Eviction battle to delay safe RV parking further
Welcome to this month’s protracted housing fight. Grab a seat, because it’s going to be a long year in housing activism. The latest battle is playing out over the Wood Street private lot in West Oakland that the city plans to convert into a safe parking site for 60 or more mobile homes.
For at least six years, an untold number of homeless people have lived on and around the site in RVs, trailers, cars, tents and makeshift structures. It became fertile ground for illegal dumping.
The property’s owner, Gamechanger LLC, hoped to turn the 4½acre lot over to the city of Oakland in November.
Most people voluntarily moved in early November. The city towed many of their inoperable vehicles onto Wood Street with the promise that they wouldn’t later be towed to a junkyard.
But two months later, instead of grading and paving the ground, Gamechanger is preparing for an eviction battle in court.
While I support housing activism, I’m conflicted by the folks declining to vacate, because there are dozens of people who moved off the lot expecting to be in a spot by now. They’re stuck waiting. Isn’t that hurting more than helping?
Dayton Andrews, a housing activist, has been organizing for Wood Street residents for almost two years. I met him when the city tried to evict people in 2018 without offering an alternative place to park — no, an alternative place to live. This time, though, the city said people will be welcomed back onto the lot once the work is completed.
The problem for the seven dwellers who refused to move off the lot is trust, Andrews says.
“No one’s actually been given a promise that they’ll get a spot on the Wood Street lot,” Andrews said. “They’ve been given no written proof that they will get to be on this safe parking lot. Folks would like to use the service, but they’d actually want assurance that the service will come through.”
The mistrust of the city runs deep among homeless people and their supporters. Andrews said people don’t trust the city and Gamechanger to keep their promises. And, he pointed out, many in the Wood Street encampment didn’t live in RVs. City officials have told me that service providers will be flexible to meet their needs.
Last Monday, about a dozen housing activists, including Andrews, protested outside the Third Street office of Alan Horwitz, an attorney who specializes in evictions and is representing Gamechanger. They taped posters with “Housing Not Evictions” and “Housing Not Lawsuits” to office windows.
In an email, Horwitz said he wasn’t available for comment because he was out of town.
Pat Smith, a real estate attorney for Smith LLP, the Oakland law firm that also represents Gamechanger, estimated that it will cost the company more than $250,000 to clean and grade the property. Gamechanger is letting the city use the property for free for an initial term of 18 months, with potential extensions to June 2023.
“We’re not turning these homeless people out on the street,” Smith said. “We want to give them something that’s going to be better.”
Gamechanger began serving eviction notices in December to the holdouts. As my colleague Sarah Ravani reported, Cam McKeel and four other men grew marijuana behind their wooden walls. The men, according to Smith, have demanded $10,000 each to move. McKeel didn’t answer my knocks on a fence when I recently visited the lot.
A trial date will be set Friday, Smith said.
That means it’s probably going to be at least another month before people who want to be on the site get to move in. That’s more days and weeks without electricity, running water and a place to dump garbage.
“This goes deeper than just a shortterm emergency program,” Andrews said. “Longterm stability is what people are looking for. We have to keep mobilizing. We have to keep fighting.”
The unhoused want homes — as we saw when Moms 4 Housing moved into a vacant house in West Oakland without permission in November. They were evicted last month, but their activism drew national attention to the plight of thousands suffering on Oakland’s streets.
Until they get homes, people will make themselves at home wherever they find space.
“We’re going to see more of these operations start to happen, because people are really fed up,” Andrews said. “There’s no way out in sight for the common person.”