Why has housing construction slowed to a snail’s pace in Oakland?

In the auditorium of a swanky Uptown Oakland hotel, architects, developers, and contractors settled into rows of seats to hear their colleagues discuss the state of the local homebuilding industry.

The conference would turn into a commiseration session, with panels of multi-family housing developers discussing how slow work’s gotten in the East Bay lately.

Last year, Oakland issued fewer building permits than it has in any single year since 2015. At the peak of the building boom in 2018, the city permitted 4,617 new housing units. In 2023, that number plummeted to 795. Large apartment buildings took the greatest hit.