Excerpt:

The City Council has approved an exclusive negotiating agreement with a team of East Bay agencies to build affordable housing at Alameda Point, a plan that supporters say will help them better serve people who were once homeless.

The Alameda Point Collaborative and the other agencies already provide services for about 500 people on about 34 acres that the groups rent at the former U.S. Navy base. But they are hoping to give up the leased area and purchase a 13-acre parcel bordered by Main Street and Orion, West Midway and West Tower avenues.

The goal is to better serve the residents, as well as make it easier for them to reach public transportation and other services. The buildings they now occupy are also in bad shape.

"The current facilities that they use are deteriorating," Jennifer Ott, the city's chief operating officer for Alameda Point, said on Tuesday, when the council unanimously backed entering the exclusive talks. "They are run down. They are former housing from the Navy. They are not built to code."