OAKLAND -- After several studies and more than two years of debate, Oakland is finally poised to adopt new "impact fees" on housing developments to help pay for affordable housing.

But how much impact the fees will have on Oakland residents in the midst of a regional housing crisis will be determined by the City Council in coming weeks.

According to a new report, city staffers are proposing fees beginning in July of $5,000 per unit for every market-rate housing development in Zone 1, which includes downtown, most neighborhoods around Lake Merritt and the Oakland hills. The fee would increase to $10,000 in July 2017 and $20,000 in the summer of 2018. The city would also demand a $710 fee per unit to fund transportation projects.

While housing activists call for Oakland to immediately adopt the higher fees seen in other Bay Area cities -- Emeryville and Berkeley recently raised their impact fees to $28,000 per unit -- developers favor a more gradual approach for a city that, until the tech boom began spilling over to the East Bay, hasn't garnered much interest from market-rate housing developers since the beginning of the Great Recession.

Greg McConnell, president and CEO of the Jobs and Housing Coalition, said a study by the Hausrath Economics Group indicated the market in Oakland wasn't yet ready for the higher fees, which could stymie development in a city that desperately needs more housing to offset rapidly rising rents.


"I wish they'd pay attention to that recommendation," McConnell said.

More importantly, however, McConnell said the city should make sure that developers with pending applications with the city's planning department are exempted from any new fees. City staffers disagree; they're recommending that only developers who apply for building permits before the July deadline are exempted, according to their report.

McConnell said Mayor Libby Schaaf in the past year has been offering the pending impact fees as a carrot to developers to come now, or pay more later. But planning applications are often tedious, and many developers won't be able to make the July deadline for their building permits, he said.

"That's a year-and-a-half process," he said. "(The city) needs to do right by those people."

But Jeff Levin, policy director of East Bay Housing Organizations, said developers had years to plan for impact fees after Oakland officials started studying the issue. Levin said McConnell's plan would exempt 2,200 more units from paying the new fees -- about $11 million, if $5,000 is the price per unit.

"It's a long time under their proposal before anyone pays a fee, and we need funding for affordable housing now," he said.

And Levin said he wants more than $5,000, too. Oakland can't afford to wait three years before the $20,000 fee takes effect, he said.

"The city has kept putting this off," Levin said. "We really just feel we can't wait any longer."

Councilman Noel Gallo said he supports a gradual implementation of fees that the business interests favor. He noted that the city hadn't revealed its proposed fees for East Oakland or West Oakland.

"My ultimate goal is to not discourage developers," Gallo said. "Oakland needs to revitalize and grow right now. We don't know what the economy will look like three or four years from now."

McConnell said developers' interest in Oakland has grown in the past year, with companies like Uber anxious to invest capital in the city.

But that investment has only just started, he said, with just a few construction cranes moving in. We're nowhere from the peak, he said.

"I just think that, historically, Oakland has always missed the wave, and it looks like finally they are going to catch it this time," McConnell said.

Mike Blasky covers Oakland City Hall. Contact him at 510-208-6429. Follow him at Twitter.com/blasky.