Proposed homeless shelter hits resistance

Operation could cost up to $23M per year; Staff says the site is `isolated and contaminated'

OAKLAND >> City staff last week poured cold water on an ambitious proposal to build a homeless shelter for up to 1,000 people on the site of a former Army base in West Oakland.

The shelter would cost as much as $22.5 million per year to operate — an expenditure that would nearly double what Oakland spends on homelessness in a given year, City Administrator Edward Reiskin told the City Council. Even if the city had the money for that, which Reiskin made clear isn't the case, the site is contaminated with toxic materials and is too far from any public transportation.

“In short, the site is isolated and contaminated,” he said. “It's not suitable to house vulnerable residents for short periods of time, and certainly not for long periods of time.”

The City Council voted unanimously last month to direct staff to research the idea of the shelter and report back on its feasibility and projected cost. Councilmember Carroll Fife, who introduced the resolution, argued the 22acre parcel near the city's waterfront is one of the last large, undeveloped pieces of publicly owned land in the city, and one of Oakland's last opportunities to build something that could have a large-scale impact on the homelessness crisis.

Oakland's latest count showed more than 5,000 unhoused residents in the city — up 24% from 2019.

Fife pushed back against Reiskin's characterization of the Army base site, and said she's “deeply frustrated” with how slowly the city is moving to address homelessness.

“I take issue with how things are being

framed, because we have a crisis right now and I don't see any shelters being built,” she said. “I don't see any housing being built.”

But Reiskin told City Council that the site is too contaminated for residential use, with unsafe levels of toxins including kerosine, arsenic and diesel in the ground water and

soil. Getting a waiver from the state to allow them to build there anyway could take up to two years, he said. And if they were successful, the city would then have to pay to clean up the toxins.

Fife said she would never suggest anyone move into a living situation that she wouldn't feel comfortable living in herself. But she said she's talked to environmentalists and other professionals who have suggested it would be possible

to clean the site and make it habitable.

The City Council first directed staff to set up a homeless shelter on the Army base in 2020, but never allocated funding to the project. It would cost more than $5 million to turn the land into a safe RV parking site, plus $18 million per year to operate the program, Reiskin said.

Operating cabins or tiny homes on the site for 1,000 people would cost even more — $22.5 million per

year.

“Needless to say, we don't have funds to do any of that,” Reiskin said.

This year, Oakland has allocated $28.8 million for all of its interim housing programs for homeless residents.

Reiskin also worried about the size of the proposed shelter, which would be larger than any homeless intervention Oakland has attempted in the past.

“We have significant concerns about our ability

… to be able to support, manage, maintain a safe, secure, well-functioning site with that many people,” he said. “It's more

than 10 times larger, I believe, than anything we've done before, and we would have significant concerns about that.”