UC Berkeley hires social worker to help homeless at People’s Park.
UC Berkeley has just hired a $92,000-a-year social worker — not to help students, but to deal with the intractable homeless problem at People’s Park.
The block-long park just off Telegraph Avenue was born out of the radical politics of the late 1960s antiwar movement. The university acquired it by eminent domain and cleared it for future development, but after the upheavals of those times, it became untouchable ground.
These days, however, the 2.8-acre plot of land is better
known for its vagrants and violence than its politics, and locals avoid it. Now, newly promoted Chancellor Carol Christ, under pressure to deal with a campus housing shortage, has embraced a task force recommendation to explore building on several university owned sites that include People’s Park.
She’s running into resistance from activists who promise a fight to preserve the park’s counterculture legacy. So Christ’s “vision for the park” includes not only student dorms, but also supportive housing for the homeless — plus open space and some sort of memorial “honoring the park’s historical past.”
But “first things first,” said campus spokesman Dan Mogulof. He said Christ has made it clear that the university’s first obligation is “to work with the city to address ... safety and the homeless situation in the park.”
And that starts with the social worker, who quietly began his twoyear assignment July 17. According to Mogulof, he’s “in the process of assessing the needs of the park’s homeless population” in hopes of connecting them to “social and health services.”
Behind the plan is architecture Professor Emeritus Sam Davis, the chancellor’s newly appointed adviser on homeless issues.
“It’s the mission of a public university to help deal with social problems,” and chronic homelessness is “an issue not just afflicting our community, but the nation as a whole,” Davis said.
It was Davis who proposed hiring the social worker. He also makes no secret of his goal to eventually turn a portion of the park into supportive housing for homeless people — the kind of housing he designed during his long career as an architect.
“I always think Berkeley should be way in front of everyone else,” he said.
Whether the effort does anything to curb the crime that is afflicting the area remains an open question.
According to UC police, at least nine violent crimes were reported at the park in the past year. The most recent was on Aug. 6, when a young man was confronted by a man who “punched him several times, then dragged him out of the park and stole his cell phone,” a police bulletin says.
Earlier in the month, an assailant clubbed a man in the park with a piece of wood, then stole his backpack. A man in a nearby car who saw what was happening tried to help the victim, only to be clubbed in the head himself. Both were treated at hospitals.
In June, a 23-year-old student at UC Berkeley watching as several people fought in the park was hit in the head, apparently by someone wielding a crowbar. The same month, a woman was arrested on suspicion of attempted homicide — a charge later changed to felony child abuse — after she allegedly force-fed methamphetamine to a 2-year-old who was at the park’s play structure with his nanny. The child was treated at a hospital, and the woman was taken to a psychiatric facility, where she allegedly assaulted and injured a deputy.
University officials say it’s not necessarily the homeless people in the park who are committing the crimes. “The major challenge in that regard appears to be people who transit through the park, not those who sleep there,” Mogulof said.
But UC Berkeley police Lt. Marc De Coulode said the number of park incidents “speak for themselves, which is more than we would like to see.”
Regardless of who’s responsible for such mayhem, those are hardly the kind of headlines the university likes to see — especially as thousands of freshmen and transfer students move into their dorms this week.
Chrissy Roth-Francis, director of new student services, told us her people talk to the new arrivals “about safety throughout the orientation ... but no specific place, on or off campus, is highlighted.”
If the chancellor’s new vision for the park is the start of a turnaround for the neighborhood, she’s already received a key endorsement from Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin, who praised the idea of using it both for student and homeless housing.
“Many students feel unsafe walking in and around the park,” Arreguin said. “We need to re-envison the space — make it both open and functional.”