Oakland Mayor Lee Says She Will Try to Fund Civic Assembly’s Vacant-Lot Ideas
Thousands of vacant lots – storefronts, larger commercial space, residential spaces, buildings you can’t even tell what they once were – are just sitting there across Oakland. But if 40 residents who have the ear of Mayor Barbara Lee get a say, things might change.
The residents were chosen at random to participate in a three-month-long process in which they get together to formulate their own solutions to the problem.
On Saturday, they were guided by a question that followed them around their meeting at Juntos Fruitvale Cultural Arts Center, room to room: “How do we transform vacant lots and commercial retail spaces to be sites of flourishing and resilience?”
Participants drew on expert advice from panel guests and broke into smaller groups to refine their ideas.
Lee spoke to them for a portion of the meeting, fielding a handful of questions from groups. Residents wanted to know in what ways their suggestions would be prioritized and how any development would be funded.
Lee said she doesn’t know how proposals would be funded and didn’t make any commitments aside from future formal consideration.
“I hope that we will see a visible response to what comes out,” said Angela Glover Blackwell, founder of PolicyLink and professor at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy. “But for me hope is not a wish; hope is a discipline. It is the discipline of doing the work to find out what are the problems, using the data to figure out who’s being impacted.”
Around 3,500 properties are vacant in Oakland, and a recent city auditor’s report showed that 3,200 properties were likely vacant in fiscal year 2025-26.
Glover Blackwell said she especially notices the amount of neglect in communities like East and West Oakland, as compared with more affluent areas of the city.
“I know what it feels like to live in a community that seems disrespected,” Glover Blackwell said. “The disconnect between the spirit of the residents and the availability that is not being mined for their use is clear.”
Lee told delegates on Saturday that she’s been looking into exactly where vacant lots are located and who owns them — the city has a vacancy parcel tax in place that was taxing 1,966 properties last fiscal year, according to the auditor’s office — but that recommendations from members would need to be taken in the context of other issues that officials are working to address.
“This project falls within all of my priorities, really,” Lee said. “Once completed, then we’ll go back to the drawing board and see where it falls. … And of course, we work with the council.”
Lee said funding of the recommendations depends on the budget’s standing when the time comes. Some of the suggestions, she said, could involve receiving funding from the private sector.
“We’ll see, but I want to make sure we do fund,” Lee said.
The decision isn’t entirely up to Lee, as she told participants, since any budget she submits would need approval from City Council members.
The assembly is still working on exactly what the proposals they submit will be.
After the final week of deliberations in October, members are expected to present their group-accepted proposals to officials.