CED Committee
March 10, 2026
AGENDA REPORT
TO:
Jestin D. Johnson, City
Administrator
FROM: Emily Weinstein,
Director
Housing & Community
Development
Department
SUBJECT: HCD Anti-Displacement
Strategic Action Plan
DATE: February 23, 2026
City Administrator Approval Date: Feb 27, 2026
RECOMMENDATION
Staff Recommends That The City Council Receive An Informational Report On The Housing and Community Development Department’s Anti-Displacement Strategic Action Plan
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The City of Oakland Housing and Community Development Department (Oakland HCD)’s Anti- Displacement Strategic Action Plan (the Plan; Attachment A) describes the approach the department will take to increase housing stability and prevent further displacement and homelessness for Oakland residents. This approach is guided by consideration of: (1) research on the root causes of housing precarity and displacement; (2) stakeholder and community member input; (3) guiding principles for investment when resources are scarce; and (4) the resources available to perform this work. The Plan focuses on strategies that will stem displacement and create greater housing stability for all Oaklanders, especially those most impacted by housing disparities.
The Plan is informed by the City’s commitment to intentionally integrate on a Citywide basis, the principle of “fair and just” in all that the City does in order to achieve equitable opportunities for all people and communities, pursuant to the Section 2.29.170 of the Oakland Municipal Code.
Further, the Plan development was guided by the City of Oakland’s Racial Equity Impact Analysis (REIA) process, developed by the Department of Race and Equity. This approach has the built-in advantage of driving concrete, data-driven, outcome-oriented problem-solving actions. It educates about racial disparities, informs about root causes, engages impacted communities, and ultimately provides a set of specific recommendations to work with and a framework to evaluate the impacts of decisions on equity outcomes.
Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: HCD Anti-Displacement Strategic Action Plan
Date: February 23, 2026 Page 2
Community and Economic Development Committee
March 10, 2026
The Plan begins by providing an overview of existing anti-displacement and housing stabilization activities, funding, and structures within the City of Oakland. It then provides an overview of key disparity data, highlighting community-level indicators by demography and geography, whenever possible, to better understand how various groups in Oakland experience displacement pressure. The Plan next describes the robust community engagement process that took place from summer 2024 through spring 2025 to gather input, feedback, creativity, and priorities from critical community stakeholders. Next, the Plan offers guiding principles for investment in a resource-constrained context, as well as an equitable investment framework for anti-displacement services to achieve the greatest disparity reduction possible. The Plan outlines broad implementation strategies City leadership may consider advancing, including in their policymaking and in steps to develop, operationalize, and resource the specific programs, program improvements, and services existing and imagined. Lastly, the Plan offers a structure for which progress will be monitored and evaluated over time, as well as highlighting several regular opportunities during which Oakland HCD leadership will report on key programs.
The Plan serves as a starting point from which City leadership can invite further discussions on how to partner cross-departmentally, involve regional partners to co-develop solutions, identify opportunities to advocate for resources at the county, state, and federal levels, and simply improve existing efforts and programs to ensure their effectiveness. The Plan is one of several citywide strategic plans that, together, will articulate the City’s approach across the spectrum of housing needs, services and typologies.
BACKGROUND / LEGISLATIVE HISTORY
Oakland HCD seeks to focus on strategies that will most effectively stem the loss of the Oakland’s residents most impacted by racial disparities.
Homelessness and housing affordability are top priorities for Oakland residents; to address these challenges, the City is carrying out a multi-pronged approach through its “3Ps” framework:
Protect Oaklanders from displacement,
Preserve existing affordable housing stock, and
Produce new, deeply affordable housing
Through the development of its 2023-2027 Strategic Action Plan, Oakland HCD identified funding priorities to create housing affordability starting with the imperative to produce deeply affordable housing for people exiting homelessness. The focus of the 2023-2027 SAP is on Oakland HCD’s capital investment strategy in furtherance of the Production and Preservation Ps – both of which have anti-displacement impacts. Oakland HCD’s Preservation strategies, which include its acquisition and rehabilitation program, Acquisition & Conversion to Affordable Housing (ACAH), and its homeowner-occupied rehabilitation programs, are detailed in the 2023- 2027 SAP. These programs are real estate strategies to promote broader housing stability and are best practices in cities and counties around the Bay Area.
ANALYSIS AND POLICY ALTERNATIVES
Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: HCD Anti-Displacement Strategic Action Plan
Date: February 23, 2026 Page 3
Community and Economic Development Committee
March 10, 2026
The Plan directly relates to the Citywide priorities of housing, economic, and cultural security by providing visions for resident stabilization and protection against displacement. The Plan begins by reviewing disparity data relevant to housing stability efforts and larger displacement in Oakland. Key data points include:
# Grounding Data
1 Housing Precarity
2 Rent Burden Rates
3 Overcrowding and Doubling Up
4 Eviction Rates
5 Housing Habitability
6 Foreclosure Rates
7 Homelessness Rates
From there, the Plan describes input received from community engagement efforts and offers a set of principles to guide strategies. This information results in an equitable investment framework for housing stabilization services that targets resources to those most impacted by racial disparities and experiencing the most severe impacts of housing insecurity. The framework will serve as Oakland HCD’s strategic focus and will drive the department’s program and policy development, resource allocations, and systems-change efforts in the coming years.
The framework speaks to a universe of desired policies and programs, including those that may not currently exist, and it establishes a logic that answers the following question:
With the limited dollars available, how should funding be prioritized to have the maximum impact for those most impacted by housing disparities?
The Plan then offers a set of implementation strategies that, over time, are intended to improve housing stability for Oaklanders and reduce disparities between different demographic groups.
These strategies are grouped into five focus areas:
1. Prioritize services to residents most impacted by disparities;
2. Improving rental housing habitability to eliminate health & safety hazards;
3. Increasing small property owner viability to preserve ownership and promote small business vitality;
4. Strengthen and clarify tenant protection policies to maximize their impact;
5. Increase viability of intergenerational homeownership & prevent foreclosure.
Each strategy listed above includes several activities that will be implemented over the next few years. Though most activities identified do not currently have funding available to be implemented, the Plan discusses opportunities at the local, regional, state, and federal levels to garner support. Lastly, the Plan highlights several vectors through which reporting and progress will be reported annually, including but not limited to:
Rent Adjustment Program (RAP)’s Annual Report;
5-Year Consolidated Plan, submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD);
Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: HCD Anti-Displacement Strategic Action Plan
Date: February 23, 2026 Page 4
Community and Economic Development Committee
March 10, 2026
Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report (CAPER) for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and other federal formula grant programs from HUD, submitted to HUD;
Annual Action Plans, serving as annual implementation updates to the 5-Year Consolidated Plan and grant resource allocation plans, submitted to HUD; Housing Element Annual Progress Report (APR), developed in partnership with the Planning and Building Department; and
the Annual Housing Programs Report, developed by HCD’s Housing Development Division.
A new, forthcoming annual report to be developed by HCD’s Community Development division.
FISCAL IMPACT
The production of this report has no fiscal impact to the City of Oakland.
PUBLIC OUTREACH / INTEREST
In the development of the Plan, staff conducted a three-pronged community engagement process between August 2024 and spring of 2025: (1) a series of six focus groups with subject- matter experts, (2) conversations with other governmental agencies, and (3) community listening sessions co-hosted by each City of Oakland councilmember in fall 2024.
(1) Subject-Matter Expert Focus Groups
These groups were selected to participate because of the anti-displacement efforts that they support and carry out through their work. The focus groups were comprised of tenants’ rights organizations, homelessness service providers and academic experts, and property owner advocacy groups. These sessions were aimed at providing an overview of HCD’s data-driven strategic approach and then ground-truthing by engaging in discussions with participants. While the background and expertise of focus group members had a wide range, there was a shared consensus that anti-displacement programs and tenant protections are worth investing in, more effective outreach and education are needed, collaboration and partnerships should be prioritized, the urgency for a data-driven approach to combat displacement and enhance housing stability through policy advocacy and resource allocation. A total of 95 focus group members participated in these conversations; a list of participants and summaries of the conversations is discussed in Appendix B of the Plan.
(2) Inter-Governmental Agency Conversations
Throughout September and October 2024, Oakland HCD staff reached out to numerous colleagues in other City of Oakland departments and Alameda County to get their perspective on the Plan’s data, framework, and strategies. There was consensus among City of Oakland departments that there are opportunities to align HCD’s anti-displacement work with other City departments’ priorities and initiatives. In conversations with Alameda County colleagues, Oakland HCD staff heard about possible opportunities to link Oakland HCD’s anti-displacement work with ongoing County initiatives most notably the implementation of the County’s Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: HCD Anti-Displacement Strategic Action Plan
Date: February 23, 2026 Page 5
Community and Economic Development Committee
March 10, 2026
Homelessness Prevention Framework. The countywide framework focuses on households who are most likely to lose their housing and will implement a uniform screening tool/assessment like that used in Oakland HCD’s Targeted Homelessness Prevention Program (Keep People Housed). This assessment will be implemented across County safety net systems to assess for homelessness risk and connect people to the appropriate resource.
(3) Community Listening Sessions
Additionally, Oakland HCD co-hosted three citywide community listening sessions with members of the Oakland City Council for residents to provide their input and help shape the Plan. A summary of consolidated themes, concerns, and opportunities named in the community engagement process are described in the main document.
COORDINATION
Oakland HCD staff received close guidance from the Department of Race and Equity in the development of the Plan. Additionally, staff consulted several other departments including the Planning and Building Department, Economic and Workforce Development, the Department of Violence Prevention, and more.
SUSTAINABLE OPPORTUNITIES
Economic: Several of the implementation strategies and activities named in the Plan could increase economic stability for Oakland residents if supported by sustainable partnerships and funding. For example, partnership with the Economic and Workforce Development Department and its service providers could intentionally target opportunities to increase residents’ income through employment and training programs. Further, the exploration of a small business development program for small property owners could increase their viability and stability in Oakland, sustaining their ability to remain in operation.
Environmental: Though there are no direct environmental impacts related to the production of this report or its main strategies, there are indirect repercussions of displacement. Namely, households that are pushed farther away from their communities and/or places of work may be required to travel longer distances, often by car, increasing vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions. Increasing housing stability for Oaklanders can help them stay in their local communities and create more opportunity for green and sustainable initiatives at scale.
Race & Equity: the Plan’s desired equity outcome is as follows:
“All Oaklanders, including all income levels and those most impacted by disparities in displacement, have healthy, safe, fair, affordable, and stable housing. Oakland’s communities are stabilized, without disproportionate displacement of historically underserved communities.”
Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: HCD Anti-Displacement Strategic Action Plan
Date: February 23, 2026 Page 6
Community and Economic Development Committee
March 10, 2026
Data on rent burden, homelessness, and displacement show uneven geographic distribution of displacement risk in Oakland. In response, the equitable investment framework and linked strategies/activities are designed to increase housing stability for residents in high-risk areas of the City.
ACTION REQUESTED OF THE CITY COUNCIL
Staff Recommends That The City Council Receive An Informational Report On The Housing and Community Development Department’s Anti-Displacement Strategic Action Plan
For questions regarding this report, please contact Hugo Ramírez, Deputy Director of Community Development, [email protected]
Respectfully submitted,
Emily Weinstein (Feb 26, 2026 15:21:10 PST)
Emily Weinstein
Director, Housing and Community Development
Department
Prepared by: Chris Norman, Chief of Staff, and
Hugo Ramírez, Deputy Director of Community
Development, Housing and Community
Development Department
Attachments A: HCD Anti-Displacement Strategic Action Plan (link)