City of Oakland Welcomes New Deputy Director of Housing Development

Published on October 15, 2025

OAKLAND, CA – Oakland's Housing & Community Development (HCD) Department welcomes a new Deputy Director of Housing Development. Fay Darmawi will be leading HCD's affordable housing production, preservation and asset management activities.

"Deputy Director Darmawi brings exactly the kind of expertise and passion Oakland needs as we work to ensure every resident has access to safe, affordable housing," said Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee. "Her decades of experience in affordable housing finance, combined with her deep understanding of community development and displacement, make her the ideal leader for this critical work. I'm confident that with Fay's leadership, we will continue to make meaningful progress on the housing challenges that matter most to Oakland families.”

Fay is a community development professional with a background in both affordable housing finance and social impact storytelling. She brings more than 30 years of affordable housing finance and project management experience through her consultancy in which she partnered with developers, commercial banks, and community development financial institutions. Some of her past clients include Bank of America, Silicon Valley Bank, LISC, BRIDGE Housing, Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation and more.

"We are thrilled to welcome Fay to the HCD team," said Emily Weinstein, Director of Oakland's Housing and Community Development Department. "The City of Oakland has made great progress in recent years, and Fay will help us continue our critical work to create truly affordable homes right here in Oakland. We know homelessness and housing affordability are top priorities for Oakland residents and we are addressing these issues through our “3P” framework: Protect Oaklanders from displacement; Preserve the existing affordable housing stock; and Produce new, deeply affordable housing units."

Fay also founded the SF Urban Film Fest and produced the SA AMIN: OUR PLACE documentary film that tells the untold story of the Filipino community in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood resisting gentrification and displacement to create a cultural hub. Fay earned a masters degree in city planning from M.I.T., but her love of cities comes from her childhood in Jakarta, Indonesia. She is based in the Bay Area and is the proud mother of young adult twin sons.

About Oakland’s Housing & Community Development Department

Oakland leads the region in building affordable housing for our residents. In 2025, there were nearly a thousand affordable homes under construction, over 60% of which were for people exiting homelessness. This includes six Homekey sites that have won awards from the State of California.

Another 700 affordable homes will break ground over the next six months. 32% of those homes will be for people exiting homelessness. This reflects some of the biggest investments Oakland and its partners have ever made in creating affordable housing solutions made possible by the voter-approved Measure U.

HCD has robust strategies to continue Oakland's commitment to creating affordable housing in Oakland:

First, the City of Oakland will leverage the remaining Measure U dollars as fast as possible to produce deeply affordable housing. City Council included $180 million in Measure U funds in the current biennial budget; HCD will ensure we deploy and leverage that funding to maximize the number of affordable units we build and protect.
Second, also with Measure U funds, the City of Oakland will launch a $30 million partnership with the Housing Accelerator Fund to increase our ability to preserve affordable housing. This investment will be instrumental in protecting Oakland residents from displacement.
Lastly, the City is increasing investments to ensure flow in our overall homeless response system. This includes greater investment into homelessness prevention, support for people experiencing homelessness, and the creation of new homes. Together, these investments will stabilize Oaklanders at scale.

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