Oakland’s top homelessness official steps down, as city struggles with ongoing crisis

Oakland is losing its top official tasked with managing homelessness, at a time when the city is struggling with an ongoing crisis of unhoused residents living in cars, RVs and sprawling encampments.

Daryel Dunston, who was hired as Oakland’s first homelessness administrator in February 2020, has accepted a new position at the San Francisco Foundation. His last day with the city of Oakland will be Monday, according to city spokeswoman Karen Boyd. Dunston was in the midst of rolling out several new strategies to address homelessness, including the city’s controversial new encampment management policy. The city will look for a replacement for Dunston, Boyd said. But for now, LaTonda Simmons, assistant city administrator, will take over oversight of homelessness programs.

“All of that work will continue,” Boyd said.

Dunston had spearheaded efforts to implement the city’s encampment management policy, which marks certain areas — including those near schools, homes, businesses and public parks — mostly off-limits to camping. But enforcement of the new policy, which the City Council passed in October, has been slow. The policy is set to be reevaluated in April, and activists fighting for the rights of unhoused people to camp on public land, likely will push for it to be scaled back or abolished.

Dunston also was in the midst of getting the city’s new Commission on Homelessness off the ground. The group, made up of volunteers who have personal or professional experience with homelessness, includes Candice Elder of the East Oakland Collective, Tomiquia Moss of All Home and Trent Rhorer, executive director of San Francisco’s Human Services Agency. The commission had its first meeting in December, but has been bogged down by mandatory trainings and other procedural tasks.