Where Is the Money? Measure W Raised Nearly $1 Billion and Left Taxpayers Waiting

When Government Collects Before It Can Deliver

There is a principle most taxpayers understand intuitively: if you promise something in exchange for someone’s money, you deliver. You don’t sit on $800 million for five years while families struggle to afford rent, while homeless encampments grow, and while the very crisis you pledged to solve deepens by the day.

Yet that is precisely what happened in Alameda County, California.

In November 2020, county voters approved Measure W — a half-cent general sales tax projected to raise $1.8 billion over 10 years to address homelessness and affordable housing. The pitch to voters was urgent and compassionate: people are sleeping on the streets, working families can’t afford rent, and the county needs resources to act. Voters said yes. They’ve been paying into the fund since 2021.

Five years later, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors has just approved committing $53 million of those funds to 10 affordable housing projects across the county. More than $700 million of the roughly $800 million raised still sits untouched in the county’s coffers.

Let that sink in. Nearly a billion dollars collected. Fifty-three million finally out the door. That’s not a governing success story — it’s a case study in government dysfunction.

What Measure W Promised — and What It Delivered

Voters were told Measure W would make a dent in the Bay Area’s crushing housing crisis. As of a May 2025 assessment by the California Housing Partnership, renters in Alameda County needed to earn $50.73 per hour just to afford the average monthly rent of $2,638. That’s not a housing market — that’s a locked door for working and middle-class families.

Meanwhile, the county was sitting on a growing pile of tax revenue it couldn’t — or wouldn’t — spend.

Part of the delay was tied up in litigation. The Alameda County Taxpayers Association sued, arguing that because Measure W was written to specifically support housing and homelessness, it legally qualified as a “special tax” requiring a two-thirds supermajority to pass — not a simple majority. The lawsuit froze the funds in escrow for years.

A judge ruled in 2025 that the measure was a general tax, freeing the Board of Supervisors to spend at their discretion. At that point, more than $800 million was waiting.

Credit where it’s due: the lawsuit raised a legitimate and important legal question about how taxes are classified and what level of voter approval they require. That principle matters. Taxpayers have a right to know exactly what their money will be used for — and to demand the appropriate vote threshold when earmarked funds are involved.

But the legal cloud lifted. And then? The money still didn’t move quickly.

Bureaucracy as a Feature, Not a Bug

Jonathan Russell, the county’s Director of Housing and Homelessness Services, acknowledged his department has begun paying out approximately $93 million committed to homeless service providers over the next five years. He called the pace “really fast from our perspective.”

Really fast. Five years in. Seven hundred million still parked.

Russell also admitted a structural problem: the county simply doesn’t have enough staff to review and process applications for the funds. “We don’t have enough staff on board to run the whole thing yet,” he said publicly. This, from the government body that has been collecting taxes for half a decade.

That’s not a footnote — it’s an indictment. If you’re going to tax residents nearly a billion dollars to fix a crisis, the bare minimum obligation is to build the administrative capacity to actually spend the money. Collecting revenue without the infrastructure to deploy it isn’t caution — it’s incompetence dressed up as prudence.

Oakland Councilwoman Charlene Wang put it plainly: “I was hoping that the money would be released sooner than what we’re seeing. We really don’t have time to wait. We’ve got to move with some urgency here.”

Hayward Mayor Mark Salinas added: “We need less red tape.”

These aren’t conservative voices — they’re local officials across the political spectrum who watched their communities suffer while the county deliberated.

The $53 Million: What’s Actually Being Built

The March 3, 2026 Board of Supervisors vote approved $53 million in Measure W Home Together Funds distributed across 10 projects — five in Oakland, two in Berkeley, and one each in Alameda, Livermore, and Newark. In total, the funding is expected to help deliver approximately 889 to 900 affordable housing units.

Among the notable projects:

• People’s Park Supportive Housing (Berkeley): An $8 million allocation for a 1,100-unit development near UC Berkeley, including below-market student housing and 100 supportive apartments for formerly homeless individuals.
• Eden Housing (Livermore): A $6 million allocation for 130 units of affordable housing in downtown Livermore — a project itself delayed for years by legal challenges.
• Newark’s Thornton Avenue Project: $2.95 million in Measure W funding, including $2.375 million for construction and $550,000 in operating support.

These are real projects. Real units. Real relief for real families. That is worth acknowledging. But it should have been happening three years ago.

And there’s an important caveat: even with the $53 million approved, developers won’t receive the actual funding until they successfully compete for state funding this year to get their projects construction-ready. The money has been committed — not yet cut.

The Bigger Picture: Government, Accountability, and the Taxpayer’s Contract

The Measure W story isn’t just about housing. It’s about something more fundamental: what government owes the people who fund it.

There is a reasonable debate to be had about whether a sales tax — which falls disproportionately on lower- and middle-income residents who spend a higher share of their income on goods — is the right vehicle to fund social programs. There’s a reasonable debate about whether government-directed affordable housing construction is more effective than removing the zoning restrictions, permitting delays, and regulatory burdens that drove up housing costs in the first place.

Those debates deserve oxygen. But right now, the more immediate issue is simpler: voters were asked to trust the county with their money. The county accepted that trust. And for five years, it failed to honor it.

Michelle Starratt, director of the county’s Housing and Community Development department, said her office is waiting to see what the Trump administration does with federal housing funding before committing capital funds. “We’re not going to get very far if what we’re doing is backfilling the state or backfilling the federal government,” she said. That’s a fair concern. But it’s also a convenient reason to keep waiting — a posture that has already cost Alameda County residents years of urgency.

Fiscal accountability means more than not stealing money. It means spending it as intended, on time, with competence and transparency. By that standard, Alameda County has a long road ahead.

What Taxpayers Should Demand Going Forward

The $53 million allocation is a start. But accountability cannot end at the press release. Here is what residents and watchdogs should be tracking:

1. Full transparency on the remaining $700M+. Every dollar should be accounted for publicly — committed, spent, or otherwise. A rolling public ledger isn’t a luxury; it’s a baseline expectation for government funds.

2. A staffing accountability plan. If the county doesn’t have the staff to administer the fund, the Board of Supervisors needs to publicly explain why — and present a concrete timeline for resolution.

3. Milestones, not promises. The 10 approved projects need measurable benchmarks: when developers receive funding, when construction begins, when units come online. Vague commitments to “move quickly” aren’t acceptable five years in.

4. Independent oversight. No government body should be the sole auditor of its own performance. An independent oversight committee — with teeth — should be reporting to the public on Measure W spending in real time.

Conclusion: Trust Has to Be Earned Back

Alameda County voters did something many conservatives would applaud in principle: they identified a problem, debated a solution, and voted on it. Whether you agreed with the policy or not, the democratic process worked.

What didn’t work was the follow-through. And in a region where a working adult needs to earn $50 an hour just to keep a roof over their head, delays don’t just represent bureaucratic inefficiency — they represent real harm to real people.

Conservatism has always stood for government that does less but does it well. Measure W may be a big-government program by design — but even within that framework, taxpayers deserve a government that honors its commitments. Five years and $53 million out of $800 million is not honoring a commitment.

It’s time for Alameda County to move with the urgency the crisis demands — and for taxpayers to demand nothing less.

📢 Call to Action

Stay informed. Hold your county accountable.

If you live in Alameda County, contact your Board of Supervisors representative and ask for a full public accounting of Measure W spending. Attend the next public work session. Share this article with a neighbor who’s wondering why the housing crisis hasn’t improved — despite $1 billion in taxes collected.

Government accountability starts with an informed public. Be one.

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