Judge: Oakland can oust homeless group

A federal judge in Oakland ruled Wednesday that the city can oust a group of 10 men and women, and three children, from a city-owned site where they’ve been camping for a month — as long as it offers them shelter beds and stores their belongings.

The group began camping in October within the fenced-off site at Clara Street and Edes Avenue, a mile and a half southeast of the Coliseum. They named the site the Housing and Dignity Village, and said the encampment felt safer to them than other locations.

On Nov. 7, the city posted a notice ordering them to leave. Two days later, six members of the group, most of them family members, asked the court to stop the city from forcing them to leave on grounds that the action would violate their 8th Amendment right against “cruel and unusual punishment,” and their 14th Amendment right to due process, regarding their property.

But on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. noted that the city hadn’t threatened to punish the group, and had offered shelter to all 13.

“The Court is not blind to the reality that removing the plaintiffs from the site where they are currently living is inevitably disruptive of their lives,” Gilliam wrote in his order denying the group’s request. “The resulting harm, however, is significantly mitigated by the city’s commitment to provide temporary shelter and storage services” to the group.

A federal appeals court ruled in September that the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits cities from making it a crime to sleep on a public street or sidewalk when no homeless shelters are available. Gilliam said Oakland has promised to comply with that ruling by providing shelter and has not threatened to prosecute anyone for being homeless.

The appeals court ruling “does not establish a constitutional right to occupy public property indefinitely,” Gilliam said.

Joshua Piovia-Scott, a lawyer representing the four women and two men who brought the matter to court, said his clients are “very, very disappointed” in Gilliam’s ruling.

“Destroying this community of sober, unsheltered women and their families will only make the homeless crisis worse,” he said.

The group is also skeptical of the city’s claim that it will provide them shelter because the city has said so only to the judge, the lawyer said.

“The city says they have secured 13 shelter beds. What does that mean? Where? Who? How? Nothing’s been told to the residents,” said Piovia-Scott, noting that it took a court action for the city to make such a promise, even to the judge.