Home sweet homeless camp: Tent cluster remains tidy and pleasant OTIS R. TAYLOR JR.
As I walked underneath Interstate 580 on Telegraph Avenue on Labor Day, I noticed something I haven’t seen at homeless encampments in Oakland: The sidewalks were swept clean.
No cigarette butts. No clothes strewn about as if wildly tossed from a dresser drawer. No birds pecking for scraps of foods. There were no flies. The thorny stench of urine was missing.
Just a week after Oakland cleared homeless encampments on 29th and 30th streets that blocked sidewalks and forced people to pass in the street, one of the cardinal rules set by the residents of a camp just a few blocks away is that the sidewalk must be passable.
And residents take turns sweeping the sidewalk, sometimes more than once a day.
The camp stretches the length of the sidewalk covered by the highway overpass. It’s a small camp for Oakland, with about 10 tents and fewer than 20 people. They’ve been there a few months, and they’ve kept it clean by adhering to a social order.
They’ve evicted people for hoarding stolen and scavenged items. They’ve forced people to move because of drug use. They’ve kicked people out for stealing from other camp residents.
On Monday morning, Vernon Pierce slammed dominoes on an aqua table centered on a rug outside one of the tents. He kept score of the game he lost to his “aunt” with a red
marker in a small notebook.
Pierce, 24, who wore a camouflage safari hat over his dreads, said he lost because he got distracted by someone trying to steal suitcases from a shopping cart across the street. He was guarding someone’s property, because that’s what people do in communities on the street.
“Anything in our perimeter, we look out for,” said Pierce about the camp across the street from the Walgreens at Telegraph Avenue and 34th Street. “It’s like a family right here.”
People aren’t related by blood, but they are a family unit. That’s why there are rules — like keeping your area clean — if you want to stay in the family.
Pierce pulled back a tent flap so I could see inside his “living room” where his “brother” slept, curled up underneath covers. Tents underneath highway overpasses offered shade during the weekend heat wave.
Robert Cooper, known to the camp as Uncle Rob, unwrapped the New York steak and pork baby back ribs he had bought at KP Asian Market. Cooper, 60, took off his shirt and prepped the grill. Lemon pepper seasoning, Sriracha and other hot sauce were on a shelf outside of the tent.
“You’re more than welcome to come eat,” Pierce told me.
Pierce and Cooper waved and greeted every cyclist and pedestrian who passed. They weren’t looking for handouts. They were just being friendly.
“Just because we’re homeless doesn’t mean we’re not gentlemen,” Cooper said.
Here’s a thought: What if Oakland, which has seen the number of homeless camps mushroom, could tap into the self-governing that occurs in some of the camps? What if Oakland asked the residents to appoint captains at the camps to be liaisons with the city?
The captains would be superb advocates for the communities, because they live within the communities they’d be representing. And they could lead the charge to keep the camps clean and from sprawling out of control like what happened on 29th and 30th streets.
In May, Oakland closed a city-backed encampment under Interstate 580 on the Emeryville border. The experiment had portable toilets, sanitation stations and frequent visits from social workers. It worked — until newcomers replaced the first wave of residents.
The camp plunged into lawlessness as many of the camp’s residents, addicted to heroin, skipped case-management meetings. Reports of break-ins spiked on nearby streets.
If the city attempts another sanctioned homeless camp, perhaps the one I visited on Telegraph should be used as a model. Because I saw pedestrians and cyclists smiling at the people living in tents instead of covering their noses and crossing to the other side of the street.
“Every tool that’s available, we should explore,” Joe DeVries, an assistant to the city administrator, said.
“It’s in the broader conversation,” DeVries said about creating an ambassador program. “I don’t think we’ve made any decisions or conclusions. It’s definitely something we need to continue to explore.”
If there were an ambassador program, the city would already know that what Pierce and Cooper wanted most was a dumpster for their camp, and for the pile of scattered trash that’s down the block to be removed. It’s been there since before they moved in, they said.
DeVries told me he will file a request for Public Works to clear the debris. And while city officials won’t install a dumpster, DeVries said they will consider placing garbage cans on Telegraph similar to what was recently done at the intersection of San Pablo and Grand avenues.
If that happened, Pierce said, he and his fellow residents would handle the rest.
“We all take turns to sweep the whole area,” he said.