1 DOSP Zoning Incentive Program (ZIP)
Benefit Plan & Fee Disposition Proposal
Contents
Zoning Incentive Program ............................................................................................................................. 1 On-Site Benefits ............................................................................................................................................ 2 BMR Commercial Space ............................................................................................................................ 2 Public Restrooms ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Streetscape Improvements ....................................................................................................................... 3 Fees ............................................................................................................................................................... 4 Affordable Housing ................................................................................................................................... 4 Employment training ................................................................................................................................ 8 Streetscape Improvements ....................................................................................................................... 9 Appendix: Relevant DOSP Policies .............................................................................................................. 10 Affordable Housing ................................................................................................................................. 10 Below Market-Rate (BMR) Ground Floor Commercial Space ................................................................. 10 Streetscape Improvements ..................................................................................................................... 11 Public Restrooms .................................................................................................................................... 12 Employment Training .............................................................................................................................. 12 Zoning Incentive Program
The Draft Downtown Oakland Specific Plan (DOSP) Zoning Amendments include a voluntary Zoning Incentive Program (ZIP) for areas of the downtown that lend themselves to additional development (for example, are near BART stations or are in an area where the DOSP proposes new infrastructure). Under this program, developers may elect to provide one or more community benefits, or pay a fee to the City to fund such benefits, in exchange for increases in allowable building height and/or density (referred to as a “bonus” or “incentive”).
This program was developed in response to community requests that no new development capacity be given to developers without community benefits in return. Benefits allowed under the ZIP were selected to increase housing affordability, provide affordable rent for small businesses, train Oakland’s workforce, and create resources that support public health. They include:
1. Affordable housing units;
2. Below market-rate ground floor commercial space;
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2 3. Streetscape improvements;
4. Public Restrooms; and
5. Employment training.
These five benefits were identified and prioritized over the course of several years of public engagement, including meetings with the DOSP Community Advisory Group (CAG). Although the employment training benefit was originally limited to construction training, apprenticeships and/or job placement support programs, in consultation with the City’s economic consultants, planners felt that expanding this to employment training more generally rather than limiting it to construction employment is an important step toward achieving the Plan’s ongoing racial equity goals. These goals require that new employment land uses developed downtown – not just the initial construction jobs – provide jobs that are able to be accessed by all Oaklanders.
Staff propose that developers provide these benefits by either on-site (below-market rate commercial space, public restrooms, or streetscape improvements) or through fees (affordable housing, employment training, or streetscape improvements). The choice of which benefit to provide on-site or whether to pay is up to the developers. They could choose to provide a combination of on-site benefits, fees, or a combination of on-site benefits and fees (fees could cover the remaining required benefit amount). The total dollar value of the benefits required would be the same regardless. How the fees are used are the exclusively the City’s determination, as described below, and not the developers’.
The following section describes the purpose of each of these benefits and why staff have proposed they be provided on-site or as fees. The final section addresses how the fees taken in through the ZIP program would be allocated, into which funds, under which department’s jurisdiction, and for which purposes.
On-Site Benefits
Two of the five benefits (below market-rate commercial space and public restrooms) would be provided on-site only, with streetscape improvements able to be provided on-site or as a fee.
BMR Commercial Space
Developers would provide commercial space at below market rates to businesses and organizations that meet the goals of the Downtown Oakland Specific Plan, particularly in in the Black Arts Movement and Business District (BAMBD). This would be tenanted and administered through a partnership. Staff have met with potential community-based partners, and the recommended implementation method is to develop a list of qualified community-based partners (such as Oakland Community Land Trust, EBALDC, or CAST) who would be given the master leases and tenanting/monitoring responsibilities using criteria developed with the City based on DOSP goals, including racial equity.
Staff also encourages flexibility in implementing this program to allow for community ownership in addition to long-term master leases – e.g., the developer deeding a condoized space to a nonprofit community land trust to be kept affordable under a long-term lease.
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3 Staff recommends providing this benefit on site only. Since fees will be available inconsistently based on development projects, it would not be practical for the City to use them off site to provide this benefit through ongoing administration costs or operating subsidies.
This is consistent with the following DOSP Policies:
• Policy C-1.1 - Citywide Cultural Districts Program
• Policy C-1.5 - Incentives for Affordable Arts, Culture, & Commercial Space • Policy C-1.8 - Community Ownership & Stewardship
• Policy C-1.10 - Zoning for Arts and Culture Uses
• Policy C-3.3 - Master Lease/Nonprofit Ownership Program for Affordable Arts Space • Policy C-3.5 - Expand the Keeping Space Oakland Program
Public Restrooms
Many businesses and advocates for the unhoused have repeatedly stated the need for public restrooms downtown, with youth members additionally citing the need for non-gendered restrooms. The City does not currently operate standalone public restrooms downtown, and the result has been that business and property owners are often faced with managing untenable sanitation conditions themselves.
Staff recommends that restrooms be provided on-site. The City does not currently have the capacity to shoulder the administrative and maintenance costs of installing standalone restrooms, nor does it have appropriate locations for them. Selecting a location for standalone toilets in public plazas such as a “Portland Loo” has proven challenging, whereas staff assumes that new developments would already have the land and might even already be likely to provide lobby level restrooms, albeit for private use.
Providing restrooms available to the public is based on the developer/property owner not only constructing the restrooms but assuming the costs of security and maintenance associated with keeping the restrooms.
This is consistent with the following DOSP Policy:
• Policy LU-1.3 – Development Incentive Program
• Policy H-2.15 – Restrooms/Drinking Water in Public Spaces
Streetscape Improvements
The DOSP proposes streetscape improvements to make walking more pleasant, activate the streets, support local businesses, provide “eyes on the street” for safety, and highlight the cultural and historical features of downtown. These are particularly focused on culturally relevant improvements – focused as a pilot in the Black Arts Movement and Business District (BAMBD), Oakland’s first official cultural district.
These could include cultural markers, public art, banners, planters, plazas, themed street infrastructure, such as seating and drinking fountains, open-air performance space or other culturally relevant infrastructure. A developer could provide these immediately on their property, or could provide them, in coordination with City staff and permitting, in the public right of way adjacent or in proximity to the development site.
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4 This is consistent with the following DOSP Policies:
• Policy C-1.3 - Culturally Relevant Marketing, Branding, & Streetscape Design • Policy C-1.2 – Supporting the BAMBD
• Policy C-2.2 - Community Gathering Spaces
• Policy CH-1.1 - Public Realm Improvements
• Policy LU-1.7 - Streetscape & Public Space Improvements:
Fees
Two of the five benefits (affordable housing and employment training) would be provided as fees only with streetscape improvements eligible to be provided on-site or as a fee. For those benefits that would be provided through fees, the allocation of fees would be the City’s responsibility, and the funds would be used to achieve the goals of the DOSP anywhere downtown, provided that the resources are allocated equitably, which is also consistent with the DOSP goals. Staff proposes the following breakdown of fees taken in from the ZIP program:
• 50% Affordable Housing
• 25% Streetscape Improvements
• 25% Employment training
Affordable housing is proposed to receive twice the amount of the other two categories/funds to respond to the current affordable housing crisis. The following describes to what funds and/or project these allocations would be directed, under which department’s jurisdiction, and for what purpose.
Note: these fees will be dependent on development and voluntary participation in the program and can therefore not be relied on for administrative costs, maintenance, or other ongoing expenses. The uses described below have been developed with this assumption.
Affordable Housing
Purpose and Need
The opportunity to address the need for affordable housing under the DOSP compels policy considerations that leverage the economic engine of market-driven investment in a potentially high- demand market with the means to capture subsidy for the need-driven affordability at the low and very low segments of the market. These considerations must also account for the place-based imperatives of inclusion among all sectors of Oakland’s population in the Downtown as a residential option even as any incentive-based value capture provides resources for affordable housing across the entire city. This section addresses both the opportunity and opportunity costs of how the Zoning Incentive Program (ZIP) may provide fungible subsidy for city-wide affordable housing and work to ensure that Oakland’s downtown residents reflect its broad demography.
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5 The DOSP proposes prioritizing ZIP housing funds for the construction and preservation of affordable housing in the DOSP area to maintain downtown as a mixed-income community. At the urging of affordable housing advocates, staff proposes that the ZIP’s affordable housing benefit be provided through fees only. Because the ZIP is a value capture program and the cost of providing affordable housing onsite is very high, the numerical yield of on-site affordable units would be small given the extra value the developer is receiving. Also, depending on the project, a developer may only need a small amount of density bonus to make the project feasible; if so, then the cost of providing affordable housing onsite could be higher than the value the developer would obtain with the bonus.
In comparison, fees offer more benefit to the community. Fees are more flexible to implement, and can be leveraged with other funds, including tax credit funds, to provide more total affordable units and deeper levels of subsidies than would realistically be provided on site by developers through the ZIP.
This is consistent with the City’s equity approach. Fees can also be used to rehabilitate existing buildings and preserve their affordability, which may be a more cost-effective and equitable approach to providing long-term affordable housing in downtown, where much of the land area is already built out and ongoing gentrification speaks to an urgent need for preservation of existing affordable units. Unlike Impact Fees, ZIP funds could provide a source of funding for operating subsidies, which are needed to provide extremely low-income units. Finally, administratively, using fees to fund entire affordable housing projects is more efficient given limited City resources than monitoring a few on-site affordable units per development project on an ongoing basis.
In addition, due to the regulations of the State Density Bonus, if Oakland were to allow ZIP benefits to be paid as on-site affordable housing, then this would count also as meeting the City’s affordable housing obligation under the State Density Bonus to receive incentives and bonuses and would, therefore, allow them to benefit from two separate bonus programs by providing only one public benefit. The ZIP is structured to encourage developers to take advantage of the ZIP and the State Density Bonus on top of it, thus providing a higher number of overall units on site, and therefore requiring a higher number of affordable units on site to take advantage of the State Density Bonus (the State Density Bonus is based on a percentage of the total units that are allowed).
However, the downside of not having the option of providing affordable housing on site through the ZIP is that it reduces the options for affordable units to be built downtown. Other factors contributing to the low production of affordable units – particularly low-income affordable units – downtown include:
• Oakland has chosen to implement an Affordable Housing Impact Fee with the option of building on-site instead of paying the fee rather than an inclusionary-housing requirement, and fees are used throughout the city. (Even cities with inclusionary housing usually offer an option of an in- lieu fee instead of building the affordable units on-site.) • Land in the downtown is more fully developed and more expensive than in other areas of Oakland.
• When developers do provide affordable units on site utilizing the State Density Bonus, they do not provide Extremely Low-Income units because of the added ongoing operating subsidies that are needed for deeply affordable housing, and because they do not provide services on site that residents of these units often need.
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6 Since the beginning of the plan, staff have heard concerns that residents with low incomes are being displaced from the downtown and that without intervention downtown will become a place that only wealthy and typically white Oaklanders are able to live. Although in 2015 approximately 24 percent of Oakland’s subsidized income-restricted affordable housing units were in the DOSP area1, the closure of residential hotels and the construction of market-rate housing has led to a demographic shift – so that while in total more housing units are available to house residents in need of homes, the percentage of units downtown that people with low and moderate incomes can live in has decreased. In the period before work on this plan started, there was a 7% decrease in the population of Black/African American residents in the downtown, although recent data suggests that since that time, the number of middle class Black/African American residents has increased, moving into newer units in or adjacent to the downtown.2
The data on housing construction for the last five years validates this concern. Although there have been some publicly funded affordable projects built downtown (including 524 8th Street, West Grand & Brush, 285 12th Street, and the renovation of Empyrean Towers), compared to what has been built throughout Oakland, affordable units are a tiny percentage of the total units built downtown (see table below). Nearly 97% of units built in the DOSP area have been market rate, and less than 1% very-low income. People with very low incomes are Oakland’s most critical population to serve to address the homelessness crisis; this population is also disproportionately Black/African American.
Housing Units Constructed January 1, 2018 – June 30, 2023 DOSP Area Citywide
Very Low-Income 30 0.8% 1,101 9.2%
Low-Income 35 0.9% 758 6.3%
Moderate Income 57 1.5% 180 1.5%
Above Moderate Income 3,670 96.8% 9,980 83.0%
Total 3,792 100% 12,020 100%
Source: Oakland Housing Element Annual Report, 2018-2023
Looking at the data another way, while 32% of all Oakland housing and 37% of market rate/above- moderate housing built over these five years was built in the DOSP area, only 3.5% of Oakland’s low- income housing was built in Downtown Oakland, an area rich in services, transit and amenities. Given that as of 2018 nearly 28% of units downtown (DOSP and Chinatown) were subsidized affordable units, this is a significant shift toward affordable units comprising a much smaller percentage of downtown units.
3 1 US Decennial Census 2000 and American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, 2006-2010 and 2011-2015; Strategic Economics, 2018; Strategic Economics, 2018
2 US Decennial Census, 2000, 2010; American Community Survey, 2011-2015 5-Year Estimates; Strategic Economics, 2017
3 City of Oakland Real Estate Division, 2018; American Community Survey, 201 3-2017 5-Year Estimates; Strategic Economics, 2020
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7 Downtown Oakland is a neighborhood (comprised of smaller neighborhoods) as well as a cultural and service hub that represents the values of and welcomes the entire city. The DOSP intends Downtown Oakland to remain a mixed-income, mixed-race neighborhood. This is why community members and Planning staff have developed the ZIP to include funds for affordable housing to be prioritized to produce or preserve affordable housing in the DOSP area. This is intended to mitigate the trend the data suggests, that affordable housing will continue to be underbuilt in the downtown relative to the rest of the city, relative to its existing role in the downtown community, and relative to the market-rate units being built
Relevant Policies
This use of fees is consistent with the following DOSP goals, strategies, and policies of the DOSP:
• Strategy 1 – Develop New Sources of Funds and Increase Existing Resources to Assist in the Creation of New Affordable and Accessible Housing
• Policy H-1.9 - Directing Affordable Housing Funds Downtown • Policy H-1.12 - Goals for Affordable Housing Production (4,365 and 7,275 affordable housing units)
• Policy H-2.10 - SRO Rehab & Acquisition Partnerships
Fund Administration
Administering Department: Housing and Community Development Percentage of ZIP Fee Received: 50%
Fund: Affordable Housing Trust Fund (OMC Chapter 15.62) Project: To Be Created
Constraints: For prioritization where possible in the DOSP area, consistent with the affordable housing goals, strategies, and policies of the DOSP described above.
Unlike the funds for Streetscape and Employment training, Staff does not propose to limit the use of these funds to the DOSP area, but to prioritize them there. Given the housing crisis, restricting the funds only for use in the downtown would limit the ability of the City to access State housing tax credits, necessary for developing subsidized affordable housing. Were the funds to be restricted only to the downtown, funds could potentially sit unused for some time if projects are not proposed, viable or competitive for tax credits in the downtown, which would be an inefficient use of needed City housing resources during a housing and homelessness crisis Given these constraints, the ZIP provides flexibility as to how the City will use these funds to meet the City’s housing goals, including maintaining downtown as a mixed-income community. This is somewhat different from how the other ZIP funds will be used: exclusively in the DOSP area to address needs in the area. .
Note that a new project will be developed for these fees to be administered within the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. That there is no change proposed to the existing Affordable Housing Impact Fee funds, much of which are generated in the downtown but used citywide.
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8 Employment training
Purpose and Need
The DOSP proposes to set aside ZIP funds to provide employment training and reduce barriers for individuals from communities that have been harmed by racial inequities in accessing the well-paid jobs that the DOSP intends to encourage downtown. In addition to supplementing the City’s existing employment programs to target employment assistance and training to jobs being facilitated downtown, including through construction apprenticeships, these funds could also support the creation of wealth-building worker-owned cooperative businesses and address barriers to employment in ways that other dedicated program funds can’t by funding transportation or childcare to allow job-seekers to participate in employment training activities.
During the community engagement process to develop the ZIP, local hire and other support for Oakland- based workers and workers of color was a clear candidate for a community benefit. Advocates from the building trades proposed that these be provided by requiring that construction companies participating in the ZIP hire locally, pay prevailing wage, hire apprentices from local construction training programs, and provide health care. While supporting good construction jobs is important for a plan that proposes to construct nearly 30,000 new housing units and 20 million new square feet of employment space, staff recommends that the bulk of these benefits be provided not just to support construction workers, but to support employing Oaklanders in the nearly 60,000 new jobs that could be created to ensure that the benefit of that employment growth is equitably distributed. However, Staff have worked with the Building Trades Council of Alameda (BTCA) to propose a subset of the employment benefit that would support hiring local workers, including women and people of color, in downtown construction jobs:
dedicating a portion of the employment training funds to the City’s existing funded construction apprenticeship program.
Relevant Policies
This use of fees is consistent with the following DOSP policies:
• Policy E-1.8 - Supporting Worker-Owned Cooperatives
• Policy E-3.3 - Expanded Job Training, Apprenticeships, & Placement Services Fund Administration
Administering Department: Economic and Workforce Development Percentage of ZIP Fee Received: 25%
Fund: 2415, Org 85411, Revenue Account 45419 (misc fees revenue) Project: To Be Created, Program SC11
Constraints: For use assisting Oakland residents, particularly residents harmed by racial disparities in income and unemployment, in accessing employment training and other employment services that will help them take advantage of well-paying, benefitted jobs in the downtown, consistent with the goals and policies of the DOSP listed above. 50% of these fees shall be dedicated to construction training and apprenticeship programs.
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9 Streetscape Improvements
Purpose and Need
The DOSP proposes streetscape improvements to help make walking more pleasant, activate the streets, support local businesses, provide “eyes on the street” for safety and highlight the cultural and historical aspects of downtown. These are particularly focused on culturally relevant improvements – focused as a pilot in the Black Arts Movement and Business District (BAMBD), Oakland’s first official cultural district. Fees could be used by the City to provide similar amenities to those provided by developers on-site, above. However, these could also be used for activating the public realm for semi- permanent purposes, for non-site-specific purposes, and/or to reduce barriers to success for small businesses consistent with the DOSP’s equity goals.
Relevant Policies
This use of fees is consistent with the following DOSP Policies:
• Policy E-1.4 - Land Trust/Master Lease Program
• Policy E-1.5 - Establishing Arts & Cultural Districts • Policy E-1.6 - Facade & Tenant Improvement Program
• Policy E-1.7 - Supporting Businesses Owned by Women and People of Color • Policy C-1.3 - Culturally Relevant Marketing, Branding, & Streetscape Design • Policy C-1.2 – Supporting the BAMBD
• Policy C-2.2 - Community Gathering Spaces
• Policy CH-1.1 - Public Realm Improvements
• Policy LU-1.7 - Streetscape & Public Space Improvements Fund Administration
Administering Department: Economic and Workforce Development Percentage of ZIP Fee Received: 25%
Fund: 2415, Org 85411, Revenue Account 45419 (misc fees revenue) Project: To Be Created, Program SC11
Constraints: For use in the DOSP area for improvements to the streetscape and public realm, consistent with the goals and policies of the DOSP described above.
The funds could be used for any of the improvements described above under the on-site benefits but could also be used for tenant improvements that improve the public realm, semi-permanent activation, non-site-specific purposes, and/or to reduce barriers to successful activation for small businesses consistent with the DOSP’s equity goals described above.
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10 Appendix: Relevant DOSP Policies
This appendix includes the full text of the policies related to each one of the ZIP community benefits described above.
Affordable Housing
Policy H-1.9 - Directing Affordable Housing Funds Downtown Explore tools and policies to prioritize some portion of new affordable housing funds for use in downtown to maintain downtown as a mixed-income community by adapting scoring criteria for responses to City Notices of Funding Availability (NOFA), especially as downtown generates additional housing funds through accelerated development activity or increased impact fees.
Examples of potential scoring criteria adjustments could include prioritization of the downtown specific plan area receiving additional points, or additional points for housing development projects in transit-oriented locations or locations meeting certain levels of employment access or workforce services.
Policy H-1.12 - Goals for Affordable Housing Production (4,365 and 7,275 affordable housing units)
Ensure that a mix of market-rate and income-restricted housing is produced in downtown.
Target production is between 4,365 and 7,275 affordable housing units, including units designed to accommodate larger families, out of a total housing production target of 29,100 new units.
Policy H-2.10 - SRO Rehab & Acquisition Partnerships
Continue to partner with and fund non-profit housing organizations to acquire and rehabilitate residential hotels and motels (SROs) in downtown.
Below Market-Rate (BMR) Ground Floor Commercial Space
Policy C-1.1 - Citywide Cultural Districts Program
Establish a Citywide Cultural Districts Program to develop and formalize a collaborative partnership between the City and cultural communities; identify resources to stabilize vulnerable communities; preserve, strengthen, and promote the City’s cultural assets and diverse communities; and support entertainment districts. (See map of existing, adopted, and potential Cultural and Entertainment Districts on Figure C-2).
Policy C-1.5 - Incentives for Affordable Arts, Culture, & Commercial Space Create and adopt an incentive program for downtown that identifies affordable arts, culture, and commercial space, including space for community-serving nonprofits, as one of the priority community benefiting uses.
Policy C-1.8 - Community Ownership & Stewardship
Explore the use of a nonprofit land trust model to help stabilize cultural businesses, institutions, and residents through community ownership of land. Consider cultural easements as well to restore Indigenous People’s rights to land, habitat, and stewardship.
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11 Policy C-1.10 - Zoning for Arts and Culture Uses
Adopt zoning, land use and building regulations to preserve existing and incentivize and require new arts and culture and maker spaces.
Policy C-3.3 - Master Lease/Nonprofit Ownership Program for Affordable Arts Space Develop a master lease or limited equity ownership program where a nonprofit intermediary with expertise in arts tenants, like CAST or EBALDC, could partner with building owners to provide below-market rate ground-floor building spaces to artists and arts and cultural organizations.
Policy C-3.5 - Expand the Keeping Space Oakland Program Expand existing technical assistance in business skills and marketing, and support the extension of CAST’s Keeping Space Oakland program, which provides technical and real estate support for arts organizations facing displacement, particularly for artists of color and from vulnerable communities.
Streetscape Improvements
Policy E-1.4 - Land Trust/Master Lease Program
Provide affordable space for entrepreneurs, small, local retailers, artists, artisans, worker owned cooperatives, and businesses that employ older adults and people with disabilities by exploring the implementation of a nonprofit land trust model focused on these uses, in which the City of Oakland or a City supported nonprofit intermediary leases or owns space and then subleases that space to tenants meeting criteria such as length of residency in Oakland, location of residence, economic status, and disability status/ age. Use new programs to potentially offer long-term leases to allow tenants to make capital investments to build out the spaces to meet their needs, and consider targeting use in the Black Arts Movement & Business District (BAMBD).
Policy E-1.5 - Establishing Arts & Cultural Districts
Establish a program to create additional arts and culture districts in downtown, like the existing BAMBD, with special land use regulations and other support for businesses serving the goals of the districts; potential districts could include a Chinatown Cultural Heritage District or KONO Art + Garage District. Districts should only be established when there is local support.
Policy E-1.6 - Facade & Tenant Improvement Program
Identify additional funding for the City’s façade and tenant improvement program and expand the program to focus on assisting businesses and nonprofit organizations that meet criteria for income, length of the time in the downtown, and location in established cultural districts.
Policy E-1.7 - Supporting Businesses Owned by Women and People of Color Support small businesses and businesses owned by people of color and women through ongoing implementation of targeted business support identified in the City’s Economic Development Strategy (2018-2020).
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12 Policy C-1.3 - Culturally Relevant Marketing, Branding, & Streetscape Design Strengthen and connect downtown’s cultural assets and districts by investing in marketing and branding and a network of public spaces and culturally-relevant streetscape elements, such as multilingual and accessible wayfinding, signage, historical markers, and public art. This can be done in partnership with area BIDs.
Policy C-1.2 – Supporting the BAMBD
Provide support for the Black Arts Movement and Business District (BAMBD) and promote the district with special urban design elements and marketing materials.
Policy C-2.2 - Community Gathering Spaces
Invest in the creation of new and improved public spaces that can be used to host festivals and cultural gatherings, and that feature public art.
Policy CH-1.1 - Public Realm Improvements
Working with the community, prioritize and implement public realm improvements to create a more connected and accessible network of inclusive, high quality public open spaces downtown.
Figure CH-1 identifies potential public space improvements recommended in the Downtown Oakland Specific Plan (DOSP). Following Plan adoption, update this map at regular intervals with community input to guide implementation.
Policy LU-1.7 - Streetscape & Public Space Improvements Implement streetscape and public space improvements, including the design and construction of new shared streets, paseos, plazas, and parks, as well as the construction of new and improved bicycle and pedestrian facilities, landscaping, and wayfinding along the West Oakland Walk and Green Loop connections shown in Figure LU-12.
Public Restrooms
Policy LU-1.3 – Development Incentive Program
Create and adopt a voluntary development incentive program for downtown that works seamlessly with updated zoning regulations and addresses the community’s most pressing needs while streamlining development approvals for participating projects.
Policy H-2.15 – Restrooms/Drinking Water in Public Spaces Provide creatively designed public drinking water, trash, and gender-neutral restroom facilities in parks and other public spaces, including re-opening and maintaining restrooms in parks that have been closed due to understaffing.
Employment Training
Policy E-1.8 - Supporting Worker-Owned Cooperatives
Consider adding points for City contracting and procurement for worker-owned cooperatives and develop educational programming and technical support to help form or convert existing businesses to worker-owned cooperatives.
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13 Policy E-3.3 - Expanded Job Training, Apprenticeships, & Placement Services Continue and expand local-hire initiatives, training, apprenticeships, and partnerships with employers and Laney College to develop a job pipeline in the technology sector, “green economy” industries and businesses (in coordination with this work in West Oakland), and other major industry sectors in downtown. Ensure all programs support the hiring of women and Black residents. Efforts should include expansion of training, mentoring, summer job, internship, apprenticeship and placement models, and diversity/bias training for major employers in order to develop a more inclusive downtown workforce that better reflects Oakland’s demographic composition.
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