OAKLAND — In an effort to increase low-cost housing stock, Oakland City Council members want to get rid of a planning code rule that puts a four-person limit on live/work spaces.

The council on Tuesday approved the resolution, which amends the current “joint living and work quarters” code. The city’s Planning Commission will review the rule change and could make recommendations before the proposal returns to council for final passage.

Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, who introduced the resolution, said she worked alongside activists to come up with the resolution. It’s a step towards bringing live/work spaces out of the “legal gray zone” they’re in, she told the Oakland Tribune.

“Live/work spaces are a successful way for people to find affordable housing,” Kaplan said. “To lose that is really harmful in terms of displacement and rising housing costs.”

A letter of support for the resolution written by the Oakland Warehouse Coalition, Safer DIY Spaces and Thomas Dolan Architecture said the four-person limit “has worked against low-income communities seeking to bring their live/work spaces into code conformance.”

Safer DIY Spaces, an Oakland coalition that helps bring such spaces up to code, surveyed 75 buildings in 2016 and 2017 that contained live/work spaces, the letter said. They found that most of the units were occupied by five to 15 residents, and had plenty of space to reasonably house them.

Though there are several market-rate buildings in the city that are subdivided into smaller live/work spaces suitable for the four-person limit, low-income occupants of live/work spaces typically flock to other, larger spaces, and split the rent between more than four people — “the only way such units become affordable,” the letter said.

Getting rid of the four-person limit will lead the city towards improving conditions for owners and tenants of live/work spaces that are not yet up to code, the letter said.