Homeless advocates build unsanctioned village
For many of Oakland’s at least 4,000 homeless people, the promise of housing has been elusive.
But on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, advocates and volunteers took matters into their own hands, constructing an unsanctioned village of 8-by12-foot wooden homes on a public street median behind a Burger King on East 12th Street at 16th Avenue, their guerilla solution to the city’s epidemic of homelessness.
“This was an unused piece of land with no real value — we gave it value,” said Anita De Asis Miralle, founder of a group known as
The Village, which has built two other unsanctioned encampments in Oakland in recent years. “We are saving the city money, it helps businesses, it helps the city of Oakland.”
On Monday, Mayor Libby Schaaf said the city would follow its established procedure on dealing with encampments.
“The city of Oakland has an encampment management policy. We assess each camp based on our criteria of safety, of health, of size and location,” she said.
“We have been brought to court on five occasions to defend that policy, and every time we have prevailed. The courts have found that the city of Oakland’s policy is fair, reasonable and lawful. And we will not treat this encampment any differently than we would treat any other encampment. We will assess it based on that criteria and move forward accordingly,” the mayor continued.
Oakland officials, who have cleared out two other village encampments set up by the group, did not intervene in this weekend’s construction effort, but have in the past have pointed to health and safety problems, like fires and trash accumulation, as the rationale behind clearing encampments.
Miralle said the village is an interim solution for people who are tired of waiting for affordable housing to be built and frustrated with the city’s efforts to add emergency housing. Miralle, who has been homeless for two years and lives in a camper with her daughter, added that they “are going to keep building” because the city’s homelessness problem “is going to get worse.”
The homes are simple, with insulation, a door, window, paneling and trim. The site has no electricity or plumbing, but organizers hope to eventually install solar panels and composting toilets. They also want to add a garden, communal outdoor kitchen and gathering space to the strip of land.
East 12th street is lined with tents and RVs parked along the road, whose occupants often stop by the Burger King for water and to use the bathroom, which are locked except for use by customers. The restaurant’s bathrooms Sunday were out of service.
The area has had a history of encampments, and Oakland has stepped in with “clean and clear” operations citing problems including fires, illegal electrical taps of street lamps and unstable, makeshift “tree houses” that required the city to remove trees, according to a document filed in court by the city.
Miralle’s group filed a court injunction ahead of two cleanup operations last year, arguing the city hasn’t followed its own policies for the encampment sweeps.