THE ALAMEDA COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS unanimously passed a final plan to distribute a portion of Measure W funds to programs, organizations, and services intended to address homelessness across the county.
Supervisors voted on how to allocate $810 million generated from Measure W, a sales tax passed in 2020 originally earmarked for issues surrounding homelessness. After the final vote, 80 percent of the funds will go toward homelessness and 20 percent will go toward other support services.
The decision came after county staff recommended two funds should be made, one pool in which the accrued $810 million be distributed and another of an estimated $1.02 billion generated over the next 5 years, that would go progressively go towards ongoing projects.
Tensions ran very high in the Board chamber as housing advocates and other members of the public weighed in on the final vote Wednesday. Everyone agreed there is a housing crisis in Alameda County that needs to be addressed, but how to solve the problem was highly disputed as the session dug into the details of proposed plans.
“It affects the lives of our kids, our funds, our mental health, and physical health,” said a woman about the housing crisis, who identified herself only as Vicky from the unincorporated Cherryland area of the county.
While the vast majority were housing advocates asking for the supervisors to fund services preventing the cycle of homelessness, some individuals representing property owners and landlords asked the supervisors to distribute a portion of the money to them after losing revenue during the eviction moratorium at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Housing providers are the first to know if a renter is having difficulty paying rent,” said former Alameda Supervisor candidate Chris Moore over Zoom, who is also on the board of the East Bay Rental Housing Association. “When funds are distributed through some of the legal entities, they typically are working to extract money from these local housing providers and putting them out of business.”
However, loud boos spread across the room with attendees disagreeing with any funds should be directly provided to landlords.
“What’s this I hear about the real estate lobby asking for $175 million of this Measure W stuff?” said public comment participant Douglas Spalding on Zoom. “Why reward landlords for their bad behaviors?”
Before the supervisors could move on to debating the agenda items, members of the public who were unhappy with waiting for hours to speak and still did not get a chance began chanting “let the people speak!”
The time for public comment ran so long, with so many people voicing their strong opinions, that Board President David Haubert said that there would not be enough time to make a final vote. This risked the possibility of pushing the vote back to August or possibly September. Ultimately Haubert extended the meeting by 30 minutes and squeezed in the final vote.
The Board voted unanimously in favor of largely passing the same framework they had already established in the previous week’s special session, with some changes to language and implementation.
Of the $810 million, about 80% of it — or $585 million — would be placed into newly created Home Together fund that will be administered by the Alameda County Public Health Department. The money will be allocated to nonprofits, services, and other organizations that align with the countywide Home Together plan, which Supervisor Nikki Fortunato Bas supports.
“I think it’s important for the public to know that the county does have a plan for addressing homelessness, it’s called our Home Together plan, and that plan shows that we need to spend $2.5 billion dollars over five years to address homelessness,” Fortunato Bas said Monday.
About $54 million will be placed into the Essential County Services Fund that will invest in providers that help vulnerable populations across the region obtain food, meal delivery, or any number of public benefit services. It will be administered by several county agencies that align with safety net and other priority services.
An additional $170 million reserve would be created in the case of economic downturns and be applied to continue funding projects even if revenues are below estimates.
One agenda item was left out of the vote to be decided later, a proposed $15 million Emergency Stabilization fund that would provide support to non-profit affordable housing providers facing financial difficulties. That is expected to be finalized at a later, yet to be announced, date.