Oakland OK's spending $5M to house the city's unsheltered

OAKLAND, Calif. - The Oakland City Council has approved funding to address the homeless crisis ss the number of un-housed people living in the city has increased 47% since 2017. 

City leaders hope to fix the problem by approving additional money for housing programs and sites and changing the city's zoning laws, which they say will give people more housing options.

On Tuesday, the council voted to approve spending $5 million to help house the homeless.

It includes:

- $2 million to prepare city land to become future housing sites

- $1.2 million to operate a city-sanctioned, designated RV parking site at 26th and Wood streets, next to I-880 in West Oakland.

- $1.5 million to open a transitional housing site, in a building on East 12th and Second, near Lake Merritt. That building would be able to immediately house about 60 people, waiting for permanent homes.

Ahead of the city council vote, Mayor Libby Schaaf and two other council members announced a proposal to change city rules about the types of housing that can be built in Oakland.

"ew also have to produce more housing to address the supply and demand problem in the Bay Area," Schaaf said. 

The mayor and other city leaders proposed changing the city ordinances so that people would be allowed to live in RVs and tiny homes on private property.

The new ordinance would also allow mobile and manufactured homes - like the kind that could be built from shipping crates - to be built in all residential areas of the city.