney damage, and birth defects.³

Cleaning up and reinvesting in these properties can help reduce disparities in adverse health outcomes by preventing exposure to hazardous substances. Revitalizing brownfield sites also offers opportunities to bring jobs back into an area, clean up blight in a neighborhood, increase community connectivity, restore local ecologies, reduce the effects of urban heat islands, and promote physical activity and recreation.

Hazardous Waste Sites

Hazardous waste sites may contain chemicals that are harmful to health. Only certain facilities are allowed to treat, store, or dispose of this type of waste. Hazardous waste can range from used automotive oil to highly toxic waste materials produced by factories and businesses. The Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) maintains data in the EnviroStor Hazardous Waste Facilities Database and Hazardous Waste Tracking System on permitted facilities that are involved in the treatment, storage, or disposal of hazardous waste as well as information on hazardous waste generators. Although this database includes information about illegal and abandoned sites, it is noted that it may not necessarily capture all incidences of potential exposure to hazardous materials in a community.

According to EnviroStor and GeoTracker as of March 2022, there were approximately 1,700 documented hazardous materials sites throughout Oakland, mainly located near the southern half of the city and in West Oakland (Figure EJ-14). While more than half are “closed” cases (e.g., have been cleaned up or taken other corrective action), numerous hazardous materials sites may still contain contaminants that pose a threat to the public and environment if these sites were disturbed without appropriate protective or remediation measures. Almost a quarter of all sites are actively being remediated and five percent of sites are currently operational and certified to handle hazardous materials. In tandem with the Safety Element, which includes several policies to minimize health and safety impacts related to the use, storage, manufacture, and transport of hazardous materials, policies in the EJ Element support improving land use compatibility, performance standards to avoid health and safety impacts to sensitive uses, and changes to conditional use permitting that phase out incompatible uses more quickly. Impacted communities most burdened by hazardous materials are shown in Table EJ-5.

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SOLID WASTE SITES

Solid waste sites are places where garbage from homes, factories, or businesses is collected, processed, or stored. These include landfills and composting or recycling facilities, most of which require permits to operate. As of July 2021, there were 14 solid waste facilities in Oakland, with the largest concentration in East Oakland, north of the Coliseum. According to CalRecycle’s Solid Waste Information System (SWIS) database, six of the 14 solid waste facilities in Oakland are active: two facilities operated by Bee Green Recycling & Supply, one operated by Asphalt Shingle Recyclers, one by Independent Recycling Services in the Coliseum Industrial Complex, and two by California Waste Solutions facilities in West Oakland. The number of solid waste sites and facilities in predominantly Latinx census tracts is over seven times higher than in predominantly Asian census tracts, and nearly five times higher than predominantly white census tracts. The census tracts with the most solid waste sites and facilities include Melrose, Port Upper, and Lockwood/Coliseum/Rudsdale, while 63 census tracts in the city have none at all.

Institutional Framework and Responsibilities

There are a number of federal, State, regional, and local agencies that are responsible for addressing hazards. These agencies are described in detail in Section 3.1 of the Safety Element. Facilities that are subject to cleanup, permitting, enforcement, and investigation efforts are tracked by the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC)’s EnviroStor database and include sites such as Federal Superfund (National Priority List) and State Superfund sites, military facilities, voluntary cleanup sites, and school sites being evaluated for possible contamination. The State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB) maintains the GeoTracker database to regulate leaking underground storage tanks (LUSTs); Department of Defense facilities; spills, leaks, investigations, or cleanups; and landfills. As described in the Safety Element, the City will work closely with agencies responsible for monitoring, enforcement, and cleanup, in addition to community-based organizations working on environmental justice issues.

ILLEGAL DUMPING

Abandoned trash, or illegal dumping, also contributes to an unhealthy and unsafe living environment and has a negative impact on neighborhood quality. Illegal dumping can contribute to land, water, and air pollution in a neighborhood and may contain harmful substances. Accumulation of illegal dumping can also be fire hazards. Figure EJ-15 shows the rate of service requests received by the Oakland Call Center (OAK 311) for illegal dumping per 1,000 people in each census tract. In general, tracts along the freeways, particularly I-880 and I-580, have higher rates of illegal dumping and geographically correspond with the West Oakland and East Oakland neighborhoods (with some exceptions). Tracts in the Oakland hills to the northwest have very few reports of illegal dumping in comparison. West and East Oakland already face environmental burdens from surrounding industrial operations, existing recycling facilities, freeways, and other uses. While some of this dumping is household waste, some businesses and individuals hire unlicensed haulers, who sometimes drop loads on public property. Dumpers may also target and leave their garbage illegally at encampment sites, which exacerbates the challenges faced by unhoused individuals already dealing with difficult living conditions. Environmental Justice Communities most burdened by illegal dumping are shown in Table EJ-5.

City efforts to tackle illegal dumping include the creation of Oaktown PROUD, a campaign by and for Oaklanders, to Prevent & Report Our Unlawful Dumping. The campaign’s strategy for reducing illegal dumping organizes City and community efforts into the three E’s (focus areas): Education, Eradication, and Enforcement. As a part of the Oaktown PROUD outreach campaign to reduce littering and dumping, the City is working with Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) high school students, teachers and administrators to manage the Oaktown PROUD Student Ambassador Program, detailed below. Students take the knowledge they have gained to educate people about the problem of litter and dumping in Oakland and provide resources and guidance on what they can do to help.¹

The City has also taken steps to eradicate illegal dumping. The Public Works Department proactively sends Garbage Blitz teams to clean up known hot spots and illegal dumping. In 2019, the City established an Environmental Enforcement Officers (EEOs) unit, a team of civilian investigators who monitor heavy dumping sites and refer cases for legal action when necessary. EEOs enforce and keep illegal dumpers accountable by contacting suspected dumpers, encouraging them to abate blight using available services, and issuing citations when adequate evidence is found. Since its inception, the Oaktown PROUD campaign has continued to be implemented in partnership with the City Council, neighborhood advocates, community-based organizations, and businesses.²

Table EJ-5: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Hazardous Materials/Illegal Dumping

Note: Bolded census tracts in blue are EJ Communities.

• Indicates census tract with low population.

1. Only includes 11 tracts in top decile due to ties. Next highest score for Solid Waste Sites is 0.88, and next highest for Illegal Dumping is 0.66.
2. Maximum score is 0.92 due to ties.

Building Resilience: Oaktown PROUD

Oaktown PROUD is a campaign by and for Oaklanders to reduce illegal dumping and improve our neighborhoods. The campaign name contains an urgent call to action for all Oaklanders to "Prevent & Report Our Unlawful Dumping (PROUD)." The Oaktown PROUD campaign uses the City of Oakland’s Three E’s strategy to reduce illegal dumping by organizing City and community efforts into three focus areas: Education, Eradication and Enforcement. As a part of the Oaktown PROUD outreach campaign to reduce littering and dumping, the City of Oakland is working with OUSD high school students, teachers, and administrators to manage the Oaktown PROUD Student Ambassador Program. This program was sparked by ideas from Oakland students and currently operates at Oakland and Skyline high schools. The focus of the students' work is to take the knowledge that they gain through a summer program and use that information to educate people about the problem of litter and dumping in Oakland and provide resources and guidance on what they can do to help.

Source: Oaktown PROUD website

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Figure EJ-14: Hazardous Materials Sites

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Envirostor Status

• ○ Active
• ○ Certified
• ○ Refer

Geotracker Status

• ■ Active
• ■ Open
• ■ Pending Review
• □ Informational Item

Base Map

• [---] City of Oakland
• [---] Alameda County
• Parks
• Residential Areas

SOURCE: ESA, 2022; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA County GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2022; DTSC, 2021; SWB, 2021

Figure EJ-15: Calls for Illegal Dumping

Includes Open, Referred, Work Order Created, Evaluated (No further action), Unfunded, and Closed cases.

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SOURCE: City of Oakland, 2021; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2022

Figure EJ-16: Pollution Exposure of Sensitive Uses

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Pollution Burden Category Score Within Existing Sensitive Uses

Base Map — Railroads — Major Highways — Major Roads [ ] City of Oakland [ ] Alameda County

SOURCE: City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2022 Sensitive uses include existing residential uses, schools/educational facilities, religious/institutional uses, and hospitals.

3.2 GOALS AND POLICIES

GOAL EJ-1 REDUCE POLLUTION, MITIGATE THE IMPACTS OF POLLUTION ON EXISTING SENSITIVE LAND USES, AND ELIMINATE ASSOCIATED PUBLIC HEALTH DISPARITIES.

Toxic Air Contaminants

EJ-1.1 Toxic Air Contaminants. Reduce the public's exposure to toxic air contaminants through appropriate land use and transportation strategies, identified through the LUTE update in Phase 2 of the GPU process, particularly in Environmental Justice Communities and other areas most burdened by air pollution, as identified in Figure EJ-12.

EJ-1.2 Truck Emissions and Pollution Exposure. Minimize air pollution and exposure of sensitive land uses to truck pollution, particularly in EJ Communities and other areas most burdened by air pollution, while recognizing the Port of Oakland's role as the highest-volume shipping port in Northern California.

Industrial/Sensitive Land Use Compatibility

EJ-1.3 Industrial Uses Near Sensitive Land Uses. Ensure that heavy industrial uses are adequately buffered from residential areas, schools, and other sensitive land uses. In new industrial developments, require adequate mitigation of air contaminant exposure and vegetative barriers near large stationary and mobile sources of air pollution. Prioritize nature-based mitigation solutions such as vegetative barriers wherever feasible and align with other greening opportunities such as canopy need, green stormwater infrastructure, and high heat areas to plan for multiple benefits.

EJ-1.4 Performance Standards. Develop performance standards in the zoning code applicable to new industrial and commercial developments to minimize or avoid the potential for adverse effects related to air quality, noise, or safety on adjacent existing residential uses and Environmental Justice Communities, including the possibility of creating an overlay that focuses on air quality issues.

EJ-1.5 Regulate Polluting Uses. Develop more stringent permitting standards and limit the number of variances approved for new, high-intensity, industrial or commercial land uses near sensitive uses in Environmental Justice Communities. See also Policy SAF-5.1 and EJ-1.15.

EJ-1.6 Enhanced Enforcement. Prioritize code enforcement to address illegal land uses and activities that cause pollution and are hazardous to health in EJ Communities.

Air Filtration and Reducing GHG

Many of the strategies to reduce GHG will be included in the forthcoming Land Use and Transportation Element (LUTE) update (including mixed land uses and transportation policies).

EJ-1.7 Truck-Related Impacts. For new warehouses and truck-related businesses, reduce impacts from truck loading and delivery including noise/vibration, odors, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions.

EJ-1.8 Air Filtration. Consistent with the State's Building Energy Efficiency Standards for air filtration in effect as of January 1, 2023, require newly constructed buildings of four or more habitable floors to include air filtration systems equal to or greater than Minimum Efficiency Reporting Value (MERV) 16 (ASHRAE Standard 52.2), or a particle size efficiency rating equal to or greater than 50 percent in the 0.3-1.0 micrometer range and equal to or greater than 85 percent in the 1.0-3.0 micrometer range (AHRI Standard 680).

EJ-1.9 Electric Vehicle Charging. Require industrial and warehouse facilities and truck-attracting businesses to provide electrical connections for electric trucks and transport refrigeration units in support of CARB regulations.

EJ-1.10 Reduce Emissions from Port Operation. Support Port of Oakland's efforts to reduce emissions as part of operation and compliance with CARB regulations. This could include:

• Support of zero-emission drayage truck operations through appropriate local ordinance amendments, including allowable weight limits for single-axle, zero-emission trucks on local streets, and developing an investment plan for needed upgrades.
• Provision of data or staff time to study of the effects on truck flow and congestion due to increasing visits from larger container ships, the feasibility of an off-terminal container yard that utilizes zero-emission trucks to move containers to and from the marine terminals, and the potential efficiency gains from increasing the number of trucks hauling loaded containers on each leg of a roundtrip to the Port.

Construction and Building Emissions

EJ-1.11 Building Electrification. Continue to enforce compliance with Oakland's Building Electrification Ordinance, which requires new buildings to be natural gas-free and support the transition of existing buildings to natural gas alternatives in order to improve safety and air quality and reduce health risks. This could include:

• Ensuring that all new developments reduce on-site natural gas combustion through electrification of heating and cooking technologies.

EJ-1.12 Construction Site Impacts. Through standard conditions of project approval, code enforcement, and other regulatory mechanisms, require new development to minimize disturbances of natural water bodies and natural drainage systems caused during construction and to implement measures to protect areas from road dust, erosion and sediment loss.

Credit: Amir Aziz

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EJ-1.13 Emissions from Construction Activities. Require projects to implement construction air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions controls and applicable mitigation strategies for all construction sites to the maximum extent feasible. Refer to Best Construction Practices and Best Available Retrofit Control Technology (BARCT) recommended by BAAQMD.

EJ-1.14 Reduced Exposure to Air Pollution for Project Occupants. Incorporate measures to improve indoor air quality and reduce exposure to air pollution in new development projects.

Air Quality Monitoring and Assessment

EJ-1.15 Sensitive Uses. Coordinate with BAAQMD and community partners in evaluating human exposure to toxic air contaminants, particularly in Environmental Justice Communities, and impose conditions as appropriate on projects to protect public health and safety beyond those in the City’s 2020 standard conditions of approval.

EJ-1.16 Community Air Protection. On an ongoing basis, support BAAQMD, community members, businesses, and other stakeholders in developing and implementing Community Air Monitoring Plans, Community Emissions Reduction Plans, and other air pollution control initiatives pursuant to AB 617. Supportive City actions may include:

• Participation on steering committees and technical advisory committees.
• Co-investments that leverage additional funding for actions in EJ Communities.
• Utilization of community-collected air quality data in policy development and evaluation.
• Co-development of a public information campaign targeting residents living 1,000 feet of freeways that focuses on education about air pollution mitigation measures.
• Contracts with community partners and other air pollution monitoring organizations to obtain more granular pollution data.

EJ-1.17 Data-Informed Efforts. Collaborate with BAAQMD, community organizations, and other stakeholders to use air quality monitoring data to inform area-specific improvement actions outside of AB 617-related efforts. Such actions may include:

• Prioritizing areas for capital investments with co-benefits for air quality, such as the planting of trees, green stormwater infrastructure for flood management, and installation of EV charging infrastructure. Ideally, to maximize resiliency, co-benefits will address multiple climate and environmental hazards.
• Integrating air quality improvement actions into planning efforts, such as new specific plans, master plans, or area plans that will guide development in impacted areas.
• Limiting the establishment of new sources of air pollutants in areas with elevated levels of pollutant concentrations unless appropriate mitigation is implemented.
• Obtaining and using hyperlocal data along with community ground-truthing to more accurately inform development of air quality improvement strategies that are most effective and responsive to the needs of EJ Communities. This data will be accessible for residents to utilize.
• Seeking opportunities to enhance existing air monitoring efforts, such as by working with BAAQMD and helping to expand the current monitoring network, especially where sensitive uses are within close proximity (within 500 feet) of pollution sources.
• Partnering with industrial and warehouse facility owners, community-based environmental and energy justice organizations to install rooftop solar PV systems to power EV charging stations.

EJ-1.18 Impact Assessment and Mitigation. Continue to use BAAQMD modeling tools and guidance documents as appropriate to identify and mitigate air quality impacts from proposed development projects.

EJ-1.19 Regional Coordination. Support air quality planning efforts led by other local, regional, and State agencies while simultaneously leveraging City authority and resources to focus on reducing air pollution burden in EJ Communities.

GOAL EJ-2 PROTECT OAKLAND WATER SUPPLIES FROM CONTAMINATION.

Water Quality

EJ-2.1 Clean Water Programs. Promote environmental stewardship and pollution prevention activities with outreach, assistance, and incentives for residents and businesses, particularly in EJ Communities and areas with impaired surface and groundwater, as identified in Figure EJ-13.

EJ-2.2 Water Quality Hazard Prevention. Remediate and clean up sites with known or potential contamination, as mapped in Figure EJ-14 or identified on GeoTracker, that impact or potentially impact water quality. Continue to support the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board and California Department of Toxic Substances Control to assess cleanup sites, leaking underground storage tanks, and gasoline stations in EJ Communities with high water contamination threat.

EJ-2.3 Protect and Restore Creeks and Wetlands. Protect, enhance, and restore riparian corridors and wetlands, increasing biodiversity and access for residents to existing creeks and wetlands. Collaborate with environmental justice organizations and EJ Community residents to co-develop environmental stewardship and pollution prevention programs with outreach, assistance, and incentives for residents and businesses.

EJ-2.4 Stormwater Management. Reduce stormwater runoff by implementing the Green Stormwater Infrastructure Plan to help conserve water, protect water bodies, comply with stormwater protection regulations, and mitigate localized flood risk from large storm events. Review opportunities for greening, additional open space, and safe Non-Motorized Transportation (NMT) infrastructure and prioritize improvements, workforce development, programs, investments, and partnerships in Environmental Justice Communities.

GOAL EJ-3 PREVENT, REDUCE, AND CLEAN UP ILLEGAL DUMPING.

Illegal Dumping and Blight

EJ-3.1 Design for Graffiti Reduction. Establish guidelines based on Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) standards and other best practices that decrease opportunity for graffiti.

EJ-3.2 Blight Control and Prevention. Control and mitigate impacts of blight-producing industrial and commercial activities with a high tendency of attracting trash and litter, such as recyclers, fast food restaurants, warehouses and industrial sites, and other businesses that may attract blight. Additionally, vacant lots should be routinely maintained by property owners and kept clean.

EJ-3.3 Proactive Illegal Dumping Cleanup. Support the expansion of proactive cleanup crews that target illegal dumping "hot spot" areas in EJ Communities, as identified in Figure EJ-15.

EJ-3.4 Illegal Dumping Enforcement. Continue to enforce dumping as an illegal activity, including increased monitoring of hot spots on weekends and before/after business hours, ticketing, and expansion of Environmental Enforcement Officers (EEO). Every two years, as part of the budget process, assess enforcement efforts to ensure discriminatory patterns do not emerge.

EJ-3.5 Community Education on Illegal Dumping. Expand community campaigns in EJ Communities, in partnership with community members, to prevent dumping, inform neighbors about affordable services and ways to report illegal dumping, and support youth leadership. Develop campaign outreach materials in a variety of languages. Examples include education about Bulky Block parties and engagement of the Oaktown PROUD Student Ambassadors.

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4. Safe, Healthy, and Affordable Homes

A safe and healthy home is a fundamental component of a healthy quality of life, supporting both mental and physical health as a source of shelter and peace of mind. Housing with proximity to quality facilities such as open space and recreation, public transportation, and employment also promotes good health. However, a history of inequitable investments and discriminatory practices, compounded with the rising cost of living in the Bay Area, disproportionately threatens the ability of low-income and BIPOC communities to afford to stay in their communities. As described in Chapter 3, certain neighborhoods and communities in Oakland also face pollution exposure due to their proximity to polluting facilities, such as the Port of Oakland, industrial land, and truck routes. Pockets of concentrated housing inequity may also be isolated from essential health resources such as improved recreational spaces, quality pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals, and healthy food options.

The City of Oakland recently updated its Housing Element for the 2023-2031 housing cycle. As part of the Housing Element update, the City conducted a thorough evaluation of the previous (2015-2023) Housing Element; an analysis of housing needs, constraints, resources, and opportunities; and an assessment of fair housing. The 2023-2031 Housing Element includes more information and detail about Oakland’s housing needs and the City’s plan for protecting and supporting existing neighborhoods while accommodating new residents. The 2023-2031 Housing Element also discusses issues related to homelessness, housing affordability, and displacement. This section of the EJ Element describes additional issues and opportunities related to housing quality and habitability, as well as identifies appropriate locations for housing to minimize exposure to pollution.

4.1 ISSUES AND DISPARITIES

COST BURDEN AND EVICTIONS

Household income is one of the most significant factors affecting housing choice and opportunity. Income largely determines a household’s ability to purchase or rent housing. While higher-income households have more discretionary income to spend on housing, lower- and moderate-income households are limited in the range of housing they can afford. Typically, as household income decreases, cost burdens, overcrowding, and vulnerability to displacement and houselessness increase. Households that are housing cost burdened and do not receive housing assistance or own their home outright are considered precariously or insecurely housed. These households are at greater risk for eviction, displacement, overcrowding and homelessness.

A housing cost burdened household is defined as a household that spends more than 30 percent of their monthly income on housing, while severely cost burdened households spend more

than 50 percent of household income on housing costs. Most extremely low-income households in Oakland (over 60 percent) are severely cost burdened. Oakland’s predominantly Latinx/Hispanic neighborhoods are the most housing cost burdened with over double the number of severely housing burdened households as predominantly White neighborhoods.

According to the California Department of Finance, in 2021 there were 178,207 housing units and 167,680 households in Oakland. Most of these households are renters (59 percent), while 41 percent are homeowners.¹ This means that homeownership in Oakland is significantly less than Alameda County as a whole, where the majority (54 percent) of units are owner-occupied and 46 percent are renter-occupied. In Oakland, more renters are low-income than homeowners and tend to have higher rates of housing cost burden than homeowners - 46.5 percent of all renters experience some level of housing cost burden while 31.8 percent of homeowners do. Today, the vast majority of Oakland’s Black/African American residents are renters (67.83 percent). When housing costs are high, residents may be forced to make tradeoffs that affect housing habitability.

There are an average of 85 evictions per 1,000 residents in predominantly Black census tracts and 72 per 1000 in predominantly Asian tracts, compared to 34 evictions per 1,000 residents in predominantly White census tracts. Evictions in predominantly Black census tracts are nearly 2.5 times higher than in predominantly White census tracts, corroborating other evidence of higher displacement rates in the Black community. The disparity gap between the most and least impacted census tracts is far larger than the averages. For instance, Prescott/Mandela Peralta in West Oakland experiences 30 times more evictions per 1,000 people than Montclair North in the north Oakland Hills, and Port Lower in West Okaland experiences 365 times more evictions than Upper Piedmont Ave.

CODE ENFORCEMENT

The 2018 Oakland Equity Indicators Report found that housing quality (comprised of the housing habitability complaints, complete kitchen facilities, and overcrowding indicators) is not equitable, with an average score of 33 out of 100. Chart EJ-3 shows how the number of code enforcement complaints (for blight, zoning, and housing habitability) per 1,000 residents differ by census tract racial majorities.

Specifically, majority-white tracts have the lowest rate of code enforcement complaints per 1,000 residents and tracts that are majority people of color are all higher than the overall citywide rate. Oakland’s most impoverished neighborhoods with the highest proportion of renters are most likely to suffer from substandard housing conditions. These neighborhoods disproportionately house Latinx, Black, immigrant, and refugee communities, low-income renters with children, undocumented residents, residents receiving public assistance and elderly renters. Substandard housing conditions such as pest infestation, mold, asbestos, lead paint, faulty plumbing, and overcrowding can lead to increased health problems such as asthma, lead poisoning, cardiovascular disease, and neurological disorders. Residents in predominantly Black census tracts are 1.9 times more likely than predominantly White census tracts to report code enforcement complaints due to substandard housing conditions. It is important to note however, that many residents of substandard housing do not report their complaints for fear of retaliation from their landlord and some landlords take advantage of this, a practice called “predatory habitability.” Figure EJ-17 maps the distribution of all three types of code enforcement complaints for 2020 (the most recent year with complete data) throughout Oakland.

OLDER HOUSING

Age of housing can also be an indicator of substandard housing conditions, particularly for buildings built over 30 years ago. More than 80 percent of Oakland’s housing stock was constructed prior to 1980 and is now over 40 years old. Without proper maintenance or rehabilitation, older buildings can fall into disrepair, subjecting residents to conditions such as inadequate sanitation, structural hazards, hazardous mechanical systems, and other issues that the State has determined to be below the minimum standards of living (as defined by Government Code Section 17920.3). Based on the City’s 2020-2021 Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report, the Oakland Housing Authority (OHA) administered programs that supported the rehabilitation of 317 existing affordable housing units in fiscal year 2020/2021.² However, the City’s ability to meet the need for rehabilitation assistance is limited, and it can be difficult to accurately identify substandard units in need of rehabilitation, especially since not all households living in substandard conditions may actively seek assistance.

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Includes blight, housing habitability, and zoning complaints filed between January and December 2020.

LEAD

Housing that was built before 1978 when the residential use of lead-based paints was banned is likely to contain some lead-based paint. When the paint peels and cracks, lead paint chips and dust can spread throughout indoor environments and be ingested or breathed in, increasing risk of lead poisoning particularly in young children. Residents living in older neighborhoods who cannot afford to renovate or repair their homes are especially at risk of exposure – up to 96 percent of households in both east and west Bancroft/Havenscourt census tracts based on data from CalEnviroScreen. Tracts with the greatest risk of lead exposure to children are shown in Figure EJ-18. About sixty percent of the census tracts in Oakland are in the top statewide percentile rank of children's lead risk from housing. In addition, there are notable disparities by race: The percentage of low-income children at risk for lead poisoning is over 1.5 times higher in predominantly Latinx census tracts than in predominantly white census tracts. Census tracts south of Lake Merritt, bounded by I-880 and I-580, are at greatest risk of lead pollution, as well as census tracts near the Port of Oakland, including Port Upper, Port Lower, Prescott/Mandela Peralta.

INDOOR AIR QUALITY

Although outdoor air pollution is most commonly the focus of conversations about air quality, the indoor environment also has a significant impact on health, especially considering that Americans spend an average of 90 percent of their time indoors.¹ Homes can expose people to air pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, particulate matter, moisture, and mold. Older buildings that are not well-maintained can lack proper ventilation or have deteriorated building infrastructure that exacerbates exposure to these indoor pollutants.

Several major appliances including water heaters, space heaters, clothes dryers, and stoves are fueled by natural (mostly commonly methane) gas, which is also a source of indoor air pollutants and a major contributor to poor health outcomes. In fact, when gas stoves are on, indoor air pollutants can spike to levels that would be considered illegal by EPA standards if those same levels occurred outside. In light of this fact, the City has set a target of no more gas in Oakland buildings by 2040. However, replacing gas with electric energy may not be feasible for all residents. That is, lower-income areas, areas with older housing stock, and areas with high rates of renters are more likely to have higher proportions of poorly maintained or poorly ventilated homes, absent or nonfunctioning range hoods, and higher competition in demand for repair/upgrade funds, making electrification both that much more urgent and that much more cost-prohibitive, and therefore a major environmental health and equity issue. The City’s 2030 ECAP includes actions to develop a policy roadmap to achieve decarbonization of the existing building stock by 2040, without additional cost burden or displacement risk to frontline communities (those hit first and worst by climate change effects). The City will also continue to support property owners in building electrification, energy efficiency and resilience, and housing maintenance programs through grants and technical assistance.

In addition to policies and actions in Oakland’s Housing Element, additional policies in the EJ Element support resource coordination across City departments and partners, seek to improve the City’s ability to inspect and screen for health and safety issues in homes, and incentivize ways to include health-promoting features in affordable housing.

Environmental Justice Communities most burdened by quality issues, income burden, evictions, and lead exposure are shown in Table EJ-6.

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Spotlight: Racial Equity Impact Analysis: Eliminating Lead Paint Hazards in Oakland & Alameda County

Lead is a material with properties that make it useful in industrial and commercial products and was once added to everything from gasoline, paint, solder, water pipes, and cosmetics, among others. Despite this widespread use, lead is an extremely potent toxin and dangerous to health, particularly for young children. Although corporations in the lead paint industry were well aware of lead’s toxicity and its risks to public health by the early 20th century, lead paint was not banned until 1978, and many homes built before this era are at high risk of containing this dangerous substance.

In July 2019, various California counties and cities entered into a landmark $305 million Settlement Agreement with lead paint manufacturers. Under the Lead Settlement Memorandum of Understanding, Alameda County and the City of Oakland received 10 percent of the settlement abatement funds to be paid out over seven years (approximately $24 million).

In Oakland, “the problem is so large that the rate of lead poisoning in some Oakland zip codes is higher than in Flint, Michigan at the height of its lead in the water crisis.” Lead paint hazards disproportionately affect low-income and Black, Indigenous, and Latinx communities due to the prevalence of older, dilapidated housing, which exposes children in poverty to lead paint hazards at the greatest rates. In 2021, Environmental/Justice Solutions conducted a Racial Equity Impact Analysis to guide the City of Oakland in partnering with Alameda County to develop and implement an equitable lead hazard abatement program. The report recommends policies that prioritize at-risk communities, address barriers to resources, ensure lead hazards are expeditiously removed from homes in vulnerable communities, and bolster local economic resilience. This EJ Element includes policies that support implementation of REIA recommendations with an emphasize on primary prevention.

Figure EJ-18: Childhood Lead Risk

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CalEnviroScreen 4.0 Score Statewide Percentile Rank [0-100]

SOURCE: CalEPA Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, 2021; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

HEALTHY HOUSING LOCATIONS

Oakland’s geography has been shaped historically by zoning, one of the primary purposes of which is to protect residential, commercial, industrial, and civic areas from the intrusion of incompatible uses. However, in the past, zoning was often used as tools to perpetuate racism, effectively working to keep property values higher for White residents in more affluent areas by locating incompatible uses in predominantly BIPOC communities. As described in the Housing Element REIA, “While affluent neighborhoods are protected from industrial uses and the intrusion of lower-priced housing into their neighborhoods, the public health, character, and culture of lower income, BIPOC neighborhoods do not receive equivalent levels of protection. In effect, higher standards are presumed and upheld for predominantly White and affluent neighborhoods than are for lower income neighborhoods that are majority BIPOC.” Single-family zoning (detached unit residential) was largely designed to have a similar effect as racially restrictive housing covenants. This legacy continues to this day, as “[continued utilization] of single-family zones, acts to bar the development of housing affordable to residents earning moderate- to low-incomes, who are more likely to be BIPOC, across swaths of the city” where there is more access to health-promoting resources, employment, and opportunity. The Housing Action Plan includes zoning and height changes across the city and in specific sites in Rockridge, single-family dominated neighborhoods, along corridors, transit proximate areas and high resource neighborhoods to affirmatively further fair housing. The HAP also implements an Affordable Housing Overlay Zone, where 100 percent affordable projects will be granted by-right approvals. The AHO will largely apply citywide. Any projects located on sites with at least 20 percent affordable units within the City’s Housing Sites Inventory Overlay Zone will be granted by-right approvals.

Oakland’s Housing Element

Oakland’s 2023-2031 Housing Element sets forth the City’s housing priorities and goals—as well as its vision for both short- and long-term development—to create a fair and just city. State law mandates that the Housing Element be updated every eight years to reflect changing conditions, community objectives, and goals. The 2023-2031 Housing Element identifies a foundational framework of five overarching goals in Chapter 4: Housing Action Plan to comprehensively address the housing crisis and needs of Oaklanders. The goals seek to significantly address disparities in housing needs and in access to opportunity, replace segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns, transform racially and ethnically concentrated areas of poverty into areas of opportunity, foster and maintain compliance with civil rights, and affirmatively further fair housing. The goals and policy focus areas include:

• Protect Oakland Residents from Displacement and Prevent Homelessness: Protect Oakland tenants from displacement and create conditions that enable them to remain in their homes and communities.

• Preserve and Improve Existing Housing Stock: Conserve and improve the affordability of existing housing stock in Oakland and address substandard conditions.

• Close the Gap Between Affordable and Market-Rate Housing Production by Expanding Affordable Housing Opportunities: Facilitate the production of housing for extremely low, very low, low, and moderate-income households. In addition to increased production generally, provide a diversity of housing types, ownership opportunities, living arrangements, and features designed to accommodate persons with disabilities.

  Locate new housing to further access to opportunity (while simultaneously investing in and protecting tenants in disinvested communities) and remove constraints to affordable housing development.

• Address Homelessness and Expand Resources for the Unhoused: Recognize housing as a human right. Reduce homelessness through Housing First approaches and support coordination across the spectrum, from homelessness prevention to transitional housing/shelter and services to permanent housing with resources for long-term support.

• Promote Neighborhood Stability and Health: Promote resilient development in safe, healthy, and just communities. Increase resources in disinvested communities and create long-time stability through homeownership opportunities.

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Table EJ-6: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Safe, Healthy, and Affordable Homes

Note: Bolded and blue census tracts are EJ Communities. * Indicates census tract with low population.

4.2 GOALS AND POLICIES

GOAL EJ-4 COORDINATE RESOURCES TO IMPROVE HOUSING QUALITY AND HABITABILITY.

EJ-4.1 Resource Optimization. Coordinate across City departments and with relevant partner agencies including the Oakland Housing Authority, EBMUD, BAAQMD, ABAG, ACPHD and others, to optimize the use of data, grant monies, incentives, financial resources, staffing, investments, and programs in addressing displacement and tenant protections; sanitary housing and maintenance issues; environmental hazards in homes and neighborhoods; and other concerns related to stable, safe, and sanitary housing.

EJ-4.2 Supplemental Funding Sources for Building Rehabilitation. Place a high priority on identifying supplemental funding sources/resources for retrofit, rehabilitation, and upgrade projects that address health and safety in housing occupied by low-income renters and homeowners, including air quality improvements. Supplemental funding sources could include loans and grants available from the California Strategic Growth Council, CalEPA, CARB, and other entities.

EJ-4.3 Healthy Homes Inspections. As part of the Joint Lead Hazard Abatement Program in partnership with ACPHD, improve ongoing ability to screen for and eliminate lead hazards through proactive approaches, including proactive inspections of rental property dwellings and lead-safe certification requirements for childcare facilities and schools. Prioritize abatement, testing, outreach, and education activities in high-risk areas and serving the populations most likely to live in high-risk dwellings in EJ Communities, as identified in Figure EJ-18. See also Action 2.1.2 in the 2023-2031 Housing Element.

EJ-4.4 Healthy Homes Awareness. Continue to work with Oakland HCD, ACPHD, and community organizations to promote safe and sanitary housing in EJ Communities in Figure EJ-17 by providing owners and occupants with culturally appropriate and linguistically accessible information and resources about home health, including lead/Lead Safe Home Program grants, indoor air pollutants, asthma triggers, hazard zones, and other information. Efforts may include the development and dissemination of healthy home checklists, conducting trainings, workshops, or audits.

EJ-4.5 Improve Indoor Air Quality in Existing Buildings. For new projects and significant rehabilitations of existing buildings, improve indoor air quality and energy efficiency through weatherization and strategies to prevent buildup of mold and mildew.

EJ-4.6 Environmental Quality. In private and non-profit housing projects in EJ Communities, promote and seek ways to incentivize the inclusion of features and amenities that support and enhance the health of occupants and the environment, including:

• On-site health and human services;
• Energy-efficient and electric appliances;
• Green infrastructure, such as green roofs or appropriate tree planting;
• Car sharing;
• Community gardens or sponsored rides to farmers markets; and
• Transit and bus passes for lower income workers and persons with disabilities to reduce emissions.

5. Expanding Healthy Food Access

Access to affordable, healthy, nourishing food is one of the most basic human needs. Beyond this, Oakland’s food system also plays a major role in shaping Oakland’s culture, identity, and employment opportunities. However, there are parts of Oakland that lack food access, and many Oaklanders struggle with food insecurity. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) defines food insecurity as “lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active, healthy life.”¹ Food-insecure households are not necessarily food insecure all the time. Food insecurity may reflect a household’s need to make trade-offs between important basic needs such as housing or medical bills and purchasing nutritionally adequate foods. Challenges to accessing healthy food can lead to a higher risk of chronic diseases such as obesity, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes;² when people cannot get to grocery stores that sell healthy foods, they may shop at nearby corner stores, which often carry foods high in fat, sugar, and sodium and fewer healthy options like fresh produce. EJ Communities most burdened by food access issues are shown in Table EJ-7. This section describes Oakland’s food network, including availability of food outlets, food availability, and food quality.

5.1 ISSUES AND DISPARITIES

In 2019, 11 percent of California Congressional District 13’s population (encompassing the northwest branch of Alameda County) was food insecure. More than 40 percent of the food insecure population was not eligible for food assistance programs such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, administered as CalFresh in California and formerly known as food stamps) and other nutrition programs because they make more than 200 percent of the federal poverty level.³ Food insecurity rates differ by race and ethnicity: 20 percent of Black individuals and 15 percent of Hispanic people of any race were reported as food insecure, while the food insecurity rate among White, non-Hispanic individuals was seven percent. In Alameda County, 8 percent of residents receive CalFresh (SNAP) benefits, at an average of $219 per person, per month.⁴ SNAP users may use their benefits to purchase food at accepting food markets and grocery stores. In addition, benefit cards can be used at participating farmers’ markets, such as those in Temescal and Old Oakland.⁵,⁶ SNAP is an important federal tool in reducing food insecurity; thus, places where there is a high rate of SNAP usage may indicate communities that could become food insecure if any federal changes affected SNAP availability or eligibility. In Oakland, tracts with the highest percentage of people receiving SNAP are located in West, East, and deep East Oakland. All tracts in the top tenth percentile for SNAP recipiency are EJ Communities.

The percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch is often used as a proxy measure for the percentage of students living in poverty.⁷ Beginning in the 2022–2023 school

year, all public and charter schools serving transitional kindergarten through 12th grade are required to provide two free meals to every student each school day, regardless of their eligibility for other meal programs. Served meals must comply with USDA nutrition guidelines, including milk and calorie requirements. The Universal Meals Program ensures that the nutritional needs of children who require affordable food options are met during the school day. In addition, the City’s Summer Food Service Program provides free breakfast and lunch to Oakland kids and teens during summer break. Tracts with the greatest percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch are located in Acorn/Jack London Gateway, central East Oakland, and deep East Oakland.

FOOD ACCESS

The grocery store is the primary source of healthy food for most Oaklanders, providing access to a wide variety of nutritious and relatively affordable produce and other foods compared to other types of food outlets like convenience stores. However, racial and socioeconomic inequities in access to healthy food have led to differential food access for communities of color, especially in West and East Oakland, where some key food resources have closed. Current market forces driving the location of chain supermarkets continue to perpetuate food access inequity tied to policies that created residential segregation, poverty, and “supermarket flight” from certain neighborhoods. While incentives or other efforts may be needed to overcome these forces for traditional supermarkets, there are also mission-driven grocery store operators, such as food co-ops, that have emerged as an alternative that can provide healthy, culturally relevant food, while building community power and ownership. Food advocates have also urged more focus and support for smaller independent grocers that have served East and West Oakland for decades.

While development of full-service food retailers is an important strategy, existing convenience stores, dollar stores, corner stores, or gas station markets often provide the only retail food options in some areas of the city. Most corner stores sell a limited selection of non-perishable food items and less nutritious snack foods, though some also carry fresh produce and other nutritious fares. Initiatives to encourage stocking more fresh produce and healthier food options can include financial incentives, promotion and marketing, infrastructure investment (e.g., purchasing new refrigeration units or display stands), and produce supply chain development. The location of full-service food outlets and smaller convenience stores is shown in Figure EJ-19. While there are large grocery stores within a walkable distance for residents of Lake Merritt, Temescal, and Rockridge neighborhoods, considerable portions of East and West Oakland do not have one close by. East Oakland does have key smaller food markets which aim to fill the gap between larger stores.

Community gardens and farmers markets can help to improve fresh food accessibility in areas of lower food access. Community gardens are dedicated plots of land where residents can grow food or other plants; many are started by residents who recognize that their communities are underserved by traditional fresh food retailers. Community gardens can promote the concept of food autonomy, where people are empowered to control their food and food systems. The City can take additional steps to make City-owned land available for community gardens, prioritizing areas and community stewards that will have the greatest impact on food-deprived communities. Some research has shown that people who participate in community gardens eat more fruits and vegetables and worry less about running out of food before the end of the month. Oakland also has several farmers markets that accept SNAP, which benefits both the farmers and low-income shoppers. Moving farmers markets to more central locations, accessible by transit, can also promote food access.

FOOD DISTRIBUTION AND RECOVERY

Supporting a fine-grained network of food distribution points can also help to improve food access. For example, libraries, schools, parks, and even large parking lots can become sites where sales or distribution of fresh food can occur. Improving the effectiveness of existing food distribution programs, especially in underserved areas and those with higher prevalence of food insecurity, can be a cost-effective way to improve access to affordable healthier foods. For example, and the City could coordinate with community organizations to better connect eligible residents and families to federal, State, and local food programs, as well as emergency food assistance.

Edible food recovery programs divert food waste by redistributing unused food from food generators such as grocery stores, supermarkets, restaurants, corporate kitchens, and other wholesaler/distributors. Feeding hungry people through food recovery is the best use for surplus food and a vital way for Oakland to conserve resources and reduce waste thrown in landfills. The City can support food recovery by supporting existing capacity of food generators and develop new capacity to recover, divert, and redistribute consumable food to those in need.

FOOD ASSISTANCE AND EDUCATION

The price of food—in addition to taste, nutrition, convenience, and other factors—affects people’s food choices, and is one of the greatest barriers to accessing healthy food. Participation in food assistance programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (also known as CalFresh) and Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program (WIC), can help to improve food security, offer benefits that enable families to purchase healthier diets, and free up resources for other necessities. The City will seek to understand barriers, promote access and community awareness, and expand acceptance of these benefit programs at retailers and farmers markets in partnership with community organizations.

Given the time limitations and financial and physical barriers people with disabilities and low-income families may face when preparing meals, it is important to increase education around convenient and easy-to-prepare healthy food options. The City will play a role in providing marketing and educational campaigns targeted at increasing food growing and healthy eating to support new healthy food retail in EJ Communities.

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Figure EJ-19: Food Access

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Building Resilience: Community-Led Food Security

Community organizations have led the charge in building local resilience and increasing food security. City Slicker Farms leads the urban farming and food justice movement in West Oakland, having transformed a vacant brownfield site into a thriving community park and farm. City Slicker has built more than 400 backyard and community gardens since 2001, and their West Oakland Farm Park is a vibrant community hub on land that was once heavily contaminated. City Slicker Farms also includes other programs that increase food access (the Backyard Gardens Program); support food sharing (participation in the Town Fridge collective); and build skills in farming and cooking (the Food and Farming Skill Sharing Program.)

In Deep East Oakland, Planting Justice (PJ) Nursery hires and trains formerly incarcerated people at their two-acre Rolling River tree nursery in the Sobrante Park neighborhood. In the last 10 years, the team has built over 450 edible gardens throughout the Bay Area. In partnership with Sogorea Te’ Land Trust (STLT), an urban indigenous women-led community organization, PJ facilitated the transfer of the Rolling River Nursery’s plot back into Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone stewardship. This partnership recognizes Oakland’s Ohlone history and grants STLT access to the land in perpetuity.

Mandela Grocery Co-op in West Oakland is a worker cooperative (co-op), which is a model that serves as an effective tool for creating long-term, dignified jobs, particularly in urban low-income communities. The Mandela Grocery Co-op is a grocery store that is operated, centrally governed, and democratically controlled by its worker-owners and sources from local entrepreneurs and farmers in California with a focus on Black and Brown farmers and food makers.

The Saba Grocers Initiative is a network of Arab immigrant and Black corner store owners working to build a food system where fresh fruits and vegetables are affordable for all. Initially funded by Oakland’s 2017 “soda tax” after successful community organizing efforts, Saba Grocers helps its network of members secure fresh fruits and vegetables through bulk wholesale purchase and distribution to each member store. They also distribute Saba Food Cards, a closed loop Visa worth $250 each for residents in need of assistance, developed in partnership with 25 independent store owners in Oakland. The Initiative also coordinates a “Fresh 5x” nutrition incentive program funded by the USDA and distributes funds to local grocers that supplement CalFresh and CalSNAP benefits. For every dollar SNAP recipients spend on fresh produce, they get five additional dollars for additional produce, helping lower-income residents stretch their monthly grocery budgets by a significant amount.

Sources: City Slicker Farms website, Planting Justice Website, Mandela Grocery Co-op website, Oakland Equitable Climate Action Plan 2030, Saba Grocers Initiative website

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Table EJ-7: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Expanding Healthy Food Access

5.2 GOALS AND POLICIES

Improving Food Access

EJ-5.1 New Healthy Food Grocers. Leverage tax and fee deferral/reduction programs, California Food Financing Initiative funding, and other economic development grant monies to attract new healthy food grocers and co-ops and help them establish and/or make necessary improvements. As shown in Figure EJ-19, allow small grocery stores within residential areas. As a priority, efforts should be focused in areas underserved by healthy food retail with good access to the transportation network, where grocery stores and food co-ops are most economically viable.

EJ-5.2 Community Gardens Program. Partner with nonprofits, especially Indigenous groups, to expand the City's Community Gardens Program, with policies to address maintenance and permit Indigenous community harvesting/ foraging of parks. The program should include garden spaces, community-maintained edible landscapes, and amenities in public spaces.

EJ-5.3 Community and Home Gardening. Support community and home gardening efforts and – particularly in EJ Communities underserved by healthy food retail – by providing financial incentives such as land transfers or discounted water rates and technical assistance in the form of online and library resources and workshops on gardening basics and cooking easy, healthy meals with fresh produce. Work with community groups to increase the prevalence of accessible, local gardens. Other incentives may include:

• Explore the expansion of outright permitting of community gardens in areas where a Conditional Use Permit is currently required, particularly in the Broadway Valdez District (D-BV) and Central Estuary (D-CE) zones.
• Incentivize urban agriculture in urbanized areas by offering reduced property tax assessments or relief from Oakland vacancy tax in exchange for converting vacant or unimproved property to an agricultural use through a contract agreement for an initial period of five years.

EJ-5.4 Urban Agriculture in New Development. Promote rooftop gardens, edible gardens, and other sustainable agricultural landscaping alternatives within multi-unit, commercial, and industrial developments.

• Target creation of rooftop gardens highly visible from neighboring properties.
• Permit indoor “vertical food farms” in appropriate areas in the City.
• Reduce permit fees for large-scale farming of edible products.

EJ-5.5 Entrepreneurship and Food Innovation. Actively support food innovations such as street (sidewalk) vending, food cooperatives, pop-up markets and similar innovations that do not fit into the traditional brick-and-mortar storefront, farmers market, or community garden models. Promote indoor farming of fruits and vegetables in industrial zones. Support individual residents in small-scale agriculture and distribution, through education and financial assistance.

Food Assistance and Nutrition Programs

EJ-5.6 Food Assistance Programs. Work to increase community awareness of and participation in existing federal food assistance programs, such as the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Approaches can include:

• Providing information in City newsletters, on the City’s website, and at community centers and other City facilities.
• Explaining to merchants the incentive to registering to accept WIC and SNAP payments (immediate expansion of market of potential customers).
• Supporting additional programs for local grocers to supplement CalFresh benefits with cash match incentives, healthy food incentives, or fruit and vegetable supplemental benefits. Some program examples include Market Match, Fresh Creds, and SPUR’s Double Up Food Bucks program.
• Partnering with community organizations that support low-income community members who are not eligible for food assistance through identification of funding or grants.

EJ-5.7 Food Security Resources & Partnerships. Coordinate with citywide community-serving organizations, the Oakland Unified School District, Alameda County, and other public agencies to ensure that eligible residents and families have access to federal, State, and local food programs, as well as emergency food assistance during public health and other crises. Partner with these service providers to distribute food at community centers and other central locations in areas with high food insecurity and/or low access to food. During such emergencies, support the Alameda County Community Foodbank to expand hours and keep distribution centers operational.

EJ-5.8 Education and Awareness. In partnership with local agencies and community organizations, develop curriculum and marketing materials encouraging the growth and consumption of healthy food. Provide these to the Oakland Unified School District and community organizations focused on food justice and nutritional education. Support community organizations with financial incentives such as land transfers or discounted water rates and technical assistance in the form of online and library resources and workshops on gardening basics and cooking easy, healthy meals with fresh produce.

Food Recovery

EJ-5.9 Food Recovery Program. Support existing capacity of organizations within Oakland's food system, and develop new capacity, to recover edible food that is otherwise wasted, and distribute that food for human consumption. This includes:

• Exploring potential for agroforestry, where trees, shrubs, and agricultural crops are interspersed, in community gardens or parks, to create additional food sources.
• Engaging with stakeholders, including local food donation, recovery, and collection organizations, to build robust collection and food storage capacity, and reliable distribution systems to the neediest populations.
• Engaging with food generators such as supermarkets, wholesale distributors, large hotels, and institutions, to donate surplus edible food that food recovery partners want or will accept and ensuring food generators comply with the Edible Food Recovery requirements of SB 1383.
• Informing edible surplus food generators about strategies and best practices for preventing the waste of surplus food.
• Expanding community education efforts and marketing of existing recovery programs, such as Oakland Recycles.

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6. Equitable Public Facilities

The adequate provision of public facilities is a critical component to the current and future prosperity of a community. Under State law (SB 1000), “public facilities” is an umbrella term that includes “public improvements, public services, and community amenities.” This covers a wide spectrum of publicly provided uses and services including infrastructure, school facilities, parks, transportation, and emergency services. These amenities and services improve the health, safety, and well-being of a community by either enhancing the public sphere or providing services that are available to every resident.

Distribution and investment in a City’s public facilities shapes residents’ access to services and resources to fulfill their needs and wants. Because of past discriminatory land use policies, there are parts of Oakland that have been overlooked for public investments and development of new amenities. Delayed investments and programs can perpetuate current disparities in the built environment, access to opportunity and resources, and other social determinants of health – significantly prolonging these inequities and their corresponding outcomes in health and wellbeing. As part of SB 1000, environmental justice elements must ensure that EJ Communities receive priority for City investment and programs that are implemented in a timely fashion. Investments in public systems can include park improvements, transportation infrastructure improvements, upgrades to public facilities, and other systems.

More information on financing public facilities will be available in the new Infrastructure and Facilities Element in Phase 2 of the General Plan Update.

Building Resilience: Friends of the Hoover Durant Public Library

Founded in 2006, the Friends of the Hoover Durant Public Library (FOHDPL) is grassroots, volunteer-run nonprofit working to bring a public library branch back to West Oakland’s Hoover, Durant, McClymonds and Clawson neighborhoods. The North Oakland and Telegrove libraries previously serving these areas were closed in 1950 and 1980 respectively, targeted for closure as a result of historic patterns of racially motivated, systemic disinvestment and institutional redlining. Their closures have since reduced accessibility to these vital public spaces, especially as the next closest library branches require crossing major roads and highways. FOHDPL seeks to close this gap and, in the meantime, act as an intermediary providing community events and services such as their Street Corner Library.

Thanks to the efforts of FOHDPL, the City issued a feasibility study for a new 12,000 square-foot library facility that will likely be completed by early 2024.

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6.1 ISSUES AND DISPARITIES

COMMUNITY FACILITIES

Public Facilities

Community facilities in Oakland include a wide range of places that provide valuable amenities to the community. These include public libraries and community centers, which offer a variety of educational and recreational programs, community gathering spaces, access to information and technology, and opportunities to participate in a neighborhood's cultural, political, and social life.

Childcare and early education facilities keep children safe and healthy, help them develop skills they will need for succeeding in and out of school, and create better, more equitable long-term outcomes for children. Free or subsidized childcare programs provide much-needed support for working families. Head Start programs promote the school readiness of infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children from low-income families. Head Start programs in Oakland are shown in Figure EJ-20. There are 17 Head Start locations across the city, mostly clustered in central and East Oakland. Five Head Start facilities are located near the Lower San Antonio and Fruitvale census tracts in central Oakland, while six Head Start facilities are located near the New Highland and Arroyo Viejo census tracts in East Oakland. There are no Head Start locations west of the I-580 or California State Route 24.

A healthy community also has convenient access to medical services. When health care facilities are accessible via public transit, medical care is more readily accessible to those who do not drive or own cars. As shown on Figure EJ-21, there are multiple medical facilities located within the city, ranging from large hospitals and medical complexes, such as Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Kaiser Oakland Medical Center, and Highland Hospital. There are also 79 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), or community-based health care providers and critical community development facilities that provide primary care services in underserved areas, in Oakland. Most healthcare locations are concentrated in certain census tracts such as Bushrod near the Children's Hospital, Pill Hill near Summit Campus of Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, and Fruitvale near a cluster of healthcare facilities. Distribution of healthcare facilities in Oakland is not uniform; most clusters are in North Oakland and Downtown, in contrast to the few in West and East Oakland.

As part of the Land Use and Transportation Element (LUTE) update, the City will explore strategies to incentivize additional childcare locations and healthcare facilities in areas of need, prioritizing EJ Communities.

PUBLIC ART, CULTURAL INFRASTRUCTURE, AND FACILITIES

Sustaining and celebrating Oakland's cultural and creative diversity can initiate opportunities for artistic engagement, which has the potential to have significant positive effects on health, including decreased anxiety, stress, and mood disturbances. Music engagement, visual arts therapy, movement-based creative expression, and expressive writing have demonstrated positive outcomes for promoting healing as shown in a study from the American Journal of Public Health.¹ The study underscores that this more holistic approach to public health could also help to alleviate the burden of chronic diseases like heart disease and diabetes which are associated with depression and chronic stress.

Oakland's artistic and cultural landscape is very important. However, Oakland's arts infrastructure faces challenges: as noted in Oakland's 2018 Culture and Belonging Report², cultural organizations face issues related to shrinking investments in arts and culture, retaining cultural spaces in a highly competitive real estate market, lack of adequate performance venues, and a need for more equitable funding. The East Oakland Neighborhood Initiative Plan also emphasized a desire for more arts hubs in local warehouses, creative activation of vacant lots, and the purchasing of foreclosed spaces for these purposes. The East Oakland creative community anchors the character of the neighborhoods, and there is a growing interest in elevating the creative community through development and funding for the arts. In West Oakland, the West Oakland Cultural Action Network is exploring ways to foster art and preserve cultural spaces that showcase community creativity and artistry, particularly through mural projects.

Policies in the EJ Element give direction to address equitable distribution and access to community and cultural facilities as part of the LUTE. Policies related to facility maintenance and improvement will be addressed as part of the Infrastructure and Facilities Element developed as part of Phase 2.

PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE

In 2019, the City introduced a new process to better reflect public input into the Capital Improvement Projects (CIP) budget, which is the City's plan for investments over the next three years. This methodology was further refined for the current (fiscal years 2021-2023) budget to capture more equitable representation of requests and projects in East Oakland. Generally, there is an equal geographic distribution of existing CIP and non-CIP projects throughout Oakland. Many new CIPs have also been recommended, including a number in Brookfield Village, Sobrante Park, and Stonehurst neighborhoods in East Oakland, Coliseum Industrial Complex area, and Ralph Bunche and Oak Center neighborhoods in West Oakland.

New CIPs will bring public improvements to street and road conditions, facilitated by the recently proposed 5-Year Paving Plan, which will direct more equitable investment in priority neighborhoods including those with higher concentrations of BIPOC and low-income residents. Policies in the General Plan seek to continue equity-focused Capital Improvement Projects, which will be carried forward in the new Infrastructure and Facilities Element of the General Plan.

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Figure EJ-21: Healthcare Locations

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Building Resilience: Oakland 2022 5-Year Paving Plan

The 2019 3-Year Paving Plan (3YP) guided citywide pavement prioritization between July 2019 and June 2022. On December 21, 2021, the City adopted the 2022 5-Year Paving Plan (5YP), which builds on the accomplishments of the 3YP to continue to invest in the care and maintenance of Oakland’s streets. Both of these plans leverage repaving to make safety improvements and are center equity in service provision, with a new focus on neighborhood streets.

The 5YP prioritizes $225 million ($45 million a year) toward local streets, and 76 percent of this budget is programmed in consideration of equity factors to provide greater benefit to underserved populations—including people of color, low-income households, people with disabilities, households with severe rent burden, people with limited English proficiency, and youth and older adults (ages 65 and older)—and in geographic areas of greatest needs. Overall, the 5YP represents 350 miles of streets that will receive accessibility improvements including curb ramp improvements, sidewalk repairs, and crosswalk marking upgrades prioritized in local streets and underserved communities.

Source: City of Oakland, 5-Year Paving Plan, 2022

PUBLIC SERVICES AND UTILITIES

Public services in Oakland include water and sewage, electricity and gas, and solid waste services. Oakland’s water supply, treatment facilities, and distribution systems are operated and managed by the East Bay Municipality Utility District (EBMUD). The City provides citywide sanitary sewer collection services while EBMUD provides sewage transport, treatment, and discharge services. Sewer discharge from buildings within Oakland flows through approximately 930 miles of the City’s sewer network and ultimately deposits at the Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant located in West Oakland. Solid waste services in Oakland are provided by Waste Management of Alameda County, which collects residential and business trash and compost. Residential recycling services are provided by California Waste Solutions.

Electricity and gas are provided by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), and Comcast (also referred to as “Xfinity”) and other companies provide internet service in Oakland. In 2018, Alameda County and 11 of its cities launched the East Bay Community Energy (EBCE) not-for-profit public power agency that governs Community Choice Energy service to help supply clean energy and create local green energy jobs, programs, and clean power projects. EBCE supplies electricity to residential, business, and municipal accounts that are delivered through PG&E.

A lack of essential services can have a significant impact on the daily lives of residents. Energy is one of these crucial services. High energy cost burdens can have several negative effects on households. Low-income households may have to make trade-offs between energy costs and the costs of other necessities such as food and medical care. Households that cut back on energy use due to high cost may experience negative health effects, including asthma and arthritis. High energy cost burden also creates a chronic source of stress, which negatively affects the mental health of household members. In addition, households of color experience greater energy cost burden compared to white households, as seen in Chart EJ-4. This is especially true for Black households in Oakland for which median energy cost burden is 2.34 times higher than for white households. Geographically, the census tracts that are most impacted by energy cost burden include Lockwood/Coliseum/Rudsdale, Lower San Antonio East, and Fitchburg, among others listed in Table EJ-8. Further analysis into public service infrastructure equity issues and financing options, including grants and assistance to lower income populations in EJ Communities, will be explored as part of the new Infrastructure and Facilities Element in Phase 2 of the General Plan Update.

Chart EJ-4: Median Percent of Household Income Spent on Energy Costs by Race, 2018

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Source: Oakland Equity Indicators Report, City of Oakland, 2018.

Table EJ-8: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Equitable Public Facilities

6.2 GOALS AND POLICIES

GOAL EJ-6 SUPPORT A NETWORK OF WELL-MAINTAINED COMMUNITY FACILITIES THAT ARE EASILY ACCESSIBLE, CULTURALLY SUPPORTIVE, AND RESPONSIVE TO COMMUNITY NEEDS.

Public Facilities

EJ-6.1 Public Facilities Distribution. Ensure equitable distribution of beneficial public safety, civic, and cultural facilities. Prioritize new facilities, resilience hubs, and creative spaces in traditionally underserved areas. Locations for these public facilities should be identified in collaboration with local schools and neighborhood groups.

EJ-6.2 Childcare Facilities. As part of planning efforts, ensure appropriate land use designations, zoning, and incentives to facilitate additional affordable and high-quality childcare facilities in areas without sufficient access, as shown in Figure EJ-20.

EJ-6.3 Healthcare Facilities. As part of long-range planning efforts, ensure appropriate land use designations and zoning to facilitate additional healthcare facilities in areas without sufficient access, as shown in Figure EJ-21.

EJ-6.4 Facilities Maintenance. Maintain and improve existing civic and public facilities to ensure safer, more attractive facilities that are responsive to community needs. Prioritize equitable capital improvements and maintenance projects and investments in public and community-driven social infrastructure in EJ Communities.

EJ-6.5 Public Service Coordination. Maintain interagency coordination agreements with neighboring jurisdictions and partner agencies that provide urban public facilities and services within the City/County to ensure effective and efficient service delivery. Ensure strong coordination between agencies during climate emergencies, with in-language and culturally appropriate outreach targeted to the most vulnerable communities.

EJ-6.6 Public Restroom Facilities. Distribute restrooms equitably across the city to support all residents, including Oakland's unhoused population. Access to safe, clean sanitation is globally recognized as essential for public health. Public toilets should be accessible to all Oaklanders, without social or physical barriers preventing usage. A public toilet facility's design and upkeep should offer privacy and safety, ensure cleanliness, provide required sanitation-related resources, and be gender equitable.

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Credit: Black Cultural Zone

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7. Promoting Physical Activity

Building complete neighborhoods with open spaces, parks, urban forest, and safe sidewalks and bikeways can support a greener, healthier City, with more opportunities for residents to get out and play, socialize, experience nature, and exercise. Physical inactivity is one of the key contributors to chronic disease in California. In fact, people who are physically active tend to have a higher life expectancy and lower risk for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, and other health-related illnesses.¹ In Oakland, areas with the greatest prevalence of obesity include DeFremery/Oak Center and Acorn in West Oakland as well as Havenscourt/Coliseum, Bancroft/Havenscourt, and Seminary in East Oakland, whereas tracts in the Oakland Hills consistently have lower incidences of obesity.

The built environment plays an integral role in determining how communities can access opportunities for physical activity by providing places and encouraging land uses that support active transportation and other forms of exercise. The built environment of impacted communities can be negatively impacted by a history of inequitable investments and discriminatory land use practices. These practices have meant fewer opportunities for physical activity, such as fewer parks, recreation facilities, and safe pedestrian connectivity networks. This section describes some of the top barriers to physical activity and health and lays out a framework for addressing other considerations in the LUTE and Open Space, Conservation, and Recreation (OSCAR) Elements.

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7.1 ISSUES AND DISPARITIES

MOBILITY AND SAFETY

Accessible land use patterns with amenities in close distance, robust transportation options, and access to safe pedestrian and bicycle networks are important components of community livability. In addition to serving as spaces where people can recreate, pedestrian and bicycle facilities can help encourage residents to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle.

Bicycle Facilities

“Let’s Bike Oakland” (2019), an addendum to the LUTE that forms the City’s Bicycle Plan, takes an equity-focused approach to bicycle planning. The plan establishes a vision that Oakland will be a bicycle-friendly city where bicycling provides affordable, safe, and healthy mobility for all Oaklanders. The plan highlights new projects and programs that will work to enhance existing communities and their mobility needs. Existing and planned bicycle infrastructure from Let’s Bike Oakland is shown in Figure EJ-22. The plan acknowledges the lack of bicycle infrastructure in East Oakland despite a strong desire among residents for more opportunities to bike and proposes significant investments in low-stress

Figure EJ-22: Oakland Existing and Proposed Bicycle Network, 2019

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Existing Bikeways

• Class I
• Class II
• Class III
• Class IV

Proposed Bikeways

• Class I
• Class II
• Class III
• Class IV
• City of Oakland
• Alameda County

SOURCE: City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA County GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

²bikeways, supportive infrastructure³, and programming in East Oakland neighborhoods. However, the plan acknowledges the potential adverse effects of transportation investments on housing costs, particularly in historically disinvested neighborhoods, in a speculative land market. Let’s Bike Oakland recognizes the connection between public investments in transportation infrastructure and new development, and the threat this relationship can pose to housing affordability and stability in Oakland’s Black and Brown neighborhoods. The plan highlights the need for bicycle infrastructure investments to be paired with policies and programs that keep people in place, foster neighborhood economic development, and protect labor rights.

Transit Facilities

Oakland’s 2018 Equity Indicators identified that bus frequency is relatively equitable compared to other citywide issues assessed in the report. Nevertheless, there are still some disparities in frequency between racial groups. Specifically, residents in majority Black census tracts experience less than half the average number of buses per hour than residents in majority White tracts. In addition, data from the 2019 American Community Surveys (ACS) demonstrates that provision of services does not align with needs, as almost all racial groups have similar percentages (approximately 25 percent) of working residents who commute by transit, except for Hispanic/Latinx, Native American/Alaskan, and Other races (18 percent and lower).⁴ Oakland’s existing transit infrastructure and bus route frequency as of 2017 is shown in Figure EJ-23.

AC Transit and OakDOT updated their Transit Action Strategy in 2020 which highlights actions to reduce transit costs for low-income transit users and identifies transit improvements that would benefit vulnerable populations, such as addressing gaps in bus frequency. These actions also address infrastructure upgrades, such as repaving transit streets, upgrading bus stops, and installing pedestrian lighting.

Pedestrian Network

In 2021, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an update to its Smart Location Database (version 3.0), which includes an analysis of transportation accessibility according to factors like location and quality of employment. Census block groups in Oakland generally fall within the higher (more walkable) range. Areas where there is less walkability include census block groups along the northern edge of the city, in addition to the industrial area of West Oakland (west of I-880) and Oakland International Airport. According to “Oakland Walks,” an addendum to the LUTE that forms the City’s Pedestrian Plan, sidewalks in East and West Oakland are more likely to be damaged and to be missing critical amenities such as curb ramps, and these neighborhoods are disproportionately burdened by traffic collisions resulting in fatalities and severe injuries.⁵ Figure EJ-24 shows sidewalk gaps as identified in the Oakland Walks Plan. The neighborhoods along International Boulevard and parts of West Oakland north of Adeline Street are less likely to have sufficient tree coverage, exposing people walking to an uncomfortable environment characterized by extreme heat and pollution.⁶

The traditional approach to transportation planning and design has prioritized expeditious vehicular mobility over safety, resulting in an over-engineered transportation network that poses dangers to people walking and biking, along with segregating neighborhoods. The Oakland Equity Indicators Report also found that pedestrian safety is one of the 12 indicators that received the lowest possible score and is a therefore a top issue for equity.

As mapped in Figure EJ-25, there were 12,333 crashes that occurred between 2016 and 2020 in Oakland, including 1,552 pedestrian (13 percent), 848 bicycle (7.0 percent), 969 motorcycle (7.9 percent), 406 truck (3.0 percent), and 8,559 car (6.0 percent) crashes. About six percent of these accidents resulted in severe injury, and just over one percent resulted in death. The leading causes of these crashes are speeding (24 percent), improper turning (17 percent), violation of traffic signals/signs (16 percent), and violation of automobile right-of-way (14 percent).⁷

According to the Citywide Crash Analysis of crashes from 2012-2016, 60 percent of severe and fatal crashes in Oakland occur on just 6 percent of the total street network. Further, reported crash data reveal that certain demographic groups and geographic areas experience a disproportionate share of crashes in Oakland. For example, Black Oaklanders are twice as likely to be killed or

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Figure EJ-23: Oakland Transit Network, 2017

SOURCE: Alameda County GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021, Caltrans 2022, Alameda CTC 2021 and Oakland Transit Action Strategy, City of Oakland 2020. Sources: Esri, USGS, NOAA NOTE: Transit Streets frequency information is based on AC Transit schedules and routes from Fall 2017.

Figure EJ-24: Sidewalk Gaps in Oakland (2004-2007)

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SOURCE: City of Oakland, 2017-2021; ALAMEDA County GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2023

Figure EJ-25: Crashes in Oakland 2016-2020

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Legend

▲ Fatal or Severe Injury • Not Fatal or Severe Injury

Base Map ⎯⎯ Railroads ⎯⎯ Major Roads Parks ╏⎯⎯╏ City of Oakland ⎯⎯ Alameda County

SOURCE: Transportation Injury Mapping System (UC Berkeley), 2022; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2022

Includes crashes that occurred between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2020.

severely injured in a crash compared to all other Oaklanders.¹ Based on data from the City’s 2018 High Injury Network (HIN), which tracks the intersections and corridors with the greatest volume of crashes in the city, Chart EJ-5 demonstrates how these crashes occur predominantly, and disproportionately, in majority Hispanic/Latinx tracts – more than double the proportion seen in tracts with other racial pluralities. In addition, both Black and Asian populations make up roughly 20 percent of the city’s population and experience similar proportions of crashes (i.e., close to a one-to-one ratio), which is a significantly higher rate than for white populations.

Poor lighting alongside secluded walking environments or minimal street activity can increase pedestrian vulnerability. In 2004, the Metropolitan Council awarded Oakland a $2.2 million grant to transform four crosswalks with pedestrian-scale lighting and retimed signals, which resulted in a more friendly and visible pedestrian environment. However, there is a continued need for investment in pedestrian safety and security. For example, the Oakland 2017 Pedestrian Plan encourages investigation into identifying targeted investments to bring all sidewalks up to minimum standards for pedestrian security using pedestrian-scale lighting or improved street lighting.

As part of the LUTE update, the City can work to ensure that new street design and redesign supports pedestrian safety by minimizing traffic volumes and/or speed, incorporating street trees, implementing leading pedestrian intervals (which give pedestrians the opportunity to enter the crosswalk 3-7 seconds before the vehicles are given the green signals), and adding pedestrian-scale lighting.

Issues and opportunities related to Oakland’s roadway, bikeway, and pedestrian network will be further analyzed as part of the LUTE update. The City will focus on creating more accessible neighborhoods and identifying specific locations and strategies for improved street design and safety measures in EJ Communities and those most burdened by collisions.

Chart EJ-5: High Injury Network Crashes by Census Tract Racial Majority, 2018

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Building Resilience: Safe Oakland Streets

Safe Oakland Streets (SOS) is a citywide initiative launched in 2021 to prevent serious and fatal traffic crashes and eliminate crash inequities on Oakland’s streets by prioritizing safety over speed with a focus on historically underserved communities. The SOS approach recognizes that all severe and fatal traffic crashes are preventable. One way the City is implementing this approach is through “Safe Systems,” through which roadways are designed to anticipate human error and protect those who are most vulnerable rather than the traditional traffic safety approach that often relies on perfecting individual human behavior.

SOS is working across departments and building partnerships with the community to implement the most effective and equitable strategies. Previous planning efforts have laid the foundation for SOS, including OakDOT’s 2016 Strategic Transportation Plan, Oakland Walks, and Let’s Bike Oakland, which prioritize taking an integrated safety and equity-driven approach. For instance, OakDOT’s Geographic Equity Toolbox—which identifies Priority neighborhoods to leverage attention and funding to neighborhoods that may have been historically and currently overlooked by City services and planning processes—and information from the HIN helps the department set data-informed priorities for improvements and reduce the incidence of crashes. Additionally, OakDOT maintains a contracted “community-based organization on-call” to continue to support the values of equity and engagement. This contracting mechanism allows OakDOT to pay non-profit organizations for the valuable work they do in support of transportation justice, ranging from grassroots engagement to policy input and meeting facilitation. These include organizations such as Bike East Bay, Safe Passages, Urban Strategies Council, Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, Transform, Cycles of Change, Eastside Arts Alliance, Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency.

Source: City of Oakland, “Safe Oakland Streets”

Building Resilience: Interstate 980 Study - Vision 980

The Vision 980 study is a joint effort by Caltrans and the City of Oakland that will define transportation and land use strategies to reconnect Downtown Oakland and West Oakland communities along the I-980 corridor. The study will focus on community integration and environmental justice to establish a vision for I-980 that will guide the delivery of equitable outcomes for the City of Oakland, the Bay Area region, and the State of California. This currently ongoing effort will be accomplished by engaging study partners, stakeholders, and the public in developing and recommending a new collective vision for the corridor, such as:

• A broad range of multi-modal options, including bus and rail transit, active transportation, freight movement and emerging mobility and micro-mobility services.
• Land use options, including reallocating right-of-way to reconnect communities divided by the freeway.

The Vision 980 study will occur in two phases. The shared vision will be developed in the first phase, then the plan for accomplishing the shared vision will be developed in the second phase.

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PARK ACCESS AND MAINTENANCE

Green spaces in parks and natural areas are valuable public assets that can greatly improve community livability, support healthy and active lifestyles, and provide ecological benefits. Overall, Oakland has excellent access to parks and open space, but there are also geographic disparities on the neighborhood level. As shown in Figure EJ-26, the Oakland Hills are almost entirely bordered by and include some regional parks (several of which are owned by the East Bay Park District rather than the City of Oakland). The hills also include large resource conservation areas and open spaces. The Oakland flatlands contain a much smaller total area of the City's parkland, with most parks being small neighborhood parks. Lake Merritt is the exception as it is surrounded by substantial community parkland; however, it is also surrounded by some of the densest neighborhoods in the city and a significant share of the population lives within close proximity, resulting in heavy use of these spaces.

Based on data from the Trust for Public Land, Oakland—which is the 45th most populous city—ranks 84th among the 100 most populous cities in the country. Residents in neighborhoods of color have access to 69 percent less park space per person compared to those in white neighborhoods. Specifically, white neighborhoods have access to 135 percent more park space per person relative to the city median, whereas Hispanic/Latinx neighborhoods have access to the least amount of park space, with 32 percent less than the city median.

In addition to provision of parkland, distribution of city investments can determine whether park quality is equitable. In 2020, the Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation surveyed Oakland residents to better understand how to improve citywide park equity. This study found that park quality generally needs improvement, particularly for Black respondents; white respondents had the highest scoring perception of park quality.¹ Furthermore, the study highlighted that maintenance and safety are primary factors in park use, anecdotally showing that some residents feel they "have to drive to find a park that feels safe, has basic amenities, and functioning restroom and playground equipment," which was particularly true for residents of the East Oakland/South Hills area. In face of such issues, the City will need to balance park priorities between providing additional acreage and improving existing facilities to meet the needs of its residents.

As part of the OSCAR Element update and creation of a new Infrastructure and Facilities Element, the City can analyze major and minor CIP park projects and maintenance by funding and location as well as work orders connected to park facilities to better understand distribution of investments.

URBAN FOREST AND URBAN GREENING

Urban Forest

Shaded trees and greenery play a major part in improving the urban environment. Urban trees balance the natural with the built environment and provide both shade and beauty. Trees play a key role in the climate as they absorb carbon dioxide and help manage stormwater runoff. They also help fight pollution by improving air quality, aid in cooling on hot days, and generally make it more pleasant to recreate outside.

In 2021, the City began the process of developing an Urban Forest Plan, an equity-focused guide on how the urban forest will be planned, managed, and protected over the next 50 years for the next generation of Oaklanders. Based on studies of community tree canopy, portions of West Oakland, North Oakland, East Oakland, and Deep East Oakland have the least amount of tree canopy coverage. The City's tree inventory, shown in Figure EJ-27, is also disproportionately distributed; while white residents make up only about a third of the City's population, they live in census tracts that contain more than half of the City's tree inventory. In comparison, Oakland's Asian population represents 17 percent of the total population, they live in census tracts where only nine percent of city trees are located. As part of development of the Urban Forest Plan, the City will include targeted planting efforts, tree maintenance, and investment strategies to increase and maintain tree canopy cover in these areas.

Figure EJ-26: Parks Walkability

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	10-minute Walking Distance from Parks
	Residential Parcel
Parks & Open Space
	Mini Park/Plaza
	Neighborhood Park
	Community Park
	Special Use Park
	Linear Park/Greenbelt
	Athletic Field
	Resource Conservation Area/Open Space
	Other Park
	Regional Parks & Open Space
	Recreation Centers
	Community Gardens
Base Map
	Railroads
	Major Highways
	Major Roads
	City of Oakland
	Alameda County

SOURCE: ParkServe, Trust for Public Land, 2022; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2023

Figure EJ-27: Urban Tree Canopy

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Urban Greening and Climate Resilience

Climate change is expected to cause more frequent and more severe extreme heat events, while sea level rise continues to accelerate. High energy demand can be expected from protecting households from extreme temperature fluctuations, which can create a cost burden for lower-income households. These climate-change related factors will impact some areas more than others and affect frontline communities more severely. Frontline communities are those who have been and will continue to be hit first and worst by the impacts of environmental injustice and the climate crisis. This disproportionate impact from climate change is a result of compounding vulnerabilities including racial discrimination, poverty, disability, housing insecurity, linguistic isolation, poor air quality, and other factors. These vulnerabilities often make these communities least able to adapt or recover from climate change impacts. For more information on climate resiliency, including sea level rise, emergency preparedness, and community resilience hubs, please see the Safety Element.

To identify areas that would be most affected by climate change-related factors, indicators that measure projected maximum temperatures during future heat health events, energy cost burdens, and flood hazards due to sea level rise were combined. As seen in Figure EJ-28, areas in southwest Oakland are the most cumulatively vulnerable to climate change effects, notably those closest to downtown and San Francisco Bay. Improving climate resiliency in these areas, such as by increasing urban forestry, can help lessen the burden on these frontline communities.

In many areas of Oakland, there are opportunities to create greener, more environmentally sustainable and livable communities by creating new parks, improving existing parks and green spaces, green walls, and planting trees. With the right design, these projects can filter stormwater, improve groundwater recharge, and improve water quality. Projects may also provide additional benefits such as reducing urban heat island effects, improving air quality, increasing walkability and increasing neighborhood safety. Urban greening’s co-benefits have been included in the 2019 Green Stormwater Infrastructure Plan, and several community plans, including the West Oakland Community Action Plan and East Oakland Neighborhoods Initiative, have identified urban greening projects as one of the top community priorities. The City can also prioritize projects in Priority Conservation Areas (PCAs), which qualify for funding from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC).

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Table EJ-9: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator — Promoting Physical Activity

Note: Bolded and blue census tracts are EJ Communities. * Indicates census tract with low population. 1. Includes only 11 tracts in top decile due to ties. Next highest score for Tree Canopy is 0.87 and next highest for Road Safety is 0.89.

Figure EJ-28: Climate Change Category Score

This map shows the EJ Communities Screening Analysis score for the Climate Change Category, calculated from the Heat Health Events, Energy Cost Burden, and Sea Level Rise indicators.

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SOURCE: City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA County GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2022

7.2 GOALS AND POLICIES

GOAL EJ-7 CREATE ENVIRONMENTS THAT SUPPORT PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, RECREATION, AND HEALTHY LIFESTYLES THROUGH SAFE, COMFORTABLE AND ADA-COMPLIANT WALKABLE, BIKEABLE NEIGHBORHOODS, WITH ACCESS TO TRANSIT, GREEN SPACE, TREES, PATHS, AND PARKS.

Land Use Planning

Additional policies will primarily be developed as part of the Phase 2 LUTE update.

EJ-7.1 Complete Neighborhoods. Promote "complete neighborhoods"— where residents have safe and convenient access to goods and services on a daily or regular basis—that address unique neighborhood needs and support physical activity, including walking, bicycling, active transportation, recreation, and active play.

EJ-7.2 Accessible Neighborhoods. Encourage active modes of transportation and transit accessibility by supporting neighborhoods that provide access to a range of daily goods, services, and recreational resources within comfortable walking or biking distance. Encourage transit providers to prioritize, establish, and maintain routes to jobs, shopping, schools, parks and healthcare facilities that are convenient to EJ Communities.

Collisions

Additional policies will primarily be developed as part of the Phase 2 LUTE update.

EJ-7.3 Street Design for Safe Speeds. Work to maximize the safety of the transportation network by designing/redesigning streets for lower driving speeds and enforcing speed limits as well as promoting safe driving behavior. Strategies could include implementing leading pedestrian intervals for crosswalks in residential neighborhoods and providing pedestrian scale lighting. Prioritize speed reduction efforts in EJ Communities with the highest concentrations of pedestrian and bicyclist crashes. Study enforcement patterns annually to avoid racial profiling.

EJ-7.4 Safe Oakland Streets. Use a community engagement-rooted, data-driven and systematic approach to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries, while increasing safety, health, and equitable mobility for all.

EJ-7.5 Bicyclist-and Pedestrian-Friendly Design. Prioritize designs that protect people biking and walking, such as improvements that increase visibility of bicyclists and pedestrians, traffic calming, and safer intersection crossings and turns. Improvements should also prioritize universal design so that improvements are usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialization.

EJ-7.6 Collaborative Safety Solutions. Collaborate with educational institutions, senior living facilities, community organizations, and other stakeholders, particularly those who reside in EJ Communities, when developing and implementing programs and improvements that increase safety and encourage the use of active transportation modes. Identify and plan for improvements in collaboration with existing neighborhood residents and businesses to address concerns about gentrification and displacement.

EJ-7.7 Equitable Paving. Continue to plan and distribute paving program resources based on equity, road condition and safety metrics. Align paving programs with other city infrastructure priorities including the West Oakland Specific Plan, the 2019 Oakland Bike Plan, and the 2017 Oakland Walks Pedestrian Plan. In addition, align the paving program with the GSI Plan to ensure flood resilience and pollution prevention is incorporated.

Parks, Programming, and Access

Additional policies will primarily be developed as part of the Phase 2 OSCAR update.

EJ-7.8 Park Distribution. As part of park planning efforts, prioritize development of new parks in EJ Communities that are underserved, as identified in Figure EJ-26.

EJ-7.9 Enhancing Access to Parks. Pursue strategies that increase community access to safe, high quality-open space, parks and recreational facilities, including increasing access to pedestrian and bicycle amenities around open space or recreational areas, expanding joint use agreements with schools and educational institutions; removing of physical barriers to access (ex: fences); and providing a choice of legible routes to and from park areas through the installation of new or improved multi-use shared paths, wayfinding, and signage.

EJ-7.10 Parks Programming. Create high-quality inclusive programming that encourages the use of the park facilities by a variety of users including older adults, youth, and people with disabilities throughout the day and evenings. Opportunities should be taken to incorporate local heritage and culture.

EJ-7.11 Partnerships. Coordinate partnerships with Caltrans and the Port to activate and increase access to parks and greenways with community programming and events, as well as to explore the potential for new greenway resources, including ways to reconnect areas divided by I-980 and I-880.

EJ-7.12 Park Safety. Use Crime Prevention Through Environmental design (CPTED) and other best practices for landscaping, lighting, and other components when designing open space and recreational spaces. Take into consideration locational indicators related to crime and perception of safety when prioritizing park safety improvements or programs.

EJ-7.13 Park Maintenance. When evaluating park projects and funds for maintenance—such as routine trash collection, cleaning of restroom facilities, provision of safety lighting, and other operational functions—include equity and presence in EJ Communities as a priority weighted factor.

EJ-7.14 Community Input. Provide ongoing opportunities for public engagement and input into the parks and recreation planning process, including priorities for amenities, facilities, programming, and improvements.

Greening and the Urban Forest

EJ-7.15 Urban Forest. Implement the Urban Forest Master Plan, a comprehensive, area-wide urban canopy and vegetation plan that identifies locations where trees can be added and maintained, such as parks, streets, and rights-of-way. Develop a plan to maintain and protect existing trees that provide shade, reduce urban heat island impacts, reduce flooding, reduce pollution, and reduce exposure to air pollution emissions in communities most affected by air pollution. Align tree canopy with climate resilience planning, including green stormwater infrastructure. Trees should be low on the allergenic scale, to serve EJ communities most impacted by air pollution and asthma. This includes partnering with local nonprofit groups, encouraging trees on private property, and working with the community on tree maintenance and (as needed) removal. Prioritize tree canopy in EJ Communities with the least amount of canopy, as shown in Figure EJ-27.

EJ-7.16 Urban Greening. Promote collaboration with community-based organizations in identifying, funding, developing, and maintaining specific green infrastructure projects in EJ Communities. Align urban greening efforts with flood and pollution prevention, prioritizing green stormwater infrastructure, especially in areas at risk of flooding.

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8. Engaged Communities

SB 1000 seeks to facilitate transparency and public engagement in local governments' planning and decision-making processes, reduce harmful pollutants and the associated health risks in environmental justice communities, and promote equitable access to health-inducing benefits to address the inequitable distribution of pollution and associated health effects in low-income communities and communities of color. Meaningful participation of all people in decisions that affect their lives and communities is a critical component of environmental justice and a prerequisite for a sustainable and equitable city. As discussed in Chapter 2, the most socioeconomically disadvantaged and environmentally impacted communities in Oakland have been institutionally barred out of decision-making processes, and the result has been a pattern of underinvestment and disinvestment in these communities. Redressing inequities will require a sustained effort to rebuild trust, engage and empower historically underrepresented communities, and focus investments and actions in areas that are cumulatively most affected by environmental, social, and economic burdens.

ENGAGEMENT BEST PRACTICES

Achieving inclusive, authentic community engagement and closing equity gaps requires direct participation by impacted communities in the development and implementation of solutions and policy decisions that directly affect them. As shown in the image below, community engagement can be conducted on a spectrum that ranges from informing to power sharing. This spectrum can also be thought of as series of steps essential for building capacity for community collaboration and governance, and the City will assess and orient community engagement efforts that advance the level of public impact toward greater community ownership. When the City conducts community engagement, it will start by identifying community assets and build sustained partnerships to support cultural brokers and community-based organizations who already have in-depth knowledge and established relationships in the community.

When designing community engagement efforts, it is crucial to identify potential barriers and address them as part of

Figure EJ-29: Community Engagement Spectrum

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Credit: Graphic designed by Local Initatives Support Corporation (LISC), based on the framework developed by the Internationanl Association for Public Participation (IAP2).

implementation. The City will seek to remove technology, language, education, cultural, and other barriers that have limited participation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC); low-income; non-English speaking people; older adults; youth; people with disabilities; individuals across the sexual orientation/gender identity spectrum; unhoused people; formerly incarcerated persons; and other historically marginalized groups. Strategies to address barriers include provision of food and childcare at meetings; transportation vouchers; compensation for time and effort; translation services and materials available in people’s desired language, including Braille or other languages accessible to people with disabilities or limited reading ability; venues and materials that are accommodating of work schedules and cultures; physically accessible venues; accessible marketing and informational materials with simple, relevant language; culturally relevant events and meeting formats; partnerships with trusted community organizations; expansion of internet access and coaching in digital skills; and establishment of pathways and resources for City staff follow-up.

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8.1 ISSUES AND DISPARITIES

LINGUISTIC ISOLATION

One of Oakland’s strengths is its diversity: residents come from many different cultures and backgrounds. Nearly 27 percent were born in another country, and common languages spoken at home (by at least one percent of the city’s population, ages 5 and over) include Spanish, Vietnamese, Arabic, and Chinese (including Mandarin and Cantonese).¹

However, many of these residents do not speak or read English as a first language or at all and experience barriers to civic engagement, health and safety as a result. The people and institutions that provide social services and medical care often fail to provide translation or interpretation for adults who are not able to speak or read English well, which means they may not get the health care and information they need. Linguistically isolated households may not hear or understand important information when there is an emergency like a fire, earthquake, or extreme heat waves. A household’s limited English proficiency can create even more barriers to social and civic inclusion. A household is considered linguistically isolated when all adults primarily speak a language other than English and have limited English proficiency. Figure EJ-30 shows areas of linguistic isolation, which are greatest in the Jack London Gateway, Chinatown, Lower Laurel/Allendale, and Elmhurst Park tracts in addition to a large portion of south-central Oakland throughout Fruitvale and adjacent neighborhoods. The City will prioritize interpretation, translation, and connection to linguistically appropriate services in these communities. Policies in the Safety Element address linguistic barriers in community education, emergency preparedness, and emergency response.

INTERNET ACCESS

Reliable access to the internet and telecommunications systems plays an increasingly important part in daily and civic life, helping people to work, learn, access services, participate in government, and stay connected to friends and family. Despite this importance, there are still households without access to the Internet or to computers at home. The impacts of digital isolation, especially for older adults, people with disabilities, and communities of color, include less access to resources and decreased ability to participate in civic political and non-political activities, which compounds other barriers to civic engagement and increases impacts of racial disparities in access to resources and opportunities. Figure EJ-31 shows that tracts with the greatest proportion of households without Internet access are located in the Lockwood/Coliseum neighborhood in East Oakland and neighborhoods in Jack London Square. According to the 2018 Equity Indicators Report, Black individuals were the most likely to not have high speed internet access at home (40.8 percent), followed by Hispanic/Latinx individuals (33.5 percent). White individuals were least likely to lack high speed Internet access at home (14.6 percent). Among Asian individuals, 25.2 percent did not have access to high-speed internet at home, slightly lower than the citywide percent (26.8 percent). Black residents were 2.79 times more likely than white residents to not have high speed Internet access at home. Additional strategies to foster digital equity may include leveraging City infrastructure to provide access to households in underserved areas and partnering with telecommunications and cable providers to offer discounted wireless and broadband plans to low-income customers.

Figure EJ-30: Limited English-Speaking Ability, Population Ages 5 and Over, 2019

Limited English-speaking ability defined as population ages 5 and older who speak a language other than English at home and speak English less than "very well."

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Percent Limited English-speaking Natural Jenks

• 33% - 61%
• 22% - 32%
• 13% - 21%
• 7% - 12%
• 0% - 6%
• No Data/Low Population Area

Base Map

• [---] City of Oakland
• [---] Alameda County

SOURCE: ACS 2015-2019; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

Figure EJ-31: Internet Access at Home, 2019

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Percent Households w/No Internet Natural Jenks

Base Map

SOURCE: ACS 2015-2019; City of Oakland, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

Building Resilience: Bridging the Digital Divide

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, essential activities like completing homework, finding a job, working from home, starting a business, making appointments, and accessing government services increasingly take place online. Yet, according to 2019 American Community Surveys (ACS) five-year estimates, over 15,000 Oakland residents do not have a computer and 27,600 do not have internet at home. Inability to access internet or broadband excludes the marginalized from educational and economic benefits available to those who are connected; this disparity between the have and have-nots is referred to as the "digital divide." The City has developed a program for "digital inclusion" with the objective of achieving digital equity. By targeting four intervention points—advocacy and awareness, internet access, devices, and digital literacy (skills)—the program can positively impact education, healthcare, employment, and economic development.

Funded through the federal CARES Act, the Oakland CARES Act: OAK WiFi Initiative provides free internet access for students, older adults, job seekers, small businesses, the underserved, and unconnected. Beginning in November 2020, the City has provided OAK WiFi live hotspots throughout the city, greatly expanding coverage from West Oakland through Downtown and along the International Boulevard corridor to the San Leandro border.

The #OaklandUndivided campaign is a partnership between the City Office of Education, Oakland Promise, Oakland Public Education Fund, Oakland Unified School District, and Tech Exchange that provides free school-loaned laptop computers, reliable internet connection, and ongoing tech support to public school students.

The City of Oakland also has also collaborated with the Greenlining Institute to address barriers to digital access through a year-long program called The Town Link, which builds digital inclusion and digital literacy through trainings and educational programs; builds awareness around free and affordable broadband plans; provides computers and tablets to residents that lack devices; and provides $100,000 in grants and technical assistance to 10 local organizations ($10,000 per organization) with the goal of increasing internet adoption and digital literacy in priority communities and neighborhoods. In October 2021, the Greenlining Institute announced the grant recipients, which included the following 10 grassroots Oakland organizations: Allen Temple Baptist Church, El Timpano, Homies Empowerment, Oakland Workers Fund, Vietnamese American Community Center of East Bay, Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants, Roots Community Health Center, The Unity Council, St. Mary’s Center, and Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency.

Sources: ACS 5-Year Estimates, 2019; City of Oakland Digital Inclusion Report; City of Oakland “OAK WiFi – A Small Step to Closing the Digital Divide” website; #OaklandUndivided website; Greenlining website

ECONOMIC WELL-BEING

Economic well-being and employment represent a means by which people engage in community life. A state of economic well-being, where people can meet their basic needs, can also make it easier for people to participate in civic processes. Access to jobs and employment opportunities is an indicator of a place’s economic health, and many of Oakland’s smaller businesses represent the beating heart of Oakland’s culture. As the city plans for employment of the future, the city is well-positioned to capture additional jobs in fast-growing Bay Area sectors related to software, social media, life sciences,- and the “green economy”, given its burgeoning labor force already employed in these industries as well as its central, transit-accessible location and abundant real estate redevelopment opportunities. By providing enough jobs and the means to live near those jobs, cities can significantly help foster community and support residents. Figure EJ-32 shows where high-wage jobs are located in Oakland by census block group, based on data from 2017 in the EPA Smart Location 3.0 database. Currently, areas between International Boulevard and I-580 throughout central and East Oakland have a lower percentage of high-wage employment. Downtown Oakland and the industrial area of West Oakland have high proportions of high-wage jobs, ranging between 73 and 90 percent of workers in the census block group.

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Figure EJ-32: High-Wage Jobs by Census Block Group, 2017 (EPA Smart Location Database 3.0)

SOURCE: US EPA, 2021; ALAMEDA COUNTY GIS, 2021; Dyett & Bhatia, 2021

Preserving existing Oakland businesses is a key component in an equitable economic future. Many of these businesses represent the “beating heart” of Oakland’s culture that strengthens and reflects the neighborhoods they are a part of. However, new economic growth can also mean displacement pressures, and the City must take action to protect these important community assets.

Entrepreneurship, specifically business ownership, is also an indicator of economic opportunity at both an individual and neighborhood level. Policies in the General Plan seek to overcome racial disparities in entrepreneurship opportunities. Additionally, through industry, government, and community partnerships, the City can help build a support system of education, training, and mentorship for industries of the future. These resources can support youth, women, people of color, and formerly incarcerated individuals with the skills and connections to new economic pathways.

The LUTE update will include additional strategies for employment related to business attraction, land use and infrastructure planning, revitalization of underperforming commercial corridors, and a more comprehensive equitable business development and support strategy. The EJ Element includes a focus on opportunities that promote equitable, inclusive, and sustainable growth and support for existing Oakland businesses, culture keepers, and entrepreneurs.

Table EJ-10: Top 10th Percentile Tracts by Indicator – Civic Engagement

Note: Census tract names that appear in red are EJ Communities.

1. Includes only 11 tracts in the top decile due to ties. Next highest score for is 0.88.

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8.2 GOALS AND POLICIES

GOAL EJ-8 FOSTER MEANINGFUL CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND SUPPORT COMMUNITY POWER- AND CAPACITY-BUILDING.

EJ-8.1 Meaningful, Relevant Engagement. Design and implement public engagement processes and events that facilitate participation from low-income communities and communities of color; are driven by resident priorities, are easily accessible and understandable, and provide meaningful opportunities for participants to influence outcomes.

EJ-8.2 Sustained Engagement. Develop and maintain communication channels that allow for ongoing dialogue with neighborhood groups and individual residents; consult with AB 617 Steering Committees; track issues and priorities at the neighborhood level; and foster transparency and accountability. Use this information to inform development of City programs, projects, and services, sharing information across departments to optimize the effectiveness of efforts, and share outcomes with groups.

EJ-8.3 Innovative Methods and Creative Strategies. Explore innovative strategies for increasing community involvement in civic processes and ownership of outcomes, tailoring strategies to best reach target audiences. Strategies to explore may include participatory budgeting, participatory action research, providing staff assistance to support community-driven planning and policy efforts, or other approaches that emphasize the active participation of community members most affected by the questions at issue.

EJ-8.4 Community Partners. Partner with community-based organizations that have relationships, trust, and cultural competency with target communities as to support engagement for local initiatives and issues. Seek opportunities to support community partners in these efforts such as by providing technical assistance, data, meeting spaces, funding and other support services as feasible.

EJ-8.5 Community Capacity Building. Empower historically marginalized community members to participate in local decision-making and engage meaningfully in planning efforts, including through increased representation in employment and civic life; providing educational/training workshops and programs about civic involvement and processes, such as through fellowships and internships; providing organizational support to community-based organizations; and other capacity building activities.

EJ-8.6 Engagement Infrastructure. Build City technology, staffing, funding and systems resources to conduct more inclusive, meaningful and community-empowered engagement, including seeking grant funding. Develop flexible but sustained infrastructure for two-way information sharing between City and partner agencies and community members.

EJ-8.7 Interagency and Interdepartmental Collaboration. Collaborate with and among public agencies and City departments to leverage resources, avoid duplication of effort and enhance the effectiveness of public participation.

EJ-8.8 Youth-Centered Events. Seek out opportunities for meaningfully and authentically involving young people—particularly from EJ Communities—in the planning and implementation of youth-centered events that develop confidence and leadership skills.

EJ-8.9 Events for Older Adults. Provide greater opportunity for older adults (ages 65 and over), particularly those from EJ Communities, to be integrated into community events and intergenerational exchanges. Involve older adults in the planning and implementation of events that are accessible to older adults.

EJ-8.10 Linguistically Isolated Communities. Continue to provide interpretation and translation services, assistance in accessing community services and programs, and direct engagement with specific demographic groups. Prioritize EJ Communities as identified in Figure EJ-30.

EJ-8.11 Digital Access. Ensure that all meetings, materials, and other engagement that use technology are easily accessible by mobile devices. Invest in high-speed internet in underserved low-income communities to expand digital access and engagement opportunity. Prioritize expanded internet in public facilities and EJ Communities as identified in Figure EJ-31.

EJ-8.12 Mental Health and Community Well-Being. Support programs and services that support the health and well being of residents through community-based collaboration with a range of partners.

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GOAL EJ-9 EXPAND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, INCOME EQUALITY, AND OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL OAKLANDERS.

Economic Development and Opportunity

EJ-9.1 Investments for Inclusive, Equitable Growth. Make intentional investments to increase and diversify economic growth and living wage jobs in an inclusive and equitable manner that focuses on neighborhoods and their unique needs, particularly in EJ Communities.

EJ-9.2 Small Business/Startup Support. Support the development and retention of small business startups and new firms — particularly POC/women/veteran owned businesses - by providing assistance with business planning, expansion, and access to capital.

EJ-9.3 Business Incubators. Encourage occupancy of existing buildings with incubators for specific industry/trade groups and for artisans and craftspeople, where small startup businesses can share existing facilities and equipment.

EJ-9.4 Public Procurement. Continue to use the public procurement process to stimulate small business development, prioritize certified underrepresented business enterprises, including businesses owned by people of color, women, LGBTQIA+ community members, veterans, and individuals with disabilities, and locally-owned businesses in particular, and coordinate with anchor institutions such as universities, hospitals, public agencies, and school districts to help launch new products and services.

EJ-9.5 Local Business Needs Assessment. Continually assess business workforce needs and other requirements and use the findings to assist in developing a qualified workforce that meets the demands of established and emerging business and smaller, value-added businesses such as artisan foods, digital media, recording and sound technologies, smart engineered, cooling technologies, green industries (such as urban agriculture, urban forestry, riparian restoration, infrastructure resilience, and others and green building product development.

Workforce Development and Training

EJ-9.6 Labor Force Skills Development. The City shall partner with educational institutions, employers, and community-based organizations to develop a local labor force with skills to meet the needs of the area's businesses and industries. Continue and expand local-hire initiatives, just transition and clean energy training, apprenticeships, and partnerships with employers.

EJ-9.7 Barriers to Workforce Participation. The City shall collaborate with regional and local partners to identify and address barriers to workforce participation and access to training. Solutions to explore may include:

• Two-generation programs that link education, job training, and career-building for low-income parents with supports for their children;
• Bridge programs that prepare people with low academic skills for further education and training; and
• Transitional jobs programs that provide short-term subsidized employment or training for formerly incarcerated individuals.

EJ-9.8 Entrepreneurship and Social Enterprise Training. Support education and training in entrepreneurship and social enterprise as an alternative pathway to traditional jobs.

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9. Implementation Actions and Programs

9.1 PRIORITIZING IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRAMS THAT MEET THE NEEDS OF EJ COMMUNITIES

SB 1000 requires that Cities prioritize programs and public and private investment in EJ Communities to meet identified community needs. Goals and policies related to monitoring and evaluation will also serve as a tool to track outcomes in EJ communities as they are implemented over time.

The following table includes specific actions that address the unique needs of EJ Communities as identified in the prior sections.

Each of the actions includes a “Responsibility” field, which indicates departments or agencies that will lead and/or coordinate on implementing the action, as well as a “Timeframe” field, which indicates approximately how long it could take to complete the action. The timeframes are defined as follows:

• Short: 0-5 years
• Medium: 5-10 years
• Long: 10+ years
• Ongoing: Efforts currently underway that the City will continue to implement

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GOAL EJ-10 PRIORITIZE IMPROVEMENTS AND PROGRAMS THAT MEET THE NEEDS OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE COMMUNITIES.

EJ-10.1 Prioritizing EJ Communities. Implement topic-specific actions as shown in the Goals, Policies, and Actions table, prioritizing improvements, programs, investments, and partnerships in Environmental Justice Communities, as shown in Figure EJ-7. Implementation could include technical assistance, support with grant applications seeking federal, state and philanthropic funding, access to data sources, and other resources. Spend or distribute resources to EJ communities in ways that meet the existing community’s priority needs and improve resident’s quality of life.

EJ-10.2 Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Plan. To increase transparency and accountability, adopt an implementation monitoring and evaluation plan with achievable milestones, periodic evaluation, and a reporting mechanism, such as an online portal or newsletter to track outcomes and keep residents informed.

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

Table EJ-11: Implementation — Goals, Policies, and Actions

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OAKLAND 2045

GENERAL PLAN