Oakland's MACRO missed all of its pilot project goals—so the city expanded it
MACRO was pitched as a panacea that would “reimagine” policing, save money, and improve lives. Instead, it cost the city about $10M during a fiscal crisis with little to show.
In 2022, the City of Oakland launched MACRO as a pilot program for non-police response to community disturbances and mental health issues. It had five council-mandated goals to reduce police service load and decrease negative impacts of policing on selected populations. When that pilot ended in October 2023, MACRO had not met any of its five goals.
Despite the miss, the city continued to operate MACRO and even expand it. In 2024, MACRO introduced several significant operational changes, presumably aimed at improving performance. These included expanding service from 7 to 14 hours per day, and adding a dedicated direct phone line.
Did these changes help MACRO meet its goals? Is the program now delivering sufficient value to the residents of Oakland to justify its costs? And where did the funding come from during the past few years of fiscal crisis?
To answer these questions, we met with Elliot Jones, MACRO Program Manager, and Michael Hunt, Public Information Officer for the Oakland Fire Department. We also examined MACRO’s operational performance using the 2023 and 2024 data recently published by the program, as well as city financial and policing data.1
The changes improved one element of the program—they boosted the number of “dispatch” calls handled by MACRO.2 But the changes did not improve service efficiency or effectiveness. MACRO is still failing to meet each of its five mandated objectives. And on nearly all metrics of service delivery, MACRO has declined compared to 2023—fewer contacts made, fewer individuals served, increased expenditures from the city’s General Purpose Fund (GPF), and increased costs per contact.
On the other hand, Mr. Jones argues there is strong anecdotal evidence that these services are making a powerful difference in the lives of those homeless individuals. MACRO has responded to approximately 5-10,000 homeless people over its nearly 3 years of operations, providing street-based water, first aid, or referrals to social services. These efforts aim to accelerate a person’s transition from homelessness to a healthier and more stable life. Mr. Jones argues that MACRO’s services also benefit the broader community by addressing issues before they spiral into a crisis. Crisis response is costly both for the individual in crisis and the city.
For example, before MACRO started, Mr. Jones shadowed the fire department’s response to a homeless person who had become dehydrated while panhandling. It required a fire engine company to attend to the dehydration; and, he argues, it could have resulted in ambulance transport to the hospital if by-standers had not convinced the person to accept water. Mr. Jones noted that this would be a typical MACRO service call, had it existed at the time.
But MACRO does not quantify its impact on homeless residents' quality of life. And that makes it hard to define MACRO’s value objectively—a problem that is particularly urgent given the city’s ongoing deficit of about $130M. The city needs to make difficult and data-driven choices about what services are essential for its fiscal recovery and economic growth.
Moreover the past 3 years of operational data show that MACRO is not a replacement for policing, which is how council members Nikki Bas and Rebecca Kaplan pitched it in 2020 during the height of the defund movement. MACRO is addressing a wholly distinct set of issues related to homelessness that neither police nor fire address, and never intended to address. Thus, MACRO has had a negligible impact on police and fire service load. It receives an average of 3.3 calls a day (1200 per year) from 911 dispatch; this represents 0.16% of the 750,000 calls that Oakland Police Department (OPD) receives annually, and 1.6% of the 70,000 calls that the fire department receives. Even under the most optimistic of assumptions, MACRO is displacing at best 0.46% of OPD service volume.
If MACRO hopes to find a stable future, it needs to acknowledge what it cannot do, so that it can focus instead on delivering maximum benefit in the things it can do. That means acknowledging flaws in the city council’s original mandate, redefining its mission, and convincing the people of Oakland why they should continue to fund its new mission at a cost of approximately $6M per year—the cost of operating a fire station.
What is MACRO supposed to deliver, and did it deliver?
MACRO was launched in 2022 with wildly unreasonable expectations that were not grounded in an analysis of the problems that city council members sought to address. MACRO was enthusiastically created by the city council with the promise it would address racial equity in public safety, mental health issues and social services for the homeless, jobs for marginalized populations, and quality of life issues for the community—all the while reducing public safety costs.
Yet the council did not provide, nor mandate, nor fund the collection controlled data on any of the outcomes it mandated that MACRO achieve. Mr. Jones noted that he doesn’t have statistical data on MACRO’s performance against the first three council goals, nor does he have the tools and resources to assess them. And he has been unable to obtain from OPD the dispatch and cost data necessary to assess the last two goals.
Without such data, judgement of MACRO’s impacts is limited to story-telling. While emotionally powerful, stories do not permit analysis of the program’s benefits to the Oakland community at large.
Nevertheless, it is still possible to estimate MACRO’s impact on two of the council goals by ‘triangulation’ of various city data sources. We did this analysis and report in the table below. But we are unable to assess three of the objectives— they necessarily require controlled comparison groups and rigorous case tracking, which do not exist.
Does MACRO save the city money by decreasing the policing costs?
No. After accounting for the maximum potential OPD cost savings, MACRO actually increased total city expenses by an estimated $1.1M in 2023 and $3.7M in 2022. And regardless of cost implications, the ability of MACRO to de-burden an under-resourced police force is negligible—the maximum number of OPD calls for service that MACRO could have displaced was 0.24% in 2023, and 0.46% in 2024.
These amounts were calculated by assuming that all MACRO service calls displace OPD service calls. This is likely a significant overestimate of MACRO’s impact on OPD and cost savings because police service calls to homeless persons decreased by only 31% during MACRO’s existence (not 100% as assumed above). And this 31% drop may not be attributable to MACRO because a similar drop occurred in the two years before MACRO existed.
Nevertheless, the assumption of 100% displacement of police services provides a useful best-case scenario for assessing MACRO impact as a police alternative. Under this best case scenario, MACRO delivered a negative 35% return on investment in 2023 and a negative 78% return on investment in 2024.
How much does MACRO cost? And who pays for it?
MACRO spent $3M in FY2023 and an estimated $5M and $6M in FY2024 and FY2025.3
Conventional wisdom around Oakland is that MACRO has been funded entirely by the $10M state grant received in 2022. Multiple individuals in city hall stated to Oakland Report that they believe MACRO has been entirely funded by state monies, and that MACRO still has sufficient remaining state grant funds to support operations until next year.
But MACRO has been in service for nearly three years with a staff ranging from 21-33. Personnel costs alone for such a staff are more than $4M per year—the state funds should be exhausted by now.
Unsurprisingly, the conventional wisdom is not accurate. Oakland taxpayers actually paid for 80% of MACRO costs—about $10M in total, using General Purpose Fund monies. (The General Purpose Fund is what has the $130M deficit.) The state paid for the other 20%—$2.5M in total.4
So what happened to the other $7.5M of state grant monies? The city apparently stashed these funds for later use, while exclusively spending the city’s own tax revenues in FY2024 and FY2025. This maneuver seems intended to use city money in the early years, while there was the political capacity to do so, and hold the state funds in reserve for more uncertain times.
The upshot is that Oaklanders have been unknowingly funding MACRO out of their pockets for almost 3 years, while city leaders said it was being funded by the state. During those years, the city has closed fire stations, laid off workers, and trimmed more than 100 staff from the police department.
Yet because of the city’s funding maneuvers, MACRO has assured itself another year of operations. The unspent state grant funds are sufficient to cover a year of operating expenses, even if the city cancels its own funding in the next budget cycle.
How did MACRO’s 2024 operating changes impact delivery?
In 2024, MACRO hired nine more responders and added two MACRO-dedicated dispatchers to the fire department dispatch center.5 Now there is a total staff of about 29 (26 responders, 2 dispatchers, and 1 manager). This staff makes 19 service calls per day in teams of three, and each team handles about 4 calls per day. Service hours were doubled from 7 to 14 hours per day. MACRO’S annual operating costs increased from $3.1M to $4.8M from 2023 to 2024.
Despite the increased staff and spending, MACRO’s total activity declined by 28% from 2023 to 2024—8762 incident responses (“contacts”) in 2023 (26 per day) and 6309 in 2024 (19 per day). This drop in responses is principally due to a decline in self-initiated “On-View” contacts by responders.
On the other hand, MACRO improved its response to community requests. The percentage of dispatched contacts (those coming from community requests by telephone, email or 911) increased from 27% to 54%. This improvement resulted from a reduction in the “On-View” contacts and expansion of service hours. It likely also reflects increased awareness of MACRO in the community. However, adding the direct phone line (at a cost of about $300,000 per year) did not seem to have a significant impact.
These limited improvements were accompanied by small decline in the number of successfully resolved contacts. A contact can be resolved by calming the disturbance, referral to services, or provision of services/supplies. Or it can result in no action. No-action outcomes increased due to more un-located clients (which rose from 10% to 20% of contacts) and those refusing services or supplies (17% of contacts).
Moreover the costs for delivering these services increased markedly. Cost per service contact rose from $354 to $761; and the cost per social services referral rose from $1,742 to $3,675 (20% of contacts result in a referral).
By comparison, the cost of each OPD contact ranges from $88 to $120 (see Appendix table).
The current MACRO operating structure contributes to the high costs of its services. Each MACRO call is serviced by a team of three responders: two Community Intervention Specialists (CIS) and one Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). The total annual compensation cost for each person is about $140,000—a total team cost of $420,000. By comparison, OPD responds to routine service calls with a single officer with a total annual compensation cost in 2024 of about $280,000.
How many people does it serve, of what demographic?
In both 2023 and 2024, 94% of MACRO’s clients were homeless people. About 64% (2 year average) are black persons, and 82% are non-white. These statistics indicate that MACRO is meeting the city council objectives to prioritize services to homeless people and non-white people (BIPOC individuals).
Why this focus on homelessness? We previously noted that homeless people are overrepresented in all demographic groups that the city council sought to serve: black, non-white, and those with behavioral health issues. These groups, the council argued, were disproportionately harmed by policing, and would therefore benefit the most from MACRO as a substitute for policing. Thus, the council believed that by prioritizing the homeless, the city would prioritize its target demographic groups.
In addition, Mr. Elliot noted that nearly all of the calls for service are for issues with homeless persons, suggesting that they serve the homeless because that’s were the need is. That is likely partly true. But it is also a self-fulfilling outcome: the MACRO website states that it aims to serve homeless people, and its criteria for service (behavioral issues, disturbances, and well-being issues) are largely specific to homeless persons.
MACRO is not a police alternative
MACRO is not really a “police alternative” as it was argued during its formation in 2020 and 2021. It is a different kind of service entirely. It’s serving the homeless—a population that police largely do not serve—with a type of service the police do not provide. It offers these additional services at a net cost increase to the city, with limited ability to de-burden police of non-violent service load.
The main point of potential overlap between police and MACRO is what OPD calls “Community Caretaking.” These caretaking stops address behavioral issues, mental-health issues and disturbances. But that overlap is limited.
Police made about 1700 caretaking stops in 2023, and 72% of them were to address code “5150” issues6—severe mental health issues involving violence to others or oneself. MACRO is not permitted to address such issues; only law enforcement and certified medical professionals are permitted to make 5150 arrests. In such stops, a person is involuntarily committed to a mental health facility with oversight by behavioral clinicians and a judge.
On the other hand, MACRO’s caretaking contacts provide street-based social support services to homeless individuals, and mitigate community impacts of non-violent disturbances. This is a service the police might provide in smaller communities, but does not and did not provide in Oakland—they have not been resourced to do so.
Is MACRO worth it? Why doesn’t the county do it?
The first question for Oakland residents is whether MACRO is delivering sufficient value to the city. The cost of operating MACRO is equivalent to that of one fire station, or roughly twice the amount spent on sideshow suppression operations by OPD.
Second, given that MACRO is largely a homelessness social service, does it really belong in the fire department? Or for that matter, does it even belong as a city service?
Alameda County is already mandated to provide health services, including behavioral health services. It staffs mobile crisis assistance services, and has substantially greater resources and deeper skill sets to address these issues efficiently and effectively.
While it is noble and necessary to address the needs of homeless and mentally-ill populations, it is not effective for Oakland to provide services that may be better served by the county. This dilemma is particularly poignant if the city’s MACRO services are provided at the expense of fire and police services which the county does not provide.
MACRO may well have a bright and impactful future, but one that is better executed within the boundaries of the county government.
Oaklanders have big hearts, and noble intentions, but the city cannot do everything for everyone. Right now it is struggling to survive financially. If it doesn’t solve those issues through difficult choices, it may not be able to serve anything to anyone.
Appendix
2023 and 2024 MACRO Operating Metrics (source data)
Oakland Report has made multiple public records requests for data on MACRO which have gone unfulfilled for more than a year. Thus, we relied on data published on the city’s website.
Dispatch calls are the requests for service made directly by telephone or email, or routed to MACRO by 911.
Estimate based on the headcount data provided by Elliot Jones, employee salary data obtained from Transparent California, and the city’s budget data.
The city used a budgetary maneuver to avoid spending the state grant funds. MACRO’s actual spending in 2023 was $3.1M, and an estimated $4.8M and $5.9M in 2024 and 2025—all far less than MACRO’s $9M 2023 budget and $12M 2024 and 2025 budgets. Cash flow summary below. See analysis spreadsheet for additional details.
While the 2023 underspending is explainable as a slower-than-expected ramp-up of operations in the first year, it is a mystery why the city increased the 2024 and 2025 budgets by 33% after it had underspend the prior-year budget by 67%.
The 2023 budget was based on the original program design. It called for 57 employees, 49.5 were budgeted, and 21 were actually staffed in that first year, hence the large underspend. However, the 2024 budget increase is attributed to an unexplained line item for $3.6M in contractor costs—an oddity for an organization that is entirely staffed by city employees.
By over-budgeting for MACRO, the city had to allocate an additional $5M per year of GPF funds, beyond the remaining state grant fund balance, to cover the extra costs. This is exactly the amount required to fund MACRO at the authorized headcount (about 33 people) without touching the state monies.
This is observable in the city’s budget portal which shows a carry over of the full state funding amount from year to year to pay for salaries. Those salaries should have consumed the full amount of state funds by the end of 2024, but the budget actually shows those state funds increasing into the next year. Instead, of using those state funds, the lower-than budgeted spend was paid out of the contractor budget coming from GPF sources.
The two dispatchers were added to the fire department’s existing emergency dispatch operations (which already handles 190 calls per day) to handle the MACRO calls. These MACRO dispatchers are dedicated only to MACRO. Without the dedicated staff, MACRO calls would be routed to non-emergency dispatch which is not staffed during MACRO's full 14-hour schedule, according to Mr. Jones.
From 2021 to 2023 OPD’s 5150 arrests declined from 1528 to 1214, while “Community Caretaking” stops declined from 2465 to 1693. It is possible this decline is due to the introduction of MACRO, but an equal decline also occurred in the two years before MACRO, and the decline mirrors an overall decline in OPD non-traffic stop activity since 2016. Thus, the decline in 5150 and caretaking stops is more likely a shift in OPD policing policy towards fewer stops and pursuits. Moreover, the 5150 stops have not disappeared, and will continue to be needed for violent mental health issues—which underscores that MACRO is not a substitute for policing. (Stop statistics obtained from OPD stop data.)
All "reimagining" public safety has accomplished is leading to a bigger waste of taxpayer funds.
The budget shenanigans are incredibly frustrating…