Focus: Homelessness, Executive Orders & A Path Forward

Dear friends, family, and constituents,

Many are asking about the impacts of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Grant’s Pass v. Johnson, Governor Gavin Newsom’s executive order, and what will happen to Oakland with Bay Area cities like Berkeley, San Francisco and San Jose conducting large-scale encampment closures.

I want to express my steadfast commitment to my District's residents, housed and unhoused- through a laser focus on effective, data-driven solutions that will actually address Oakland’s housing crisis. This includes a need for permanent supportive housing and the use of state and federal funding, as well as county, city and school district public lands toward this end. I scheduled an oral report to come to city council to explain the local order. You can view it here: Agenda Item S10 from the October 1st meeting of the Oakland City Council.

What is Grants Pass and Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order?

• The Supreme Court's decision overturned an earlier Ninth Circuit ruling, allowing cities to enforce laws against homeless individuals, including property seizures, even if adequate shelter is not available.

• Following this, Newsom’s executive order requires local agencies to dismantle hazardous encampments—defined by severe overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, or health and safety risks.

  • While the order mandates notice and alternative housing or shelters, it does not provide Oakland with additional funding or resources for relocating the thousands of individuals who will be affected. In short, California cities will become very busy moving encampments from one corner to the next.

  • In response to the lack of resources available to cities to address the new state order, Newsom suggested municipalities apply for Proposition 1 funds; the availability and process for these funds is currently unclear.

It’s impact on Oakland:

• The City Attorney issued an opinion that the Supreme Court Decision will not impact the City’s 2020 Encampment Management Policy (“EMP”). They opined that:

  • The City has obligations under the EMP and previous settlements related to shelter offers, notice, and storage that remain legal, enforceable, and binding.

  • The EMP explicitly prohibits citing or arresting individuals “solely for camping” unless “necessary to protect against imminent risks to public safety and alternative indoor shelter or housing has been offered and declined.”

• According to the opinion, nothing in the Supreme Court Decision alters or makes illegal any portion of the EMP and the Supreme Court Decision does not change the City’s ability to decline to enforce anti-camping laws.  

Mayor Gavin Newsom at the McAllister Hotel on April 30, 2004, where rooms were being made available to the homeless. (Brant Ward/SF Chronicle)

We Cannot Solve Homelessness At The Local Level

Even though the Supreme Court decision does not legally impact Oakland, Newsom’s order unfairly makes local agencies responsible for solving homelessness though he himself has said:

“Homelessness… ‘is the manifestation of complete, abject failure as a society. We'll never solve this at City Hall.’” (KQED)

Previous city leaders such as Willie Brown have also admitted the issue "may not be solvable" at the city level. Homelessness has persisted for over three decades, despite numerous efforts from city leaders, because of systemic causes rooted in federal policy subsidize and support the private market versus affordable housing.

• Homelessness as we currently know it became a persistent issue beginning in the 1980s, right when we saw massive cuts to federal investment in public housing and mental health services, as well as deregulation of markets that led to skyrocketing housing and living costs.

• We see the same thing globally: In 1981, nearly a third of British households rented public housing, but by 2018, that proportion was halved due to a lack of investment and availability, and private market rentals doubled. Meanwhile, in 2018 a record high 320,000 people were homeless in Britain despite rising wealth (Standing, pg 81).

• This example from England is relevant for U.S. residents because it shows how quickly social housing can vanish, leading to mass homelessness even in wealthy nations.

Since the 1980s, we’ve been trying to solve homelessness almost exclusively at the local level with meager state and federal support. As a result:

• Nationally, HUD found homelessness increased by 12% in 2023, fueled by unaffordable rents, stagnant wages, and reduced housing assistance.

• Low wages, rising rents and fixed/zero incomes for seniors make it impossible for many to secure stable housing.

  • In 2021, a study found that 53% of people living in homeless shelters and 40% of unsheltered people had jobs

  • Oakland saw 50,000 eviction notices between 2005 and 2016. Many were low-wage workers unable to afford stable housing despite full-time employment.

• Encampment closures are costly and often temporary, this is true locally and across the country:

  • Oakland spent $12.6 million on encampment closures in two years.

  • Federally, HUD found cities spent between $1,672 and $6,208 per unsheltered person annually. Encampments typically re-emerge soon after clearance.

The True Path Forward: A Complete Overhaul of Our Housing System

We are in a moment where there is increasing distrust of government, particularly at the state and federal levels. At the same time, the forces of financialization are wreaking havoc on our communities and the private market will never solve our housing crisis. It will only lead to ever-increasing home prices and rents.

We need accountability at the state and federal levels regarding our housing crisis because the scale of the issue requires substantial funding from both sources. The way our economy is setup, local governments are not able to run deficits and our federal government can in order to resolve a crisis. We also need supportive systems, most of which must be done at the County Board of Supervisors level. Only then can solutions really flourish from the bottom up.

Solutions that we need to collectively begin rallying around and demanding include:

Public Investment In Permanently Affordable Housing:

• Community land trusts (CLTs) and social housing are the only effective strategies that provide long-term affordability because they remove housing from the private market for either long-periods of time or for perpetuity.

• I advocated for $40million of Measure U funding to be put into a revolving loan for CLTs, a type of loan fund that replenishes itself and does not give money/return to investors. The fund was established this year!!!

• This amount and method of funding is unprecedented in Oakland and will be incredibly impactful. Now that we have this mechanism set-up, we can add more funding to it through new measures and bonds.

Utilize Vacant Public Lands for Housing:

• Whether by CLTs, social housing or nonprofit development, acquiring homes from the private market can be expensive. However, the County of Alameda has a list of disposed and tax-defaulted parcels and properties that are only now being reviewed for programming. There would have been no Moms 4 Housing movement had the County had an operational program. It’s taken 6 years of constant pushing for the County to hire a consultant to build out a program and we are finally moving things forward.

• Currently these houses get auctioned off to private buyers, often going right into corporate ownership. These corporate owners do minimal repairs, flip the houses and make huge returns. There is an opportunity here for these buildings and parcels to now move into community ownership.

• We need a streamlined and transparent process, not ad hoc decisions for evaluating publically-owned properties-particularly by the county and other government agencies- to house the unsheltered and for ongoing operations funding, or create affordable homes for missing middle first-time buyers.

• To date, I’ve been working with elected officials at the County of Alameda to create this process and make acquisition of properties and parcels available for community ownership. While we have been working together, far too slowly for my taste, we need to collectively apply pressure to get this done.

Create a Social Housing Department:

• Like Seattle’s Measure 135, a dedicated city department would allow Oakland to own and operate housing, enabling flexible, creative solutions to the housing crisis. Right now, the City almost exclusively partners with outside entities for housing development, which often increases costs.

• I’ve researched ways we can make this happen in Oakland and it comes back to operations dollars from higher levels of government.

Use Public Dollars Wisely:

• I will be writing about how publicly-financed construction could become more cost-effective in my next newsletter on Regional Measure 4, but ultimately, there are simple yet beautiful building designs as well as having public lending options (versus private banks) that would allow us to ensure public money goes further.

Left to right: Social housing by Bruno Taut, social housing by Bruno Taut, social hosing in Elvissa by Peris-Toral Arquitectes

• Mental Health Services: The Vietnam War and subsequent forever wars brought home waves of veterans with PTSD and further cuts to mental health funding only exacerbated homelessness. Mental health services MUST be part of our solution.

• Utilize Underused Shelters: Spaces like St. Vincent De Paul are sitting underutilized. We have to analyze these spaces and include community input to better meet the needs of our homeless population.

• Create Workforce Training Pipelines: High schools, community colleges, and centers like Rising Sun Center for Opportunity, Cypress Mandela and Civicorps can help train a new generation of green energy workers, addressing both the construction labor shortage and creating living-wage jobs.

By demanding these solutions, we can have a huge impact in tackling homelessness and the systemic inequalities driving it. This isn’t a dream—this is our responsibility and our right. With the right political will, and state and federal support, housing can be a guarantee, not a gamble.

Who are the unhoused?

I want to close this newsletter with a critical reminder that all of our issues with encampments have the same root: unaffordable housing due to runaway forces of the “free market”. I’m witnessing polarization on whether encampments should be here or there, whether they should be allowed to exist or not. It is my position that public streets, sidewalks and underpasses are not humane places for people to live, particularly if there is an adverse impact to critical infrastructure. Human beings need access to running water, human waste removal and trash service. I occupied a speculator-owned home in 2019 to highlight the universal need for safe housing, not street survival. The majority of people living unsheltered in Oakland are African American elders and my people deserve more. ALL human beings deserve more. And let’s be clear: most unhoused people do not want to exist on sidewalks.

Both unhoused and housed residents are dealing with the compounding violence that also exists on the streets. There is real criminal infiltration by predatory forces that have included armed individuals embedding themselves in some encampments to set up their operations. This cannot be allowed to grow. It exacerbates an already dangerous environment for those in and around these spaces. This can be true while also acknowledging that being unhoused does not inherently make someone criminal.

Many people are frustrated about the current conditions, and rightfully so. But we didn’t have to be here. Over the last several years, I warned Californians that we’d end up here if we didn’t win policy shifts at the federal, state and local levels. Many were swayed by the marketing of the real estate lobby. Now, our housing crisis is unavoidable and our work to turn things around will be much harder. The most frustrating aspect of what we’re seeing is that quite frankly, real solutions can’t happen immediately. We all want a solution today and have to face the reality that solutions require consistent and collective organizing. Those relationships and actions not only take time to build, but also need to be directed at strategic targets. If we’re frustrated that there isn't an immediate solution despite paying local taxes, this frustration will become cynicism. This is because real solutions lie in federal funding and policy change. Yes, we need more affordable homes and to utilize vacant lands, but we will also need ongoing funding for mental health hospitals and additional support services. Local municipalities alone will never be able to generate the kind of revenue streams that are needed to provide ongoing mental health and housing services for unsheltered seniors and people with little to no income.

Part of the work will require a different orientation to our anger. Residents must know the level of responsibilities at different levels of government and the roles NGOs play in this system. We should also look at what can occur on a hyper-local, street level. Some immediate actions I’ve heard of are neighbors coming together to help encampments manage their trash. One neighborhood identified that some of the trash was due to discarded textiles because there was no washing service, so they began a laundry rotation. Other neighborhoods have come up with other ideas. MACRO is one resource available to help storefronts and neighbors de-escalate heightened situations related to mental health. In addition, the city is working to install cameras in illegal dumping hot spots where housed individuals and some businesses dump to avoid paying costly waste management fees. I’ve done myriad things to address Oakland’s issues, but this newsletter is already lengthy and our challenges complex. Please check out my websites and social media pages for more info and to share your thoughts and ideas on real-time solutions.

Lastly, the deep love we feel towards each other and our city should be moved to anger when we see and experience the existing conditions in Oakland and the world. Hold onto this anger and let it move you into action, but be careful to not let it become cynicism. “Be careful what doors you allow cynicism to lock in you. All dreaming is dangerous to those who benefit from our hopelessness” - Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies.

In service and solidarity,

Councilmember Carroll Fife

OTHER UPDATES

1. Affordable Housing Opportunities

2. Supporting The Justice For Renters Act

The Justice for Renters Act is a state-level piece of legislation that will appear on the November 2024 election ballot. If approved by voters, it will clear the way for local governments and communities to create local rent control laws and make housing more affordable for low-income and middle-income renters. It will do this by primarily repealing the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act. I introduced legislation that expresses Oakland's support for this Act and below is a deep dive on what it’s all about, as well as here on IG.

What is the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act that currently bans rent control?

In 1995, this act was signed into law and placed significant limits on the ability of cities in California to implement rent control for any single-family home or condominium, including single family homes owned by corporations or institutional investors, and any apartment constructed after February 1995. It prohibits cities that established rent control laws prior to the Act's passage from expanding rent control.

The act also prohibits cities from implementing "vacancy control," also called "strict" rent control, thus allowing an apartment owner the right to rent any vacant unit at any price, usually the market price, following a tenant vacating the unit.

It impedes permanent changes to local rent control ordinances and enables rents on currently affordable rental housing units to rise to market rates upon vacancy thus imperiling the existing affordable housing stock, tenants, and contributing to a worsening of our homelessness crisis.

How Does It Impact Oakland?

Since Oakland had rent control laws as early as 1983 and prior to Costa-Hawkins, the way the ban on rent control is applied is not clear-cut. According to Costa-Hawkins, only multi-unit buildings built before local rent control laws were instantiated in 1983 can be covered by rent control laws. The only single-family dwellings and condominiums that are covered are ones that have been occupied since 1995.

While Oakland has been able to expand its Just Cause For Eviction laws, which I co-introduced in 2022, and I was able to also introduce legislation that capped rent increases on units covered by rent control laws, the hands of legislators are tied when it comes to expanding rent control laws. Considering Oakland’s housing stock is around 80% single-family homes and 60% of our population are renters, Costa-Hawins has meant that most Oakland renters are not covered by any form of rent control.

In addition, because one of Costa-Hawkins most overarching impacts is banning vacancy control, in Oakland we often see tenants being evicted and the same unit with no improvements going back on the market with a substantial price hike.

What Will The Justice for Renters Act Do Instead?

Under the Justice for Renters Act, authority over local rent control laws would be returned to cities and counties, affirming that the State of California may not limit their right to maintain, enact or expand residential rent control. It will repeal the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.

There have been many attempts to appeal Costa-Hawkins and the real estate lobby comes out aggressively every time to confuse people’s understanding of what Costa-Hawkins actually does. They often say that appeals are “anti-housing” or lead to less housing on the market. In reality, it leads to housing insecurity, more people in and out of housing, and the price of rental housing increasing exponentially. I hope more and more people are realizing this and this resolution expresses Oakland’s support for the Justice for Renters Act and the positive impact it will have.