Oakland property owners who let nuisances fester without fixing them could soon face fines climbing all the way to $10,000 a day under legislation moving through City Hall. The proposal, tied to Councilmember Zac Unger, would create a tiered penalty system that starts where current law does but ratchets up sharply for owners who keep ignoring citations.
According to Oakland Observer, the initial fine for an ongoing, previously cited nuisance would remain at $1,000 per day — the same starting point property owners face now. But under Unger's proposal, that fine could then jump to $2,500 per day, and ultimately as high as $10,000 per day for what the outlet describes as egregious scofflaw behavior. CBS News reporter Katie Nielsen also reported this week that Oakland is considering raising nuisance property fines to the $10,000-a-day level.
The ordinance appears on a recent Oakland City Council agenda under the title “Increasing Civil Penalties On Unabated Nuisances,” per Oakland City Council records. Under Oakland's existing building ordinance, any structure deemed unsafe for the health, property, safety, or welfare of the public can be classified as substandard and a public nuisance, according to the City of Oakland.
Why the City Is Looking to Go Bigger on Fines
The push for steeper penalties builds on groundwork laid by a past ballot measure. The proposed increases would draw on charter changes from Dan Kalb's Measure RR, which eliminated the city's previous $1,000 cap on its fines structure, the Oakland Observer's reporting notes. Without that cap removed, the city would have had no legal room to escalate penalties the way Unger's ordinance proposes.
City code enforcement has long maintained that fines for persistent noncompliance aren't a one-time hit. For persistent noncompliance, the city initiates and continues to apply fines until abatement of the violations is achieved, according to a city code-enforcement memorandum from the City of Oakland. That ongoing-fine structure is part of what the new tiers would build upon, layering higher daily rates on top of the existing enforcement timeline.
A Past Case Involved a Lower Daily Fine
Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in West Oakland received a city letter threatening a $3,500 nuisance fee and a $500-a-day fine unless it toned down the volume of its choir practice, according to CBS San Francisco.
A similar penalty structure played out in the Oakland hills in August 2014, when the city declared homeowner David Boyd's Skyfall property a public nuisance, fining him $3,500 and giving him 30 days to abate the problem or face daily fines of $500, per CBS San Francisco's earlier reporting. The city had ordered Boyd not to hold weddings and other commercial events at his hilltop residence, and Boyd appealed the fine and was awaiting a hearing date, according to the same report.
How Oakland's Numbers Compare Regionally
Oakland isn't the only Bay Area city grappling with how hard to hit repeat violators. Across the bay, San Francisco's short-term rental enforcement allows for escalated penalties of $968 per day per dwelling unit for a second violation, with the possibility of referral for additional civil or criminal penalties, according to SF Planning. That figure sits well below the $10,000-a-day ceiling Oakland is now weighing for its most defiant nuisance cases.
