Athletics need a new home … they may get one and provide 6,000 more

OAKLAND, Calif. - The Oakland Athletics badly need a new home. Their current one, plagued by plumbing problems, is an uncomfortable throwback to the days when baseball and football teams shared generic stadiums lacking in charm and good sight lines.

For two decades, the baseball team has looked for that new ballpark throughout the Bay Area. The Athletics' latest offer, and possibly their last, is to build 6,001 homes in Oakland - one for themselves along the waterfront, the rest for a city desperately in need of housing.

In times past, taxpayers typically financed the stadiums and arenas, and the teams kept the profits.

As California led the way in cutting those subsidies, owners turned to real estate development, making money by surrounding their venues with restaurants, shops and offices.

Now, with soaring rents in Oakland and elsewhere amplifying the housing shortage in California's coastal cities, they are building homes.

The Athletics, San Francisco Giants and Rams have proposed to build a combined 10,000 housing units over the next