{"id":310700,"date":"2026-05-11T19:14:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T19:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/310700\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T19:14:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T19:14:18","slug":"a-tax-to-support-oakland-homeless-shelters-could-be-headed-to-the-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/310700\/","title":{"rendered":"A tax to support Oakland homeless shelters could be headed to the ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"

The scale of Oakland\u2019s 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<\/a> three shelters, including one of its only \u201csafe-parking\u201d programs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, a city office created by Mayor Barbara Lee issued a strategic action plan<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Now, Councilmember Charlene Wang is proposing a way to raise money to pay for more shelter beds.<\/p>\n

Wang plans on introducing a ballot measure for the November election called the Oakland Shelter Access For Encampment Response Act<\/a>, or \u201cSAFER.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have enough shelter beds in the city of Oakland,\u201d Wang said. \u201cOur ratio is really, strikingly low.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should be responding to someone when they\u2019ve been on the streets before the three-month mark,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s \u201ctargeted prevention\u201d program, which concentrates resources on households facing the greatest risk of losing shelter.<\/p>\n

The plan also noted that a shortage of emergency and transitional housing solutions has transformed shelters into \u201ca long-term home\u201d for many residents.<\/p>\n

If the council agrees to put Wang\u2019s initiative on the ballot, the measure will need approval from two-thirds of voters in November to go into effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The City Council recently approved new rules making it easier for police and city staff to tow vehicles<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> in Oakland.<\/p>\n

A preliminary sketch of Wang\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“*” indicates required fields<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The scale of Oakland\u2019s homelessness crisis currently eclipses the resources the city can bring to bear on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[4480,2351,22371,1493,143,5365,145,406,144],"class_list":["post-310700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-ballot-measure","tag-barbara-lee","tag-charlene-wang","tag-homelessness","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-city-council","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-mayor","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}