The housing shortage is the #1 issue facing Oakland.

Decades of exclusionary housing policy have made Oakland unaffordable. This issue is at the center of nearly every problem facing our city, among them our high cost of living and rising crime. Despite political hand-wringing, the solution is actually simple:

Build More Housing.

Remove every impediment to building more housing. Build dense, mixed use housing, with an emphasis on affordable units near transit. Use all available laws and resources to greenlight and fast-track new housing. Follow New York City and Seattle's leads and legalize single-stair, multi-level, multi-family units. Incentivize and allow more mass timber construction, which is safer, cheaper, more sustainable, and speeds up building times. Crack down on the thousands of illegal short-term rentals that are taking housing away from residents of Oakland, and create a registry of institutional investors buying homes in Oakland and evaluate if they need to be regulated. Continue the push to automate and speed up the permiting process. Upzone, upzone, upzone.

Oakland is an amazing place to live. By removing red tape and speeding up the process, housing costs will drop.

We need more housing solutions and resources for our unhoused neighbors. Besides being the first step in recovering from addiction, securing a job, and more, housing is a basic human right.

Lastly, we have a once in a lifetime opportunity to reimagine downtown Oakland in the wake of the pandemic. Empty office space does not serve Oakland. We need to prioritize walkable, green, public spaces and dense, mixed-use housing to ensure that Oakland is a safe and desirable place to call home.