The council voted unanimously to approve the Nuisance Vessel Ordinance. The ordinance requires a second approval by the council, which may take it up on March 21.
City officials are eager to pass the ordinance to avoid enforcement and penalties, which the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission could impose. Penalties could be as much as $6,000 a day.
The commission considers the boats unpermitted fill, according to police in a report on the matter to interim City Administrator G. Harold Duffey. The commission is responsible for regulating fill in San Francisco Bay.
The Oakland Estuary is considered part of the Bay.
City Councilmember Janani Ramachandran told her colleagues that the ordinance as it is written leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
Oakland is facing a budget shortfall in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
In addition to the environmental threats the boats pose, they pose a safety hazard to rowers who use the estuary, according to Denise Martini, president of the East Bay Rowing Club.
She said the ordinance is "vital to our safety."
But Delphine Brody, an advocate for homeless people, urged council members to vote no on the ordinance.
She argued it "is yet another form of the criminalization and state violence against unhoused people that has been the focal point of Oakland's policy around homelessness for a very long time."
