MARCH 18
Oakland
1 STRATEGIC PLAN
2026
Attachment B
Mayor’s Commission on
Persons with Disabilities
Strategic Plan 2026
The Oakland Mayor’s Commission on Persons with Disabilities (MCPD) is an advisory board of appointed volunteers who represent the needs Oakland disability communities. They advise the Mayor, City Council, and City staff on Oakland’s goal of being an accessible and equitable city where everyone can thrive. They advocate for systemic change and serve as a vital resource for Oakland’s public servants.
This strategic plan was written via the committed work of MCPD and its community supporters. It was created and approved by the Officers and Commissioners of MCPD, through a process facilitated by Jasmine Pomar, over the course of the December 2024 through February 2025 Commission meetings. The Officers and Commissioners who worked to draft it are:
Chair Anwar Baroudi
Vice Chair Fatimah Aure
Vice Chair Benjamin Bartu
Commissioner James Carter
Commissioner Jia Wilson
Commissioner Thomas Cloyd (former)
Commissioner Raven Foote (former)
Commissioner Linda St. Julian (former)
Commissioner Kaitlyn Roh (former)
Commissioner Nadia Morales-Saleh (new)
2 Commissioner Cynthia Gutierrez (new)
Commissioner Lauren Reed (new)
Commissioner Emily Habansky (new)
Commissioner Actions
Anwar Baroudi (chair) Oakland Elevator Ordinance Enforcement, ADA Transition Funding Advocacy, OakDOT Design
Guidelines, OakDOT Project Review, Pedestrian Plan
Review
Fatimah Aure (co-vice chair) Transit/Mobility Usership Review Jia Wilson (co-vice chair) City Staff Workplace Accommodations, Community Needs Survey, Service Provider Open Call, Targeted
Service Research, Resource Guide Development,
Outreach and Publicity
Benjamin Bartu Clean Air Refuge Investigation, Website Accessibility Audit, City Staff Workplace Accommodations,
Police/PWD Interaction Report, Community Needs
Survey
James Carter OakDOT Design Guidelines, OakDOT Project Review, Transit/Mobility Usership Review, Pedestrian Plan
Review
Nadia Morales-Saleh Intersection of Affordable and Accessible Housing Cynthia Gutierrez Service Provider Open Call, Targeted Service Reasearch Lauren Reed City Staff Workplace Accommodations, Community Needs Survey, Service Provider Open Call, Targeted
Service Research, Resource Guide Development,
Outreach and Publicity
Emily Habansky Website Accessibility Audit, ADA Transition Funding Advocacy, OakDOT Design Guidelines, Pedestrian Plan
Review
3 The plan is laid out over four main Goal Areas. Each Goal Area has Commissioners assigned to be accountable for the Commission’s progress in that area and additional Commissioners assigned to work on furthering those goals. The lead for each Goal Area is expected to act as a project manager, checking in on tasks assigned to other Commissioners, coordinating timelines, and agendizing updates and reports at Commission meetings on the status of their Goal Area.
Furthermore, each Goal Area is made up of multiple Actions and Plans. These actions are numerated, and sometimes assigned to Commissioners in the following pages. The four Goal Areas identified are:
City Operations ……..……………………………………………………………………………………………Pg.4 Service Navigation ………………………..……………………………………………………………………Pg. 6 Housing ………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…….Pg. 9 Transportation …………………………………………………………………………………………………Pg. 12 4 ÿ
City Operations
G
oal Area One
This Goal Area includes plans to support the City of Oakland’s operations becoming as accessible as possible. These efforts seek to make the City’s communications more accessible to the public, to make the City a more accessible workplace for its thousands of staff, and to make the administration of City business more equitable for persons with disabilities living in Oakland.
Progress in this area will be guided and monitored by Commissioner Bartu, who will manage the tasks identified and assigned to the various Commissioners and administratively add new actions if deemed relevant through the process of accomplishing the goal.
ACTION S FRO M THIS G OAL INCLUDE:
• Clean Air Refuge Investigation
• Website Accessibility Audit
• City Staff Workplace Accommodations
• Police/PWD Interaction Report
These actions are explained in more detail, with assignments for specific Commissioners to complete them, below.
Clean Air Refuge Investigation
This action will be undertaken by Commissioner Bartu. It involves reaching out to City of Oakland departments to inquire what plans exist to develop clean air refuge sites for Oaklanders to protect themselves during periods of intense poor air quality, for instance during wildfires. This may lead to reporting back to the Commission or requesting a presentation from the relevant staff. Additional opportunities include collaborating with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD). 5 Website Accessibility Audit
This action will be undertaken by Commissioner Bartu and Commissioner Habansky. It will take a few phases, starting with reviewing the existing City standards for accessible inclusive communication. Commissioners will then systematically review various webpages for each City department, evaluating how well they adhere to these standards. The webpages will also be reviewed for opportunity areas above and beyond what is required by City standards. Outcomes of this action may include targeted outreach to departments with inaccessible pages, recommendations for updates to the web accessibility guidelines, or a deeper collaboration with the IT and citywide communications teams. The digital product team in the City Administrators Office will be an important resource for Commissioners working on this action.
City Staff Workplace Accommodations
This action will be undertaken by Co-Vice Chair Wilson and Commissioners Bartu and Reed. It is an open-ended investigation into the conditions of City employees and the accommodations offered to make Oakland an accessible workplace. Recommended partners for this action include the ADA office, City staff unions, and City HR teams. An important outcome for this action is to ensure that staff with disabilities continue to be treated equitably in the budget-constrained environment the City of Oakland is enduring.
Police/PWD Interaction Report
This action will be undertaken by Commissioner Bartu. The ultimate goal of this action is to institutionalize a regular—ideally annual—report from OPD to the Commission cataloging police interactions with persons with disabilities. Steps will include the creation of criteria for inclusion in this report, a summation of all the information needed in the report about these interactions, and the scheduling of the report to MCPD. Steps may need to be taken to collaborate with OPD on how to properly collect and sort this data.
6 Service Navigation
Goal Area Two
This Goal Area includes plans to connect more Oaklanders, with and without disabilities, to services that are already available. These services may be provided by the City of Oakland, other governmental agencies, or community organizations.
Making the public aware of services available to them and helping people understand what services they qualify for are both important parts of this goal.
Progress in this area will be guided and monitored by Co-Vice Chair Wilson, who will manage the tasks identified and assigned to the various Commissioners and administratively add new actions if deemed relevant through the process of accomplishing the goal.
ACTION S FRO M THIS G OAL INCLUDE:
• Community Needs Survey
• Service Provider Open Call
• Targeted Service Research
• Resource Guide Development
• Outreach and Publicity
These actions are explained in more detail, with assignments for specific Commissioners to complete them, below.
Community Needs Survey
This action will be undertaken by Commissioners Bartu and Reed and Co-Vice Chair Wilson. It is a continuation of the valuable work done in 2024 to understand which issues community members care about and prioritize to guide the direction of MCPD.
At the end of 2025, the survey will be taken again, this time with a focus on intentional outreach to young people, as the 2024 survey showed a skewed sample that underrepresented younger respondents. Opportunities include collaborating with the Oakland Youth Commission.
7 Service Provider Open Call
This action will be undertaken by Commissioners Reed and Gutierrez and Co-Vice Chair Wilson. It involves assembling a list of service providers—governmental, nonprofit, and grassroots—to be reached out to asking for reports and/or presentations on what services they offer, both specific to persons with disabilities and not, and how to access those services. The list will be shared at a Commission meeting for all Commissioners to give input and add providers. The information received from these service providers will be cataloged for the creation of a resource guide.
Targeted Service Research
This action will be undertaken by Commissioners Reed and Gutierrez and Co-Vice Chair Wilson. Similar to the open call, it involves assembling publicly available information about resources available to Oaklanders, including but not limited to legal assistance, healthcare, and social work. It also includes collecting the resources shared by presenters in previous Commission meetings. This information, too, will be used to develop the resource guide.
Resource Guide Development
This action will be undertaken by Co-Vice Chair Wilson. It involves taking the information about resources aggregated by the previous actions in this Goal Area and creating a singular document or database with information on what services are available and how to access them. This action may include the creation of tools like a map that shows the locations of various centers and facilities. The resource guide is to be hosted in an easy to find location via the city website and should be printable to facilitate in-person engagement with it.
Outreach and Publicity
This action will be undertaken by Co-Vice Chair Wilson. Once the resource guide is assembled, it will be important to connect residents to it. This will include presentations at community centers and places persons with disabilities congregate. It 8 will also include digitally sharing it via as many channels as possible, including email lists, social media, and other mass communication channels. This task also includes looking into mass advertising avenues like public service announcements, bus benches, and IKE Smart City kiosks to highlight specific resources that need greater visibility. 9 Housing
Goal Area Three
This Goal Area includes plans to make housing in Oakland more accessible and affordable. Its actions take steps to support affordable housing across Oakland as well as investigate how supportive the Oakland housing market is for people who need ADA compliant accommodation across all affordability levels.
Progress in this area will be guided and monitored by Co-Vice Chair Aure, who will manage the tasks identified and assigned to the various commissioners and administratively add new actions if deemed relevant through the process of accomplishing the goal.
ACTION S FRO M THIS G OAL INCLUDE:
• Affordable Housing Application Streamlining
• Oakland Elevator Ordinance Enforcement
• Intersection of Affordable and Accessible Housing
• Investigating Tenants Rights
• Connect Housing Resources to Communities
These actions are explained in more detail, with assignments for specific commissioners to complete them, below.
Affordable Housing Application Streamlining
It is the continuation of a prior planned effort. The Commission is aware of groups working to create a centralized universal affordable housing application, to reduce the redundant applications that residents in need of housing must file with different agencies. This task involves identifying who is working on this effort, requesting an update on the status of this work and the limitations or challenges in achieving it, then advocating for the change needed to facilitate its creation. 10 Oakland Elevator Ordinance Enforcement
This action will be undertaken by Chair Baroudi. The tasks involved are requesting a report on the implementation and enforcement of the newly passed Elevator Maintenance Ordinance (Ordinance 13811 C.M.S.) including but not limited to how residents can make a claim under the ordinance, how many claims have been made so far, and what actions the city has taken to respond to these claims. Opportunities for further actions thereafter might include advocating for changes to make the ordinance more effective, supporting with public awareness, and working to support the teams involved in enforcing this ordinance.
Intersection of Affordable and Accessible Housing
This action will be undertaken by Commissioner Morales-Saleh. It involves continuing the efforts of the Commission to ensure housing options that are both affordable and ADA compliant are available to Oaklanders. Because the ADA first went into effect in 1991 and the Oakland Rent Adjustment Ordinance exempts houses built after 1982, community members have expressed that there is a dearth of rent-stabilized housing that meets their accessibility needs. This action involves working with the City Attorney and potentially the Housing and Community Development Department (HCD) to identify how much ADA-compliant housing qualifies for the Rent Adjustment Program and how to increase that rate.
Investigating Tenants Rights
This action will include a series of inquiries with HCD, potentially the Oakland Housing Authority (OHA), and even state agencies to identify what disability rights protections exist at a federal, state, and city level for Oakland residents. Some of the questions identified by Commissioners include how rules for small and large landlords differ, how these rules are enforced, and how residents can file a claim to ensure their rights are protected. This action creates opportunities for inclusion in the Resource Guide that will be created for the Service Navigation Goal Area.
11 Connect Housing Resources to Communities
This action will be undertaken by Co-Vice Chair Wilson. This action synergizes with the previous action and with the Outreach and Publicity task in the Service Navigation Goal Area. As part of collaborating with the relevant government agencies in the investigation stage, questions about how these agencies perform outreach to connect with persons with disabilities should be asked. Commissioners should work to inform the agencies of community groups that they can engage with. Additionally, Commissioners shall take the information learned in this process to community hubs and organizers to help distribute these important resources as well. 12 Transportation
Goal Area Four
This Goal Area includes plans to make the streets and sidewalks of Oakland safer and more accessible for everyone, particularly persons with disabilities. It also includes plans to advocate for consistency and reliability in the transit methods that persons with disabilities use most.
Progress in this area will be guided and monitored by Chair Baroudi, who will manage the tasks identified and assigned to the various Commissioners and administratively add new actions if deemed relevant through the process of accomplishing the goal.
ACTION S FRO M THIS G OAL INCLUDE:
• ADA Transition Funding Advocacy
• OakDOT Design Guidelines
• OakDOT Project Review
• Pedestrian Plan Review
• Transit/Mobility Usership Review
These actions are explained in more detail, with assignments for specific Commissioners to complete them, below.
ADA Transition Funding Advocacy
This action will be undertaken by Chair Baroudi and Commissioner Habansky. After MCPD supported the effort to create the updated ADA Transition Plan for the streets and sidewalks of Oakland, this action aims to ensure that this transition is properly funded. The task may include, with the guidance of ADA office staff, drafting a proposed policy, writing letters of support for a line item of restricted funding for ADA transition projects, and speaking at City Council in support of this protected budget fund. In addition to an ADA transition fund in the budget, advocating for this transition may include advocating for the ADA office to become and remain fully staffed, as this team is essential to the work.
13 OakDOT Design Guidelines
This action will be undertaken by Chair Baroudi and Commissioners Carter and Habansky. They will work with the Oakland Department of Transportation (OakDOT) to create design guidelines for their streetscape projects that ensure Oakland streets and sidewalks are designed and built in a way that is inclusive and accessible. Some of these guidelines might include standards for installing benches every amount of sidewalk distance or the standard treatment of crosswalks and bulb-outs. This action will require close and sustained collaboration with OakDOT.
OakDOT Project Review
This action will be undertaken by Chair Baroudi and Commissioner Carter. Reviewing OakDOT projects and plans is an ongoing collaboration between the two groups. In 2025 the Commission intends to continue this work by reviewing upcoming projects and requesting presentations at the relevant interval to give meaningful insight into how the projects can be made more accessible. While the assigned Commissioners will select projects and coordinate OakDOT staff participation, all Commissioners should and will be involved in the input given to the Department.
Pedestrian Plan Review
This action is already underway, and all Commissioners will be involved in the feedback, particularly Chair Baroudi and Commissioners Carter and Habansky. The Oakland Pedestrian Plan is undergoing updates for the 2025 calendar year. As persons with disabilities are more likely to be pedestrians and are more at-risk of injury while walking, it is essential that the pedestrian plan not only consider but prioritize them in its recommendations. This action will involve giving feedback to staff to help make the plan more accommodating.
Transit/Mobility Usership Review
This action will be undertaken by Co-Vice Chair Aure and Commissioner Carter. The action aims to understand the service level and needs of public transit and paratransit riders, then advocate for changes that serve them best with a focus on the East Bay Paratransit system, the Commission will request presentations from AC Transit and BART about as much de-personalized ridership data as they have on rider disability 14 status. This includes ridership rates, bus route/train line distribution, time peaks of disabled ridership, average trip comparisons, etc. For Paratransit specifically, demography of riders, ridership trends and ride volumes are a focus, and a key point of interest is in routes. Since paratransit is not a fixed-route service like the bus, analyzing trip locations will provide insight into the places where persons with disabilities are most underserved by existing public transit infrastructure. As much data as is reasonable on this, up to and including a full origination/destination database will be useful, as the ability to make a ‘heatmap’ will bring clarity to this task. With the information learned through this process, Commissioners can then make recommendations and advocate for service planning that highlights riders with disabilities. Additional opportunities for mobility review include rideshare companies like Uber and Lyft. A similar task could be asking them for similar ridership data and asking about how they ensure riders with disabilities are able to use their platform and access the vehicles used in service. GoGoGrandparent, as a rideshare aggregation service, might also be a candidate for this.
15 Conclusion
In a time where many communities are facing the loss of their protections, and during an era in the City of Oakland when budget cuts are looming, the Mayor’s Commission on Persons with Disabilities recognizes that it is now more essential than ever to protect our community. Persons with Disabilities are essential parts of the Oakland community and deserve to move through the world with the same degree of confidence and ease as anyone else.
It is our sincerely held belief that this plan takes valuable steps toward making that idea a reality. We have constructed this plan to maximize our collective impact and address the perspectives and needs of the communities we serve.
The Mayor’s Commission on Persons with Disabilities hereby approves this strategic plan for 2025 and commits to taking the steps laid out therein toward achieving its goals.
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Anwar Baroudi, Chair
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Fatimah Aure, Vice Chair
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Jia Wilson, Vice Chair
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