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The Oakland City Council appeared tantalizingly close to a possible compromise on the city’s divisive affordable housing issues Tuesday night, but while the outlines for such a compromise have begun to take shape, it was unclear who would be brokering a possible agreement, or the logistics of how it would take place. 

“I don’t think there’s a plan for how we can get together to talk this out,” Councilmember Jane Brunner said by telephone a day after the meeting. “There are conversations going on, and when something comes together, we’ll bring it back.” 

And in a separate interview, Councilmember Desley Brooks said that the issues of inclusionary zoning and affordable housing are linked, and “it is very hard to see that one will be passed without the other; it will probably have to come as a package deal.” 

Council has been divided down the middle on affordable housing since late 2006 when Councilmember Brooks (East Oakland) put together a coalition that delayed passage of an inclusionary zoning ordinance authored by Councilmembers Brunner (North Oakland) and Jean Quan (Glenview-Montclair). Shortly afterwards, Brooks’ own proposal for amending Oakland’s condominum conversion ordinance was blocked.  

Both issues were sent to a newly formed Blue Ribbon Commission on Affordable Housing, which met for a year and ended up recommending a rough compromise on inclusionary zoning that seemed to satisfy neither side, and issuing two minority reports, but no commission agreement, on condominium conversion. 

In an interview last week, Brunner sounded doubtful that there were the necessary five votes to pass any new affordable housing legislation, and she repeated that belief during Tuesday’s debate. But at the end of a special three-hour afternoon Council meeting held to try to break the year-long deadlock, there were suddenly signs that a deal might be possible. 

After Brunner said that Council passed its office development-affordable housing linkage fee during a down period in office construction in Oakland—similar to the current downturn in residential construction—Brooks said she “might support” some form of inclusionary zoning that included a delay in its implementation until a better economic climate, such as the earlier linkage fee had done. 

Brooks also said she “agree[d] with a lot of” a last-minute condominium conversion compromise introduced at Tuesday’s meeting by Councilmember Pat Kernighan (Grand Avenue-Lakeshore), adding that “I think if we continue the dialogue a little bit longer, we have the opportunity to pass something.” 

Other Councilmembers appeared to agree, giving optimistic statements that had been largely absent in earlier affordable housing debates. Both Quan and Councilmember Larry Reid (East Oakland) said that Council was “closer” to putting an affordable housing ordinance together than they’d been before. 

Meanwhile, it is not clear what role the Dellums administration may be playing in the affordable housing discussions. Council delayed deliberations on the affordable housing issue this year while waiting for Mayor Ron Dellums to issue his own recommendations. Dellums released recommendations on inclusionary zoning and condominium conversion earlier this month, but his affordable housing package also included recommendations on the city’s rent adjustment program and other areas Council is not currently prepared to discuss.  

And in his presentation to Council on Tuesday, which he said he was doing “on behalf of the mayor,” Community and Economic Development Agency interim director Dan Lindheim said that “we were reluctant to put inclusionary zoning and condominium conversion in our proposal because we thought it would take away from the other proposals in the package.” 

Deep divisions over inclusionary zoning and condominium conversion remain. 

That was clearly evident when 102 public speakers signed up to present their views at Tuesday afternoon’s special Council meeting, many of them—in the one minute allotted apiece—repeating testimony and public statements that councilmembers and the Blue Ribbon Commission have been hearing many times over the past year’s public debate. 

Gregory McConnell, a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission, said that Oakland faces a budget deficit and a downturn in housing sales. “Do you solve the problem by putting on onerous rent control and onerous inclusionary zoning, or do you incentivize?” he asked. “Do you want to risk cutting off the revenue stream provided by building housing?” 

Bruce Beasley, chair of the South Prescott Neighborhood Association, said that some of the proposed changes to the condominium conversion—he did not have enough time allotted to specify which changes—were “a thinly disguised attempt to prevent this form of ownership.” 

On the opposite side, Tosh Wells, an Oakland resident, said that the city “desperately needs affordable housing. Inclusionary zoning is a big part of that. When housing was booming, we didn’t see developers rush forward with inclusionary zoning proposals. There’s one reason for that: greed.” 

And calling Oakland’s lack of housing opportunities for moderate- to low-income families “a full-blown crisis,” Rev. Phil Lawson of the East Bay Housing Organization said that he knew of 54 family members leaving one church in a 10-month period to move to Stockton because they could not afford to live in Oakland. “We need to increase the ability of people to stay where they now live in Oakland,” he said. 

Many people in the meeting audience held printed signs of the Oakland Peoples Housing Coalition reading “Housing Is A Right” and “If Not Now, When?” 

In her telephone interview, Brunner said that “the biggest thing we are divided on is inclusionary zoning for rental property.” 

Meanwhile, the process for how a possible Council deal would be reached was left pointedly vague. Reid suggested at Tuesday’s meeting that Brunner, Kernighan, and Brooks sit down and try to work out their differences and bring back a compromise proposal, but De La Fuente did not take up the offer to appoint the Councilmembers as a special committee, and Brunner later threw cold water on the idea.  

“That group would not be able to come up with a deal,” she said by telephone. “I don’t see Desley and Pat moving their positions enough to make that possible. That’s why I didn’t jump at that suggestion.” 

Instead, De La Fuente suggested that he talk with Brunner, and that the two of them come back to Council Rules Committee if something develops. 

“Whoever from the Council sits at the bargaining table, they’re not going to be able to make a deal on this by themselves,” Brunner said. “They are going to have to be able to go back to their people and convince them to make a compromise. The developers and the housing coalition, both sides are going to have to give a little bit.”