Why has this housing for homeless Oaklanders been sitting empty for months?

Four brand-new townhomes in East Oakland sit ready and waiting to house homeless families, but despite the thousands of people sleeping outside on the streets, city officials have yet to let anyone move in.

The developer — a grassroots nonprofit organization called Poor Magazine — says the homes on MacArthur Boulevard have been finished for about a year, but they’re navigating a gauntlet of code enforcement and permitting hurdles. It’s taken months and tens of thousands of dollars to address the city’s seemingly never-ending list of requirements, from adding three parking spaces Poor Magazine says residents likely won’t use, to painting the vents on the roof. Now, if the project doesn’t secure an occupancy permit by Wednesday, the nonprofit will be on the hook for $40,000 in fees.

Developers all over the Bay Area have long complained of nit-picky code requirements and expensive building fees. But Lisa Gray-Garcia, co-founder of Poor Magazine, says Oakland’s rules make it all but impossible for small nonprofits without code expertise or deep pockets to build the affordable housing the city so desperately needs. To call attention to the issue, she and dozens of other activists barged into the city’s planning and building department Tuesday, pitched tents and demanded the city allow their project to open.

“We have people on the street in this city, and they still refuse to open four beautiful, multi-family townhouses,” said Gray-Garcia, who goes by “Tiny.” Gray-Garcia, who used to be homeless herself, planned to sleep in a tent in Frank Ogawa Plaza until the city grants the occupancy permit.

Neither city spokeswoman Karen Boyd nor the city’s planning and building department responded to requests for comment.

Poor Magazine, which also runs an aid organization, youth newspaper, school and radio station, has been working on the MacArthur Boulevard project for more than 10 years. Gray-Garcia and her team raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in piecemeal donations to buy the property and build the townhomes, which will house between eight and 12 homeless people, rent-free. The money comes from Poor Magazine’s “Solidarity Family” — a group of dozens of people who donate their time, skills and money — but the nonprofit eventually hopes to open a cafe that will help pay for the property’s ongoing costs.

They call the project “Homefulness.”

But the group has run into obstacle after obstacle. The city doesn’t answer calls or emails asking questions about the permitting requirements, leaving Poor Magazine to interpret complicated city ordinances on its own, said Iris Starr, who used to work for the planning and building department and now volunteers her time to help Poor Magazine.

“It’s impossible,” she said.

Last summer, the team found out the city, like many others, requires developers to include parking with new housing based on the project’s size and zoning. For the MacArthur building, that meant three spaces — which Gray-Garcia said was pointless because most of the low-income residents won’t have cars. The nonprofit raised more money and finished the parking spaces in January. It cost $34,000 to level the ground, pour the concrete and move a utility box that was in the way, Gray-Garcia said.

That wasn’t the end of it. Each subsequent city inspection pointed out something else Poor Magazine had to fix, Gray-Garcia said. They’d fix it, and then the city would come up with something else, she said.

The city’s most recent notice, from Feb. 18, said the group needed to cover a cable in the attic. But the inspector also verbally told them they needed to paint the vents on the roof, cover some pipes outside and add a curb to the shower to comply with city building codes, said Muteado Silencio, one of the project leaders.

The delay means Poor Magazine likely will be on the hook for $40,000 in impact fees. City officials issued Poor Magazine’s building permit in May 2016, and exempted the group from those fees as long as they finished construction and secured an occupancy permit — which authorizes people to move in — within three years. The city granted the group an extension, which expires March 2.

Ironically, the bulk of that $40,000 bill would go toward helping the city build affordable housing.

Poor Magazine has purchased a second property a few blocks down MacArthur, where the group plans to build 14 accessory dwellings units as homeless housing.

On Tuesday, Gray-Garcia and her team poured into the lobby of the city’s planning and building department, pitched their tents, and, after a brief scuffle with security guards, acted out a skit depicting a homeless encampment sweep. Chants of “free Homefulness” rang out as a handful of city employees looked on.

Juju Angeles, 38, has been waiting for months to move into one of the Homefulness townhomes. Angeles is trained as a midwife and is assisting in deliveries while working on getting licensed in California. But she’s not earning enough to afford a Bay Area apartment. She’s been couch surfing for the past year, while her 14-year-old daughter stays with Angeles’ mother.

To Angeles, Homefulness is an opportunity to have a stable home with her daughter, and pursue her dream of delivering babies to low-income mothers without having the burden of rent hanging over her head.

Waiting for that to happen has been hard.

“It’s very emotional,” she said. “You feel like you can’t provide for your daughter. So it doesn’t feel good.”