Getting a permit to build in Oakland has been hellish. Will sweeping new reforms work?

Say there’s a leak in your roof and you might want to change it. Or possibly you’ve employed a contractor to renovate your restaurant. Or Grandma’s shifting in, and also you need to set up a cottage within the yard. 

Nearly something constructed or altered in Oakland first wants permission from town. A sequence of planning approvals, constructing permits, and inspections be certain that a challenge’s supplies are fire-safe, the construction is sound, the peak doesn’t surpass zoning limits, the contractors are licensed, and the design isn’t out of preserving with metropolis requirements. 

However the technique of getting these permits isn’t simple.

The Oaklandside has heard through the years from numerous owners, architects, contractors, and builders who have been irate over the hair-tearing process of looking for a allow for residential or industrial work. 

Themes emerged in these complaints: professionals and common people alike ready weeks to achieve a metropolis planner, getting bounced round from one division to a different, receiving conflicting directions on necessities and costs, and confronting tech glitches and delays. A number of individuals within the constructing enterprise instructed us the circumstances have turned them off from beginning initiatives in Oakland — and have led to a rise in unpermitted, usually harmful, work.

Some metropolis leaders have candidly acknowledged the issue. 

Chatting with a convention of native builders in 2024, then-Mayor Sheng Thao conceded: “Oakland has a shit allowing system.”

Oakland’s allowing woes trigger complications for patrons and might value Oakland desperately wanted income within the type of allow and developer charges, in addition to the misplaced property taxes and different {dollars} that will have flowed into metropolis coffers if extra buildings had gone up. At their worst, these issues can result in systemic challenges for town and the area. Oakland has a state-set goal of constructing thousands of new homes within the subsequent couple of years, and macroeconomic elements like rates of interest have practically floor that course of to a halt. The bureaucratic rigamarole solely makes it worse.

“Simply the thought of doing one other challenge proper now in Oakland, it’s simply not price it,” veteran architect and former Pinole mayor Tim Banuelos mentioned in an interview in 2024. His agency handles all the things from ADUs to residence constructing design and reworking. “When you get to the precise planners, these guys are all actually good. It’s attending to them that’s the issue.”

Fewer individuals pursuing permits hurts Oakland’s funds. Town’s Planning and Constructing Division is exclusive in that, since 2006, it’s been funded by fees from the services it provides, relatively than town’s common funds. In 2024, allow charges paid for 209 employees within the division who work on numerous facets of improvement companies, from allow approvals to constructing code enforcement and engineering. With out these charges, the division couldn’t oversee improvement in Oakland and must dip into town’s burdened common fund.

Again in 2020, town assured the fed-up builders and owners that it could lastly do one thing concerning the allowing mess. In 2023, Oakland employed Robin Abad, town’s first “allow ombuds.” He and employees from a number of departments have been working since then to eradicate the hindrances and streamline the allowing course of. The challenge not solely addresses permits for housing and different buildings, but in addition for brand spanking new companies, particular occasions, leisure venues, dispensaries, and extra.

Mayor Barbara Lee has additionally made allow reform a cornerstone of her first yr in workplace. Early on, she introduced an enlargement of the varieties of companies that may open in industrial areas with out intensive assessment, and he or she secured $3 million to improve allowing software program within the funds handed by the Metropolis Council within the spring.

“I do know firsthand how irritating it may be to navigate metropolis processes,” Lee mentioned in a press launch. “Town ought to be a associate, not a roadblock, in getting your corporation or house renovation or improvement off the bottom.”

Altogether, Oakland has instated a sweeping array of reforms to the allowing course of, some newly launched this fall and others relationship again a yr or two. Lots of the battle-scarred builders we talked to mentioned they rejoiced after they heard concerning the adjustments.

Others mentioned it’ll take greater than tweaks for the allow system to operate effectively.

“Sisyphean” sagas making an attempt to construct in Oakland

To grasp the importance of the brand new adjustments, it helps to grasp what looking for a allow has been like in Oakland lately.

One North Oakland house owner’s kitchen renovation challenge a couple of years in the past was typical of the tales we’ve heard. What appeared like a simple job was a saga marked by prolonged delays and poor communication.

“It took months for the allow,” the house owner, who requested to not be named over worry that her challenge might face additional delays, instructed us in an interview on the time. “Nobody ever answered voicemails or emails for the only questions.” 

This was not too lengthy into the pandemic, and the planning and constructing departments, she mentioned, have been “walled off like a fortress.” 

Across the nook from Metropolis Corridor, Oakland’s allow middle is positioned proper contained in the doorways of 250 Frank Ogawa Plaza, a gray-and-brick authorities constructing. You’re taking a quantity and are prompted to attend on the bottom ground earlier than getting referred to as upstairs, the place metropolis staffers from totally different departments sit behind a counter, aiding clients.

Lots of Oakland’s issues, veterans of the allowing course of instructed us, date again to the beginning of the pandemic, when the counter closed to adjust to public well being orders.

“Earlier than the pandemic, the system was mainly working, within the sense that anybody might go” to the allow middle downtown, developer and property proprietor Athan Magganas instructed The Oaklandside earlier this yr. He’s constructed numerous small and huge residential and mixed-use properties within the East Bay.

Just a few years in the past, “They mentioned, ‘Ooh, we reopened,’” Magganas recalled. However the days and hours have been restricted. “Then they’d say they may solely take the primary 22 individuals,” he mentioned. “At 12 p.m., they’d take lunch for an hour. You’d by no means have the ability to get a allow off the bat,” he mentioned.

The North Oakland house owner recalled visiting the middle as soon as it partially reopened in 2022. There, she encountered dozens of pissed off individuals ready in line, wanting just like the makings of a mob. 

“I believed, ‘That is torch-and-pitchfork territory,’” she mentioned.

she additionally mentioned one thing that will be repeated, virtually phrase for phrase, all through our reporting for this story: “There are some actually good individuals there. But it surely took months and months and months to seek out out the foundations.”

Many individuals introduced up the dreaded voicemail message. 

“It’ll ring and ring, and then you definately’ll get the voicemail,” mentioned Banuelos, the architect. “Then you definately go to depart a message, they usually haven’t arrange their voicemail. If I used to be working at a job and I didn’t reply my voicemail, I might be fired. And to be a public entity and never have any strategy to discuss to the general public, or have the general public discuss to you, is prison.”

These tedious exchanges, we heard, impacted purchasers and threatened the sustainability of initiatives.

“How do you justify to somebody, ‘Hey, town’s course of goes to value you one other $3,000 to $4,000 in my time?’” Banuelos mentioned.

Individuals in and outdoors of town each instructed us that a number of allow counter employees give up in the course of the first years of the pandemic. The vacancies left of their wake weren’t crammed for ages. Morale plummeted for employees and clients alike. 

“Some individuals, after all, are jerks,” mentioned a former counter staffer who spoke to us on the situation of anonymity. “However rather a lot have the correct to be offended.”

Throughout the first years of the pandemic, metropolis management flaunted the elevated skill to pursue permits digitally and work with employees on-line; whereas the middle was closed, electronic mail by no means sleeps. However when the middle reopened, the still-short employees needed to juggle each the in-person visits and the 24/7 digital inquiries.

One worker might get 300 emails a day.

“It’s wild, the quantity they’re anticipated to cope with,” mentioned the previous staffer round that point. “It’s unattainable for employees to maintain that spigot from overwhelming them.”

Some initiatives hit a tangle of snags.

For 2 years, a house owner named Max has tried to get a pre-fabricated ADU put in and totally permitted on his Longfellow property — which was already zoned for 2 constructions. At first, he was instructed to count on completion in April 2024. However then a allow expired whereas Max’s contractor and town have been at an deadlock over a choice; the net cost system went down at a vital second; and adjustments to the legislation meant the contractor’s license was not legitimate for the work. 

After we spoke in November, Max was nonetheless awaiting remaining inspection.

“Why would anybody attempt to construct in Oakland if it’s this a lot of a Sisyphean debacle?” he requested.

A raft of reforms

Should you apply for a allow tomorrow, subsequent week, or in 2026, there’s hope you’ll have a smoother expertise than the individuals we’ve spoken to over the previous few years.

First off, there are merely extra individuals obtainable that will help you.

Town’s allow middle now has 26 workers aiding clients in a wide range of departments, together with planning and constructing, transportation, fireplace, and extra. That’s 9 extra individuals than within the early days of the pandemic, and two greater than earlier than COVID-19. The planning and constructing allow counter alone is at six individuals now, after hitting a low of two, Abad mentioned.

And the place is open far more usually.

As of this month, builders like Magganas, architects like Banuelos, engineers, contractors, new owners, and all can drop in from 8:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. Monday by Thursday, or schedule appointments for any weekday afternoon. They usually can now make these appointments in a single place on-line, whatever the division.

In lots of instances, the allowing course of itself has been slashed considerably. Till lately, establishing a home or a medium-sized constructing required intensive — and infrequently costly — assessment by town for environmental and design compliance. There was a built-in interval for public enter, and the findings from the assessment is also appealed, additional delaying or generally even killing a challenge. 

In July, the Metropolis Council adopted planning code amendments permitting most residential initiatives with as much as 30 models — all the things from a duplex to a three-story residence constructing — to earn that preliminary approval “over-the-counter,” as long as they meet new design requirements. That near-automatic approval reduces the assessment time for many buildings from 10 months to 2, in accordance with town.

The brand new guidelines, adopted partly to adjust to a spread of recent state legal guidelines encouraging housing manufacturing, apply to each market-rate improvement and inexpensive improvement. 

“This was some tremendous heavy lifting on the a part of the planning bureau right here,” Abad mentioned. 

And town plans to eradicate its zoning and constructing worksheets, which have lengthy been required as the primary steps earlier than even beginning an software. That’s anticipated to chop 52 days of employees assessment time for every allow.

Constructing permits for numerous smaller initiatives additionally don’t require in-person conferences anymore. As a substitute of every week of back-and-forth and a go to to the allow middle cashier (who takes allow charges) for issues like roofing, plumbing, and insulation, candidates can now get and pay for a allow on-line in a matter of minutes. 

Over 8,000 of those same-day permits have been pulled final yr, in accordance with Oakland — versus zero in 2022. Subsequent yr, town plans to supply the identical entry for lavatory renovation, window alternative, and extra.

“The enhancements are gradual and overlapping,” Abad instructed us in October, however they’re concrete. “We’re not alone amongst cities in making an attempt to get well from the pandemic.” He’s excited for guests to start out noticing a change.

After we caught up with Banuelos this month, he mentioned he’d turned down initiatives in Oakland since we first spoke final yr, after confronting a sequence of delays and glitches on an addition to a home in Montclair. However listening to about a number of the reforms, the architect mentioned he’d contemplate working right here once more. 

“It appears like they’ve gotten slightly bit extra actual about what must be performed,” he mentioned.

Some extra reforms on the horizon are designed to chop out the necessity for candidates to contact employees with minor questions or to speak with a number of representatives.

A “digital scoping device” slated for subsequent yr will assist candidates work out which allows they want for his or her challenge, learn how to apply, and the estimated prices, in accordance with town. Proper now, candidates usually have to scour the online and metropolis code and have interaction in prolonged back-and-forths with employees to determine these solutions.

As soon as a challenge is within the works, town intends to supply a single on-line course of for plan assessment, as an alternative of a dizzying system wherein totally different departments ship disparate suggestions in separate locations.

Will the adjustments work?

A brand new house owner named Matt spoke to us as he was ready for an appointment on the allow middle final yr. 

He didn’t need his final identify printed as a result of he was ditching work to catch the transient opening. 

Matt mentioned he was caught in a “finger-pointing” struggle between town and the East Bay Municipal Utility District over a sewer lateral. When shopping for or promoting a home within the East Bay, you might want to be sure to have a lateral that’s working and compliant. Should you can’t get a certificates declaring that in time for the switch, you’ll be able to get hold of a 180-day extension from EBMUD by placing down a $4,500 deposit.

Matt had paid that cash and ensured his sewer lateral was mounted and practical. However he couldn’t get the chunky deposit again from the utility till metropolis inspectors declared it compliant. And that was taking a while. In the meantime, EBMUD was “sending more and more threatening notices,” Matt mentioned.

He was in a position to test the standing of the challenge on town portal, however not the entire notations have been clear to him. With out an simply accessible human to assist him type issues out, he mentioned, “I attempted to make use of ChatGPT to navigate it.”

Like most of the points we encountered in our reporting, Matt’s wouldn’t be utterly eradicated by Oakland’s new reforms. However his ache would probably be eased. 

Sewer lateral repairs have simply been added to the record of initiatives eligible for same-day digital permits, Abad mentioned. Whereas this wouldn’t deal with Matt’s inspection delay, it could velocity up the work to get to that time, and can turn out to be useful for different property homeowners coping with, say, an emergency rupture.

And somebody in Matt’s place will now have extra choices for coming into the middle to get assist from a staffer.

We additionally spoke with Laura Blair, the COO of Buildzig, an Oakland developer that does all kinds of properties however has a particular concentrate on ADUs — yard cottages, in-law models, and the like.

“Constructing an ADU takes 4 to 6 months,” Blair instructed us final yr. “It’s a fast course of. The issue is getting the ADU permitted.”

The state and metropolis have handed a slew of legal guidelines lately aiming to make it simpler to construct ADUs, as a result of they’re faster, cheaper, and fewer offensive to neighbors than greater, imposing buildings, however nonetheless add housing inventory. 

A couple of yr in the past, Blair helped a shopper get hold of a state grant and low-interest mortgage from town for low-income owners constructing an ADU. Regardless of the incentives from the federal government, it nonetheless took ages to get permits in hand, mentioned Blair, who as soon as labored for town herself.

“It takes a number of emails to seek out out the challenge standing,” she mentioned on the time. And as soon as you bought performed with the starting stage, she mentioned, it was “not tremendous intuitive” to determine learn how to then undergo the constructing division. Already, town had made enhancements to the method, she acknowledged, “nevertheless it’s not one thing that somebody with out specialised data” might simply navigate.

Blair mentioned it’s been robust not to have the ability to give purchasers a transparent timeline, particularly since ADUs are sometimes constructed to satisfy pressing private wants. 

“They need to know, how lengthy is Mother going to stay in a precarious state of affairs?” she mentioned.

After we caught up with Blair this fall, she mentioned the method does go quicker now: “I feel they labored by their backlog.”

And one new change particularly will make a tangible distinction for candidates like her. Beginning in October, town started accepting “one-stop digital functions” for ADUs connected to single-family houses. A variety of different frequent permits include this feature now, too.

“This replaces a paradigm of a number of in-person submittals to numerous totally different departments,” Abad mentioned. “It’s shifting in direction of a type of common challenge software.”

Blair mentioned she’s heartened by a number of the bureaucratic progress, however famous that the brand new reforms don’t deal with one other key space for builders: value. The allow price for a small ADU has risen, and is compounded by different charges builders need to pay, she mentioned.

The bills and delays burden the common owners and unbiased professionals probably the most, mentioned Oakland-based architect Stephen Verner.

“In a big improvement, you’re ready for battle. The developer may have a workforce in place, and you realize you’ll need to do some quantity of due diligence to get a allow,” he mentioned. “With a home, individuals don’t have that time and cash put aside.”

Funds-strapped Oakland additionally might lack the funds to repair issues as swiftly as different locations. Wealthier cities have extra sources to make permit-seekers’ lives simpler and the constructed setting stronger.

Verner has labored in Atherton — one the “richest cities in California,” per Forbes — the place he mentioned town has a “little white automotive patrolling round” to attempt to spot unpermitted work.

As a result of Oakland’s Planning and Constructing Division is self-funded, the plummet in building — due largely to macroeconomic elements exterior of town’s management — means much less cash coming in to make issues higher.

Whereas he mentioned Oakland “stands out for its dysfunction,” Verner is “inspired” by the adjustments coming down the road and Lee’s concentrate on the problem.

Talking at a Metropolis Council committee assembly in November, Laura Geist, common supervisor of the Oakland Ballers, mentioned the method of turning Raimondi Park right into a stadium and internet hosting two seasons of video games there over the previous couple of years has been surprisingly easy, regardless of needing to tug all the things from constructing permits to particular occasions approvals.

“You hear that it’s such an arduous, horrible factor, and that has simply completely not been our expertise,” Geist mentioned. “Each division we’ve labored with has been tremendous useful in strolling us by the method, after which as soon as we’ve performed it as soon as, we’ve been in a position to go in and self-service.” 

Confronting Oakland’s robust housing historical past as we speak

One new house owner’s expertise in West Oakland exhibits that allowing issues minimize deeper than the variety of employees at a counter or the varieties required to use.

When Jeffrey Tollefson purchased an 1870s home within the Prescott neighborhood slightly greater than a yr in the past — his first buy after renting within the metropolis for a decade — his elation didn’t final lengthy. 

A day earlier than closing, he came upon the vendor, a flipper who’d illegally Airbnb’d the place, hadn’t disclosed a lien town had positioned on the property on account of blight and an unlawful addition. However it could have been too expensive to again out then. As a substitute, Tollefson, who works in building, figured “nevertheless naively” that he might tackle the challenge, signing a $3,000 settlement with town that he’d get it permitted inside a yr. 

The primary problem was determining precisely how a lot of the home was unlawful. The portion quoted to Tollefson didn’t appear to match the very incomplete maps and plans within the historic document. Tollefson is aware of this from searching down paperwork and having an in depth alternate with a metropolis employees historian, which we reviewed. 

Beginning within the Nineteen Sixties, West Oakland, which had turn out to be a closely Black neighborhood throughout World Struggle II, was concurrently uncared for by town and focused for “city renewal.” Town razed blocks of houses and companies within the Seventies and Eighties. Over the many years and beneath these circumstances, loads of unpermitted work was performed to homes, and poor data have been saved. 

“I simply want individuals [with the city] to say, ‘Yeah, that’s a part of our historical past, we’re gonna be slightly humble and work collectively,’” Tollefson mentioned. Town has an amnesty program for unlawful ADUs, making it simple to get them permitted, however no such idea exists for a case like Tollefson’s. As a substitute, he was given piecemeal details about necessities, charges, and deadlines from totally different divisions. He finally confronted a tough resolution.

After lengthy delays, Tollefson was assigned a planner, who instructed him that zoning approvals ought to be computerized. False. Turned out he wanted design assessment, which discovered a $12,000 requirement for a “variance” — an exemption from the code — as a result of the home was constructed over the property line. However that wasn’t the top of it. 

When Tollefson later reached out to the constructing division, somebody there alerted him to different points with the home’s format. In California, most bedrooms want an emergency exit, like a window, that lets a resident go away the property shortly. Bedrooms at Tollefson’s property have home windows that exit onto a neighbor’s property, relatively than public house. He was instructed this is able to additionally require a variance — that’s, if he might additionally get his neighbor to grant an easement. The remainder of the outdated addition would then have to be inspected, which might simply reveal different points. 

The choice? Demolish the massive chunk of the 1,050-square-foot home that town had recognized as an unlawful addition, and rebuild from scratch. That, or foreclose. Tollefson spent a sequence of sleepless nights agonizing over “what to do and learn how to do it.” He didn’t need to quit, although; he’s “nonetheless tremendous stoked to be a house owner” and loves the neighborhood.

Tollefson mentioned his nightmare reveals why a lot harmful, unpermitted work falls beneath the radar. 

“They don’t incentivize coming ahead,” he mentioned. “Their repair is to penalize everybody. It actually restricts improvement.” 

Talking with us a number of months in the past, Tollefson mentioned “a case supervisor who might observe me from begin to end” would have been an immense assist for his complicated challenge.

Future builders in his place would possibly get that. Among the many adjustments deliberate for subsequent yr: a “single employees level of contact by the allow life cycle.”

Abad mentioned town is working to deal with the shortage of interdepartmental communication by giving every division simultaneous “visibility” into the challenge standing and coordinating higher on options that meet fireplace security necessities, city design and aesthetic necessities, and constructing security and structural necessities. Some siloes are the mandatory results of the slew of various state codes and legal guidelines town has to observe.

However Tollefson’s expertise speaks to a deeper problem for Oakland in the case of offering alternatives for normal individuals to purchase, stay, construct, and keep right here. It’s a metropolis that may at all times be grappling with a fraught previous whose vestiges are seen in rundown, unrecorded, unpermitted, uncared for housing inventory — houses town wants, and whose homeowners can not often afford to convey them as much as code. 

At greatest, these circumstances make homebuying that rather more out of attain for most individuals. At worst, they danger turning neighborhoods in Oakland into foreclosures factories.

Changing that historical past into alternatives would require not solely allowing reforms however a critical reckoning.