Vann: “Mayor Schaaf has never taken the homeless issue seriously.”

Schaaf finally says, “We now need to act with a sense of urgency”

The number of homeless people in Oakland has grown by 47 percent in the past two years, faster than in San Fran­cisco and Berkeley, according to a county survey released this week.

Following federal guide­lines, officials organized vol­unteers who conducted a one-day, “point-in-time” count, which found 4,071 homeless people in Oakland living in ve­hicles, on the street or in shel­ters, compared with 2,761 in 2017 and 2,191 people in 2015.

Of those counted, 861 were living in shelters, and 3,210 were unsheltered.

The homeless rate in Oak­land has reached 940 per 100,000 residents, compared with San Francisco’s rate of 906 and Berkeley’s rate of 898.

“Of course, it is disappoint­ing … that we’ve had the high­est increase, at least in the Bay Area,” said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf in an interview with the S.F. Chronicle. “It shows that we need to do things differently, and we need to act with a sense of urgency that is greater than anything we’ve done in the past.”

“These increases are not unique to Oakland, they’re throughout this county, they’re throughout this state and throughout the en­tire West Coast,” she said in an interview on KPIX Channel 5. Nearby counties need to look at this crisis as “an all hands on deck situation,” she said.

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According to the survey, 47 percent of Alameda County’s homeless are Afri­can American, while African Americans only make up 11 percent of the county’s popu­lation. Thirty percent of the county’s homeless are white, while 17 percent are Latino.

The survey also found that 57 percent of the homeless in Alameda County have lived in the county for 10 years or more. Forty percent said they are natives, while 12 percent said they moved to the area in the past year.

Thirty-four percent of the county’s homeless residents live in tents, and 23 percent live in vehicles.

The results of this new sur­vey do not come as a surprise to the people who are working on the ground working with the homeless and advocating the solutions to the crisis.

“It didn’t come as a shock to us,” said James Vann of the Oakland-based Homeless Advocacy Working Group (HAWG) in an interview with the Oakland Post. “There were about 70 homeless encamp­ments, and now it’s between 90 and 100 encampments, and each of those encampments has grown.”

Criticizing the Mayor Schaaf’s policies, Vann said, “This report should not have been a shock. The reason it’s a shock is that (Mayor Schaaf) never took the homeless is­sue seriously.” Last year, the city only added $1.5 million to the budget for homelessness, “which only pays the admin­istrative costs for one and half of the Tuff Shed villages,” he said.

Seeing some hope on the horizon, he said that that $10 million or more may be com­ing into Oakland due to initia­tives of Gov. Gavin Newsom. Additionally, new money for homeless programs will begin entering city coffers late next year as result of Measure W, a tax on vacant properties and buildings, which local home­less advocates worked to pass with the support of Council President Rebecca Kaplan.

Margaretta Lin, execu­tive director of Just Cities/ the Dellums Institute, told the Oakland Post that the “point-in-time” survey indicates the rapid grow of homelessness in Oakland but does not reflect the true numbers of those who do not have a place to live, which is over 10,000 people.

“Based on a comprehensive Alameda County report con­ducted in 2014-2015, there were more than 9,000 home­less people in Oakland, and we know on that basis the number is much more today,” she said.

We’re seeing a new home­lessness phenomenon, where the homeless population is not just made up of people with mental health or substance abuse problems, said Lin.

“There are people who are working who have lost their homes because they can’t af­ford the crazy rent. We have people who have minimum wages jobs who are homeless, children who are homeless and even childcare workers who are homeless.”

Because this is a crisis, she said, the city needs to adopt “less expensive, immediate solutions” such as tiny homes, repurposed containers and mo­bile homes,” dignified, aesthet­ically pleasing housing mod­els similar to what other cities have done.”

These kinds of homes can cost about $10,000 and be put up in a month, compared with traditional housing, which costs about $600,000 and takes three-to-five years to build, she said. Much of Oakland’s homeless housing strategies, so far, has been transitional hous­ing, only meant for temporary stays of up to six months or building permanent housing which is expensive and takes several years.

State funding can make dif­ference, “depending on how the money is deployed,” Lin said. “People need housing. It can’t be a shelter bed for one night or transitional housing for six months. They need to be able to live in a dignified place for several years until we get more permanent housing built.”

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Ken Epstein

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