New policy for homeless encampments
Oakland to dictate where people can camp, how to maintain campsites
As Oakland struggles to get a handle on its worsening homelessness crisis, the city for the first time will govern its unhoused communities with a set of sweeping rules that dictate where people can and can’t camp and how their campsites must be maintained.
The controversial policy represents a new approach in the Bay Area, where encampments in most cities generally are cleared on a case-by-case basis — a haphazard method critics say pushes unhoused residents from place to place without solving the underlying problem. But it remains to be seen whether Oakland’s new strategy, which has faced a massive pushback from homeless rights activists, will fare any better.
Oakland’s encampment management policy, approved unanimously Tuesday night by the City Council, makes certain areas near schools, homes and businesses mostly off-limits and lays out steps to move residents living there into housing or shelters and shuts down the camps. Camps not in those areas will be allowed to remain if they meet certain health and safety standards.
The move comes as cities around the Bay Area are grappling with homeless camps sprawling across sidewalks, parks
and vacant lots. In Oakland, officials are aware of 142 encampments — about half have three or more residents — and many of those are described by city staff as unsanitary and violent. More than 4,000 unhoused people live in the city, which has about 1,000 shelter and interim housing beds.
Jennifer Friedenbach, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness, says she expects to see more cities propose this type of sweeping policy as officials accept camps as a necessary fact of life until more housing is built.
“I think there’s an effort to think outside the box, but at the same time, it feels like sometimes it’s throwing in the towel,” she said. “It’s like, all right, we’re going to be somehow comfortable with people living in tents. … The big picture is this is not OK that we have literally thousands of thousands of poor and working- class people who don’t have a decent place to call home.”
San Francisco voters approved Proposition Q in 2016, which banned tents on public sidewalks, but the measure has been sporadically enforced. This year, the city has set up several sanctioned homeless encampments.
More than 100 community members weighed in during Oakland’s council meeting Tuesday — mostly in opposition to the encampment policy. They decried it as an inhumane move to wall off sections of Oakland from homeless residents, and protested in front of City Hall and outside the homes of Councilmembers Dan Kalb and Noel Gallo. But others called it a necessary step to manage encampments that have made certain blocks unlivable for housed residents.
The new policy prioritizes clearing encampments from “high-sensitivity” areas, including those within 150 feet of an elementary, middle or preschool, 100 feet of a high school, 50 feet of a residence, business, public park or protected waterway, and 25 feet of a homeless shelter. Encampments in other areas will be allowed to remain, as long as residents don’t camp on both sides of a street, store flammable materials, take up more than a 12-by12-foot area per person or break other rules.
“There’s a need for us to at the very least create some standards by which we are providing public safety, public health measures for people who are living in encampments,” Homelessness Administrator Daryel Dunston said. “This isn’t to criminalize folks. This is to say if you’re going to live here, let’s establish some basic standards to protect your own safety.”
The city will start removing encampments in offlimits areas in January, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Councilmembers pushed Tuesday to create options for residents displaced during encampment closures. Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney added an amendment that requires city staff to identify land in all seven districts for sanctioned encampments. Councilwoman Nikki Fortunato Bas added language that forces the city to set up a sanctioned encampment within the next four months that would be run jointly by unhoused residents and nonprofit workers. Opponents of the new plan faulted city officials for failing to take the needs of homeless people into account. When staffers surveyed Oakland residents for feedback on the proposed policy earlier this year, 14% of participants were unhoused.
And they worry that by breaking up existing encampments, the city will put unhoused people at a greater risk of contracting COVID-19.
“This policy violates the human rights of the unhoused,” said Darrell Jones III, deputy director of activist group Just Cities. “It violates the agreed-upon COVID standards that we passed at the outset of this.”
Several law yers also warned the policy could lead to litigation. They argued it would violate a decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that states cities cannot penalize unhoused people for sleeping outside on public property if no other shelter is available. Dunston said the policy is legally sound.
Other community members urged the City Council to pass the policy.
Anand Patel, a business owner who lives next to an encampment in Oakland, said he’s sick of cleaning up human feces and throwing away other people’s garbage outside his home.
“We understand that the unhoused should not have to live on the street and in these conditions,” Patel said. “At the same time, homeowners and business owners are also being affected by this crisis. We cannot allow this lawlessness of people using people’s yards as bathrooms, garbage dumps. … We cannot allow this to continue.”