The scale of Oakland’s homelessness crisis currently eclipses the resources the city can bring to bear on the problem. Oakland has fewer than 1,300 shelter beds and roughly 5,500 homeless people. In recent months, the city has made moves to shutter three shelters, including one of its only “safe-parking” programs.
Earlier this year, a city office created by Mayor Barbara Lee issued a strategic action plan for reducing unsheltered homelessness in Oakland by 50% over the next five years. But the plan identified a roughly $284 million annual funding gap to accomplish this goal.
Now, Councilmember Charlene Wang is proposing a way to raise money to pay for more shelter beds.
Wang plans on introducing a ballot measure for the November election called the Oakland Shelter Access For Encampment Response Act, or “SAFER.”
In an interview with The Oaklandside, she explained that her proposal will likely call for imposing a tax on real estate transactions involving foreclosed properties in the city. The revenue raised from this levy would be used to support interim shelter and transitional housing, among other services oriented toward unsheltered people.
“We don’t have enough shelter beds in the city of Oakland,” Wang said. “Our ratio is really, strikingly low.”
Wang wants to focus on funding services that address people who have only just started experiencing homelessness, which she believes will be cheaper and more effective in the long-run at getting people back into housing.
“We should be responding to someone when they’ve been on the streets before the three-month mark,” she said.
More people enter homelessness each year than leave it in Oakland. The strategic action plan advanced by the Office of Homelessness Solutions touted the success of Oakland’s “targeted prevention” program, which concentrates resources on households facing the greatest risk of losing shelter.
The plan also noted that a shortage of emergency and transitional housing solutions has transformed shelters into “a long-term home” for many residents.
If the council agrees to put Wang’s initiative on the ballot, the measure will need approval from two-thirds of voters in November to go into effect.
The City Council recently approved new rules making it easier for police and city staff to tow vehicles that people are living in without following a detailed camp closure process and offering shelter like they would for residents living in tents. Over the past two years, city closures of encampments have risen sharply. But the number of encampments continued to grow over this period, according to city staff.
Alameda County officials also recently decided how to divvy up hundreds of millions of dollars that will be raised through a sales tax called Measure W, which will pay for some homelessness services in Oakland.
A preliminary sketch of Wang’s plan was published in a City Council agenda this week, describing it as an eight-year commercial real estate transfer tax surcharge of between 0.25% and 1%, depending on the sales price of a property. Wang withdrew this proposal, however, saying she wanted to work more on the details before bringing it back to the council for consideration.
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