The City of Oakland (City)'s draft Housing Element identifies several zoning reforms in the Housing Action Plan. These reforms would further increase housing production capacity and unlock additional opportunities for affordable and “missing middle” housing in high-resource neighborhoods. These reforms would also 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. See interactive online map.
Click here for a full summary of proposed zoning reforms.
The key components of this preliminary proposal include:
Missing Middle and Related Amendments: The proposed missing-middle amendments and related 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.
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 (as defined in California Government Health and Safety Code Sections 50093, 50105, and 50106 50052.5 and in Oakland Planning Code Section 17.107.020). By-right approvals for 100% affordable housing projects will apply in the AHO Zone.
Housing Sites Overlay Zone: 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 (See Housing Sites Inventory Map and Table C-25) 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.