Ever heard of the Oakland Commission on Homelessness? Probably not, I bet. Is it even a real thing, what with all the other pseudo-agencies the City Council has created over the years? Yes, it is real, and as we’ll see, it’s a horror show, a Frankensteinian concoction of absurdity that exists simply to give sinecures to far-left activists who have curried favor with Council members.
What is the COH, you ask? You might remember that Oakland voters passed a series of taxes, including Measure W (2018) and Measure Q (2020), both designed to “remedy homelessness.” Measure Q was a $128-a-year parcel tax that “would raise $21 million dollars annually…to fund parks maintenance, homeless services and improvements to water quality and trash collection systems.” Measure W established “an annual tax of $3,000 to $6,000 on vacant property,” the word “vacant” defined to apply to any property "in use less than fifty (50) days in a calendar year.” It included condo units and parcels with ground floor spaces that were zoned for commercial use but remained vacant. (Oakland’s Measure W is not to be confused with Alameda County’s Measure W, a $1.83 billion sales tax that Supervisor Nikki “I love taxes” Bas designed, and which passed in 2020.)
The rationale for both new taxes was the same: “[Because] the City of Oakland General Fund is currently too small to pay for many of the basic services that Oaklanders need…including social services such as those for homeless residents,” it’s necessary for Oakland to find ever more exploitive ways of taxing its residents. The Commission on Homelessness (COH) was created by the City Council “to provide oversight of the Oakland vacant property tax (2018 Measure W) and the 2020 Measure Q homelessness funds received by the City of Oakland for Homeless services.” You might think that the combined value of both taxes—hundreds of millions of dollars—would be enough to require the full-time attention of a team of auditors, specialists and public citizens. In actuality, the COH seems to exist largely on paper. Although it’s required, by its own bylaws, to meet regularly, inspection of COH’s meeting agenda, which is on the City of Oakland’s Boards and Commissions website, shows that COH has met only three times in the last year. Two meetings were abruptly canceled without explanation. Of the three meetings that did occur, two had no public comments and one had only two public speakers, indicating little interest in it among taxpayers. This is perhaps not so unusual for an Oakland commission that has such a low profile and accomplishes so little.
The COH’s last public meeting was June 5, 2025, nearly a year ago. There were three major topics on the agenda: (1) Receive an Informational Report on the Housing and Homelessness Services Integrated Strategic Plan & Roadmap, which is run out of City Administrator Jestin Johnson’s Office; (2) Receive an Informational Report from OakDOT on the Updates to the Undercrossing Improvements project, which is run out of OAKDOT, and (3) Receive an Informational Report on Encampment Management Operations, also run out of Johnson’s office. The Council merely received the three reports; no vote was taken on any of them. All three are irrelevant in terms of addressing homelessness.
The COH seems to have little or no power in Oakland, despite having all that money at its disposal. Why? Because there’s a Homelessness, Anti-Police, Racial Equity Complex in power that dominates all politics, and keeps most of the city bureaucracy employed, including union members; and this complex doesn’t give a damn about such a minor farce as COH. A fierce competition therefore exists between these various bureaucracies. They all vie for funding and power. Some, such as the Police Commission, have been more successful than others. The Commission on Homelessness seems not to have the political smarts or strings to garner more power. Which is kind of strange. But with all the new tax proposals coming up in future elections, it may be that the City Council is planning on reinvigorating COH by throwing a lot more money at it. That would be in keeping with Oakland’s woke political strategy: create more and more bureaucracies to oversee homelessness, the police, and racial issues. Sink the roots of these bureaucracies deeply into the neural network of Oakland’s government and nonprofit world, thus institutionalizing and preserving them, creating forever agencies funded by forever taxes. Work with the unions to embrace the bureaucracies, and vice versa. And bingo, you’ve created a Communist-style nucleus of apparatchiks: petty dictators of no special talent or intellectual heft, but that, united and led by leftwing ideologues (including the unions), essentially runs Oakland, far from the oversight of the population, ignored by the media, and far, too, from the control of the pygmies who sit on the City Council.
Steve Heimoff