California Construction News staff writer
The City of Oakland’s draft 2023-2031 Housing plan released last week includes several zoning reforms that officials say will increase housing production capacity and unlock opportunities to build affordable and “missing middle” housing in high-resource neighborhoods.
Public meetings to review the proposals will begin this month.
Reforms are needed to “affirmatively further fair housing” by opening up exclusionary neighborhoods, and reducing the exposure to air pollution, toxic and other environmental hazards in environmental justice communities, planning staff said in a report.
Publishe preliminary draft proposals include:
Missing Middle and Related Planning Code Amendments:
- The proposed missing-middle and other related Planning Code amendments will encourage a diversity of housing types such as flats, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhomes/rowhouses, and accessory dwelling units (ADUs)s in currently single-family-dominated neighborhoods, and along corridors, transit-proximate areas, and high resource neighborhoods and remove constraints on the development of housing.
Two overlay zones are also proposed:
Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO) Zone:
The proposed Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO) Zone is intended to create and preserve affordable housing restricted for extremely low, very low, low, and/or moderate-income households. See Summary of Preliminary Draft Affordable Housing Overlay Zone (AHO) Proposal.
The City is proposing to amend Action 3.4.10 to permit affordable housing by right with at least 20% affordable housing units for all sites identified in the Housing Sites inventory (insert link to sites inventory site) and create a Housing Sites Overlay Zone.
The proposed Housing Sites Overlay Zone is intended to facilitate housing opportunities in Oakland and to bring attention to those sites that the City intends for housing to be built pursuant to State requirements.
Questions and comments on the preliminary proposals should be sent to generalplan@oaklandca.gov.
