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City Council Round Up
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V Smoothe
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September, 10 2007
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| They're back from vacation and ready for action. On Tuesday, Oakland City Council returns to some of the same vexing issues they faced before their recess. The thorniest problem is how best to create affordable housing in the midst of a real estate downturn. |
Slim Pickings on West Oakland Grocery Store Shelves (Photo by V Smoothe)
Mandela Foods
West Oakland, a neighborhood of 28,000 people, lacks even a single full-service grocery store. Most food shopping is done at one of the area’s 53 liquor stores, which offer little or nothing in the way of produce or fresh, unprocessed foods. Not only are fruit and vegetables scarce, but staples tend to cost more at liquor stores. A 2005 UCSF School of Medicine study found that in Hunter’s Point liquor stores, a loaf of bread averaged $1.94 versus $1.09 in grocery stores elsewhere in San Francisco. The higher prices are burdensome to residents of Oakland’s poorest neighborhood, where the average income is only $12,000 a year.
A group called Mandela Foods Cooperative has been trying for three years to change the situation. Their project is ambitious. The organizers plan to sell locally grown organic produce as well as fresh meat, fish, and dairy, hire neighborhood residents and give them a share of the business, institute job training programs, and provide funding for other local business start-ups. Additionally, they also plan to operate a health education center to provide nutrition education to local residents.
In 2005, the group reached an agreement with non-profit housing developer Bridge Housing to lease an 11,000 square feet space in the Mandela Gateway transit village near the West Oakland BART station. The deal was subject to Mandela Foods meeting several benchmarks proving to the developer that they would be able to successfully operate a store.
The West Oakland Project Area Committee approved a grant for $200,000 to the co-op, and agreed to guarantee an additional year of rent on the space. District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel contributed $100,000 of her project priority funds to assist them. Nonetheless, the cooperative was unable to raise the remainder of the $500,000 they needed to secure their lease. After Mandela Foods missed multiple deadlines and failed to provide Bridge Housing with progress reports, the developer elected to lease the space to a 99 cents store instead.
Mandela Foods has now moved on, and is seeking additional city funding to help open the store in a smaller storefront in the same development. On Tuesday, the Community and Economic Development Committee will consider a grant of $200,000 from redevelopment agency money to pay for tenant improvements in the new space. With the grant in hand, the group plans to begin construction on the store in October and open for business in November.
Blue Ribbon Housing Commission
On Tuesday, the Community and Economic Development Committee will receive the final report from the Blue Ribbon Commission, which was created last fall following a heated debate on a proposed inclusionary zoning (IZ) ordinance, which would call for all new housing projects to include some affordable housing. After the City Council reached an impasse on the subject of altering Oakland's condo conversion ordinance, which would update the way rental units are turned into condominiums, the Commission's mandate was expanded to the task of developing "a comprehensive housing strategy to ensure that housing, be it rental or ownership, is affordable to all income levels within the city."
Over seven months of meetings, the Commission discussed little aside from inclusionary zoning, and the report reflects as much. It includes several recommendations, but no analysis of their fiscal impacts or economic feasibility. The bulk of the 18 page final report concerns the adoption of an inclusionary zoning ordinance that would require developers to set aside 5 percent of all units in newly built for-sale developments for households earning 100 percent of area median income ($83,300 per year in Oakland). Developers could also elect to build the affordable units in another part of the city or pay directly into an affordable housing fund, in which case the requirement would increase to 10 percent of all units. After two years, the set aside would increase to 15 percent of units, or 20 percent off-site or in-lieu fees.
Thirty-four years after the first inclusionary zoning policies were adopted in California, less than a third of cities and counties in the states have such an ordinance on the books. A 2003 report from the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California found widely varying mandates in existing inclusionary zoning policies, with the most frequent requirement being 10 percent, as well as widely varying success rates. The report noted that of the 15 most productive inclusionary zoning programs in the state, 93 percent offered developers the right to build taller buildings in exchange for IZ, 47 percent offered developers speedier processing and permitting, and 71 percent provided subsidies to developers to fund construction of the affordable units. The government subsidy for affordable unit construction was the biggest difference between IZ programs that created a substantial amount of affordable housing and those that did not.
Although an economic study commissioned by the Council last year found that an inclusionary zoning requirement of 15 percent would halt most development in the city and likely cause land values to fall, the report does not suggest any developer incentives that might make the policy more feasible. It also makes no recommendations as to the implementation or oversight of the program, noting “the Commission felt that those [issues] could be left to the City Council or the staff to work out the details.”
Those details of oversight are important. In California cities where oversight was lax, for example, housing units originally designated as affordable were resold at market rates. There are also legal issues to consider. In 2006, a judge in San Diego ruled that that city's inclusionary zoning law was unconstitutional.
Other recommendations include increasing the redevelopment area set-aside for affordable housing from the current 25 percent to 50 percent of the tax increment, “subject to the ability of the Agency to meet its other obligations” (although the report offers no analysis of whether or not current obligations would make it unaffordable), and placing a $200 million bond on the ballot that would pay for increased affordable housing construction. A similar bond in Los Angeles failed narrowly last year. The Commission also failed to offer any recommendations on condo conversions.
Anti-Smoking Ordinance
Oakland’s Public Safety Committee will not be discussing what to do about Oakland’s 93 homicides so far in 2007 on Tuesday. Instead, for the third time in less than a year, they will consider an ordinance tightening the City’s anti-smoking regulations to become among the most stringent in the country. At a meeting last December, the Committee rejected most of the provisions of the proposal presented to them by staff administrator Barbara Killey, asking her to return with new legislation limiting restrictions to bus shelters, outdoor dining areas, public trails, child care centers, common areas in apartments, and near play structures in parks.
When the ordinance returned to the Committee in June, very little had changed. It still included smoking bans in all newly built multi-unit housing, including private outdoor areas like patios and balconies, and the declaration of secondhand smoke as a public nuisance, which would allow residents anywhere in the city to sue their neighbors over “drifting” smoke. Provisions that expanded the definition of secondhand smoke to include marijuana smoke and banning smoking in plays or performances remained as well.
At the June meeting, the Committee decided to delay discussion of the ordinance, due to several other agenda items that ran late and the large number of public speakers who had turned out in opposition to the proposal. During the summer, Ms. Killey visited several Neighborhood Crime Prevention Councils to promote the legislation, and had meeting residents fill out a survey about the ordinance after her presentation. The survey was also placed on the City’s website. Anti-smoking organizations like the Alameda County Tobacco Control Coalition promoted the survey to their audience, but none of the residents and business owners who had attended previous meetings on the issue were notified. Despite the cherry-picked audience, provisions restricting smoking in private housing received only narrow majorities, with 57% of 507 voters favoring the nuisance designation, and 58% supporting the multi-unit housing ban.
Local lawyers have warned the Council of likely legal challenges to the ordinance on grounds that it violates both the 14th Amendment and the voter approved Measure Z, and public speakers have repeatedly requested opinions from the City Attorney’s office on the issue. Nevertheless, the updates to the staff report on the ordinance do not include consideration of potential litigation costs, saying that the fiscal impacts would be minimal, and that the ordinance would be enforced primarily through “peer pressure.” The City is already facing a lawsuit over another piece of recently passed legislation, a ban on plastic bags. |
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OAKLAND
REAL ESTATE
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