In the face of a structural housing shortage, local governments across the state have increasingly turned to tenant protection policies to help low-income households avoid displacement. However, as housing advocates push for greater protections, do tenant protections actually help address displacement effectively? And do they have unintended consequences?

When new housing is built in a neighborhood, it raises a lot of questions. Will this new housing make space for more people of all incomes to move in? Will it catalyze change in the neighborhood, raising rents and ultimately pushing people out? Who benefits from this new housing, and who loses out?

Data from 2020 suggests that the effects of the pandemic thus far have been distinct from those of the Great Recession, which lasted from 2007 to 2009. While we can borrow some of the valuable lessons learned from the Great Recession, this post highlights findings from our report on the impact of the pandemic on residential instability. These findings suggest that policymakers and housing and community practitioners need to adapt to the unique nature of the current pandemic.

This post delves into neighborhood trends to show how different neighborhoods across Oakland are impacted by displacement, crowding, financial instability, and disinvestment. Moving and moves to crowded housing have been concentrated in Downtown and parts of North/West Oakland, while financial instability and disinvestment have been concentrated in Deep East Oakland and some parts of West Oakland, particularly in historically Black neighborhoods.

In this post, we expand on the vulnerability of moderate-SES residents to residential instability as the housing crisis continues. Moderate-SES residents have moved into lower-opportunity neighborhoods and crowded households more than low- and higher-SES residents in recent years.

This post highlights findings from our report on the extent to which Oakland residents have moved into crowded living situations and experienced financial instability since the Recession. Oakland residents moved much less after the Great Recession than before, but lower-socioeconomic status (SES) residents, based on credit scores, made more constrained choices after the Recession. Specifically, they faced tradeoffs with moving, which includes crowding and rising financial debt.

This is the first of a series of posts that highlight our findings showing how and where different Oakland communities have been affected. This post examines how much Oakland residents have moved over the last two decades, which varies across the socioeconomic status (SES) of residents and across Oakland neighborhoods.

The Changing Cities Research Lab at Stanford University partnered with the City of Oakland’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Community Development Department to study residential instability in the City of Oakland. This series of data vignettes highlight our findings showing how and where different Oakland communities have been affected.