Comment on Oakland falling behind in push to add housing

Oakland’s housing boom is bringing more than 11,000 new apartments, condominiums and lofts to the city, but it’s not nearly enough to satiate the Bay Area’s seemingly endless need for new housing, regional planners say. Despite the onslaught of new development in Oakland and San Francisco, the Bay Area is far short in reaching its goal of 188,000 new units by 2040 to accommodate the projected growth in jobs and population, according to planners at the Association of Bay Area Governments. The shortfall is in all categories, from low-income housing to family-sized units to luxury condos for single people, they said. “To the extent that Oakland and other cities are adding housing, that’s great, but this is really a regional problem,” said Johnny Jaramillo, a senior regional planner for the agency. At the geographic center of the Bay Area, with its plethora of public transit and relative affordability, Oakland’s growth will be critical to the Bay Area’s long-term economic health, they said. [...] he said, residential developers must compete with commercial projects, which tend to bring in more tax revenue for cities and often get faster approval. In Oakland, several large commercial projects are under way, including the Port of Oakland expansion at the former Oakland Army Base and a half dozen large new office buildings downtown and at Jack London Square. All the economic growth, coupled with San Francisco’s tech explosion, have given Oakland some of the Bay Area’s steepest housing price increases. Since 2010, rents have risen 45 percent and home prices have soared 76 percent, according to ABAG. City officials and housing advocates are hammering out developer fees that would address some of those concerns by increasing the affordable housing requirements as well as adding money for parks, schools, transit, roads and other projects. At the 3,100-unit Brooklyn Basin development under way along the waterfront, advocates for the poor succeeded in requiring the developer to include 465 units of affordable housing, some of it three- and four-bedroom units for families. Tougher rent control, stricter affordable housing quotas and economic policies that benefit low earners also need to be in place, he said.