Peralta Commons Workforce Housing, West Oakland, California
Vacant and contaminated properties (“Brownfields”) are an unfortunate legacy of West Oakland’s industrial heritage. They attract illegal dumping, graffiti, and homeless encampments. Yet when they are cleaned-up, these properties offer a source of housing for Oakland’s workforce that doesn’t add traffic to Bay Area freeways. Lightner Property Group bought and voluntarily spent $1 million cleaning-up a Brownfield at 2847 Peralta Street in 2005. Lightner then obtained approvals to build a 100-unit market-rate, for-sale housing development there in 2006.
Unfortunately, the Great Recession has rendered that project infeasible for years to come. Once an auto wrecking yard, the two-acre site now sits vacant. The neighborhood improvement promised by its development remains a dream. To convert hope into reality, we have reconfigured the approved condominium project into a rental development meant to provide “workforce housing” for teachers, civil servants, and artisans while qualifying for various governmental funding sources necessary to finance any new housing development in West Oakland.
As now envisioned, these rentals will provide new housing and workshops for West Oakland’s artists, teachers, public servants, retail workers, and a host of others who desire a decent place to live that is located close to their job. It will serve Oakland households with incomes up to $51,000. It will be competently managed by a people who care. Instead of sitting vacant it will help help jump-start Oakland’s economy by increasing City tax revenues and creating up to 339 jobs.
Correlation of Income Guidelines and Jobs
To qualify for an apartment at Peralta Commons, households could earn up to $51,000 per year. The typical job classifications satisfying this requirement include teacher, fire fighter trainee, police cadet, office assistant, animal shelter employee, and clerk at Best Buy and Home Depot, to name a few. Dozens of employers in West Oakland and the surrounding neighborhoods currently employ hundreds of persons who would qualify for housing at Peralta Commons.
Community Benefits
- Peralta Commons offers many short and long term benefits to the neighborhood and the City of Oakland.
- Generate 339 construction jobs
- Contractor participation in job training programs through the Cypress Mandela Training Center
- Preference for local subcontractors and local hires
- Generate 6 permanent, full-time jobs in leasing, property management, janitorial, security, and maintenance
- Provide the City of Oakland with $968,000 in permit fees. This would cover the annual salary (and associated overhead costs) of over 10 full-time city employees
- Provide quality workforce housing that is affordable to working class families, local employees and local artisans
- Transform a long-standing vacant lot into a vibrant community asset
- Bring in new residents to the neighborhood to help serve as additional eyes-on-the-street to enhance community policing efforts and serve as neighborhood guardians
- Install over 1,000 square feet of new sidewalks to enhance the walk ability of the neighborhood and serve as a physical barrier to illegal dumping
- Plant 26 new street trees along Peralta, Hannah, and Helen Streets to help combat pollution and increase the sustainability of the block
- Underground existing overhead utility lines and poles along Peralta Street
- Install 9 new street lights to improve public safety in the area and enhance the overall visual ambience
Community Outreach and Collaboration
The design of Peralta Commons is the outcome of successful community dialogue. In 2005, Bill Lightner presented the project at a number of community meetings, two before the West Oakland Neighbors (Clawson), two before the West Oakland Commerce Association, and two before the West Oakland Project Area (Redevelopment) Committee. The design was modified in response to public input. Lightner obtained supportive petition signatures from 44 residents in the immediate neighborhood.
In this spirit of cooperation, Lightner is building concensus behind workforce housing in West Oakland today.
Physical Description and Phasing
The 100-unit plan approved in 2006 consisted of 18 townhouses, 24 live/work units, 58 loft-style condominiums and nine street-level work spaces. The revised design maintains the same 100 homes, but reconfigures them into 91 flats, two townhouses and seven live/work units. Nine street-level work spaces on Hannah Street remain. The revised plan also maintains the original elevations along the Peralta, Hannah, and Helen Streets.
The project would be constructed in two phases. The five-story, 52-unit building on Hannah Street would be built first, and the remaining 48 homes would follow shortly thereafter.
