Oakland, Ca.— A new report from the City of Oakland shows a substantial number of new market rate buildings also included affordable housing under the city’s “impact fee” program.
Last year, Oakland created the most new affordable units — a total of 624 — in an decade.
Of those, 131 units were built by market-rate developers who opted to include affordable housingwithin their market rate projects rather than making a payment to fund future affordable housingunder the city’s “Impact Fee Policy” adopted in 2016.
The City has also collected over $20 million in affordable housing impact fee payments to date, according to the report, which will be shared at the Community and Economic Development Committee on Tuesday.
“The impact of ‘impact fees’ is more than just money collected for affordable housing down the road,” Mayor Libby Schaaf said. “Our Impact Fee Policy is working along with the other recommendations of our 17K/17K Plan to steadily increase desperately needed affordable housing. We have far more work to do, but the data shows we’re making progress in recovering from the devastating elimination of redevelopment funding, as well as leveraging new market-rate development to create deeply affordable housing throughout the city.”
The comprehensive impact fee program, which also generates funding for transportation improvements and public facilities in the city, was created in 2016. Oakland’s Impact Fee program has been praised by U.C. Berkeley’s Terner Center as one of the most effectively structured programs.
It was part of the 17K/17K Plan created from recommendations in the “Oakland at Home” report produced by the Oakland Housing Cabinet, a group of housing policy experts, Councilmembers, community organizations, affordable housing advocates and residents convened by Mayor Schaaf in 2016.
Link to CED Committee reports: https://oakland.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4769988&GUID=9F0A7046-EED8-4631-A4D1-BF5FFC1CA301&Options=&Search=
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