Berkeley striving to rein in homeless
Neighbors and laws seek to clean up parks, streets
A man with a low-slung baseball cap lay napping in Berkeley’s Ohlone Park, amid piles of backpacks and discarded clothes.
His was one of several small homeless encampments that have bloomed in the park in recent months, commandeering fields that border a playground, a baseball diamond, and a basketball court.
Residents say these camps are ruining a sacred part of the neighborhood. Created in 1974 when a group of activists clinched a $1-a-year lease from BART, Ohlone Park turned a three-block strip of sidewalk into a lush greenway. For decades, it’s been a place for picnics, little league practices and morning tai chi.
But now the park is overrun with detritus, said City Councilwoman Linda Maio, who helped start the park 42 years ago and now represents the surrounding district. Over the past few months, Maio said she has received letters from constituents complaining about noise, feces and trash.
One resident, Lynn Barrow, wrote that her dog had gotten sick after walking through one of the Ohlone Park encampments and had to be taken to the emergency room.
“They tested his urine, and it contained marijuana and meth,” Barrow’s letter said.
Maio responded by proposing new ordinances that the City Council approved Tuesday to bring the homeless problems under control, in part by discouraging people from strewing their bags on city sidewalks and urinating and defecating in the parks. She also called for the city to provide mobile showers and storage units for people’s effects and to crack down on camping in the city’s parks.
“We want people to get a little more connected with social mores,” Maio said, emphasizing that the laws are small, and so are the city responses for breaking them: an initial warning followed by a citation.
Divisions over laws
Nonetheless, the new laws prompted strong opposition in Berkeley, where housing activists camped out in front of City Hall the night before the council meeting. The city has long presented itself as a refuge for drifters and social misfits. Many longtime residents cling to that image at a time when housing prices are rising and a trendy arts district is blossoming downtown.
Councilman Kriss Worthington, who voted against Maio’s policies, said they would “criminalize” the city’s neediest populations.
“A whole bunch of poor people will get misdemeanors for tiny offenses,” he said, adding that the measures didn’t provide enough services for the down and out. One woman who camped outside City Hall told the council that she woke up with a stark realization of what it means to be homeless.
“There is no restroom,” she said at the meeting.
Maio said her policies barely scratch at a homeless crisis that extends far beyond Berkeley.
“The economy has repositioned itself to shift a lot of wealth to the very top,” she said. “The people at the bottom fall out. They’re not making it.”
Officials in Los Angeles declared a public emergency in September after a 2015 homeless count revealed that more than 17,000 people are sleeping in parks, or on sidewalks, or beneath freeway overpasses. According to the count, more than 44,000 people are without homes throughout the county.
Visible increase
Meanwhile, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has pledged to clear street campers out of the Embarcadero before the Feb. 7 Super Bowl, shunting them into the city’s Navigation Center in the Mission.
Lee’s cleanup effort, combined with Albany’s expulsion of homeless people from its Bulb landfill, has caused nomadic groups to flood into Berkeley, Maio said. Though statistics from the social service group EveryOne Home show that Alameda County’s homeless population has decreased overall — from 4,264 in January 2013 to 4,040 this year — Maio said drifters and street dwellers have become increasingly visible in Berkeley.
“We’ve noticed large groups of people living in RVs or campers,” she said, adding that many such vans line streets abutting the skate park or the railroad tracks in West Berkeley, where it’s easier to park overnight. Neighbors find piles of human waste in the morning, she said.
Homeless people also congregate on the busy corridors of Shattuck and Telegraph avenues, where merchants complain about finding feces in their doorways, said Stuart Baker, head of the Telegraph Business Improvement District, who spoke in favor of Maio’s legislation.
In recent months, Berkeley police have been inundated with calls over nuisances such as loud noise and garbage.
“Whether it’s an increase in encampments is hard to say,” said Berkeley police Lt. Andrew Rateaver. “It could be that the community is more sensitive and taking us up on the offer to call.”
More resources sought
As neighbors push for tighter rules against dumping and bad behavior, some homeless people worry they’ll get run out of town — some for the second or third time.
“Where’s the best place to sleep? There isn’t one,” said Kenneth Russell Collier, a 46-year-old homeless Army veteran who was recently standing amid a pile of debris at Ohlone Park. Collier moved to the Bay Area from San Diego nine months ago. He said he’s gotten three citations for sleeping outdoors. One was in San Francisco. Two were in Berkeley.
Maio said she’s mindful of the need for better resources to get people off the street. The new laws will take effect Jan. 1 but will not be enforced until after Berkeley installs public storage bins, and there are no plans set for that yet. Maio said she hopes to have the city waive citations for people who sign up for services.
In the meantime, Berkeley resident Bill Williams said he’d like to see the standard of behavior raised for everyone.
“We live in an imperfect world with finite resources,” Williams said. “But I think it’s fair to ask for a level of common civility. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to keep the parks clean and safe.”