Oakland mayor says new development may drive down cost of...

New development in Oakland is stabilizing rents and may start driving rental costs down, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said in a State of the City address Friday evening that packed the Oakland Museum.

As protesters held signs that read “Stop all evictions” and “Housing is a human right” outside the museum, Schaaf spoke of the homeless crisis, renter protections, anti-eviction efforts and safety on city streets. The mayor said the city exceeded its housing goal of adding 17,000 units by 2024. The city has added 22,000 new units.

The new housing units are starting to stabilize rents in Oakland, she added.

“Rents have stopped going up and many predict next year, they will start going down,” Schaaf said. “Rents are at an expensive place in Oakland, where the average worker cannot afford them. We have much work to do.”

The city set a goal of adding 4,760 units of affordable, protected units by 2024. Schaaf said that 2,000 of those units have been built.

The city recently came under fire after council members and housing advocates questioned why more affordable housing units weren’t being built. Oakland passed an affordable housing impact fee on new residential developments three years ago to jump-start the construction of affordable housing.

Since then, the city has collected just under $9 million in fees and distributed $4.8 million to help fund about 160 new affordable units. Oakland has not approved any new projects that have applied for funds from the fees since 2017.

On Friday, about half a dozen housing and homeless advocates protested the mayor’s speech. When the speech ended, the protesters chanted, “Hey Libby, what do you say? How many lies have you told today?”

Their message was to urge the mayor to think beyond the city’s existing solutions of community cabins and RV safe parking programs for the homeless, said Cole McLean, a member of United Front Against Displacement, a group that protests against illegal evictions.

“These solutions are not really solutions,” McLean said. “At best, they’re just half measures to quell dissent.”

Oakland’s homeless population rose 47% between 2017 and 2019, one of the biggest two-year increases of any California city. Oakland had 861 sheltered people and 3,210 unsheltered people, bringing the estimated number of homeless people to 4,071.

“If we want to keep Oakland, Oakland, we must start by keeping Oaklanders in Oakland,” Schaaf said Friday.

The city has launched four safe RV parking sites — the first of which opened in June.

In addition, Oakland officials have focused their homelessness strategy on building community cabin sites, which are made of drywall, are insulated and have double-pane windows. Some advocates have criticized the community cabin programs saying that people transition back onto the streets after their stay.

Schaaf praised the program at her address, saying the cabins “allowed us to move whole encampments as a unified community into a safe community and where our unsheltered residents can go to bed at night behind a locked door.”

Advocates have also expressed concerns that the creation of encampments leads to “evictions” where encampments are cleared out and anyone who does not participate in the community cabin program is forced to relocate to another encampment.

“They have to displace people to build these places,” McLean said.

Despite the criticism, Nino Parker, a homeless resident, said he felt hopeful after Schaaf’s speech.

“I hope there is a lot of implementation in the things she talked about this evening,” he said. “I say, give it a chance.”

The event Friday was held at the Oakland Museum in downtown Oakland. The two-term mayor held previous speeches at City Hall and the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California.

On Thursday, questions arose as to whether Schaaf was violating the City Charter by holding her State of the City address outside of City Hall. Chief Assistant City Attorney Doryanna Moreno said the meeting scheduled Friday is “not in accord with requirements” of the Charter.

The Charter requires the mayor to appear at the first meeting of the City Council in October to deliver a general address on the state of the city.

Alex Katz, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, said the Charter was not violated.

Council President Rebecca Kaplan said she did not attend the mayor’s speech because “I don’t want to create or participate in a legally questionable situation under our open meeting and related laws.”

She criticized the mayor for not holding a meeting that allowed for public comment.

Councilmen Dan Kalb, Loren Taylor and Noel Gallo attended the mayor’s speech. It’s unclear why the other council members did not attend.

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani