City Government

After Miscommunication Over Plan, City Relocates Unhoused North Oakland Residents

Published

8 months ago

September 2, 2020

An unhoused Oakland resident drags her tent to a new location during a city-run relocation and cleanup at Manila Avenue in North Oakland on August 27. Photo by Zack Haber

On Aug. 27-28, The City of Oakland cleared five residents who were living in tents from Manila Avenue near Mosswood Park, but allowed them to move 300-400 feet north.

The City also conducted a deep cleaning on Manila Avenue between 38th and 40th streets, in an operation that directly affected about 15 unhoused people living in the area.

Prior to the day of the clearance, the City’s plans were still unclear to unhoused residents in the area and advocates.

The City began the relocation operation on August 21 by placing pink “notice to vacate an illegal encampment” flyers near the five residents and throughout the surrounding area where other unhoused residents, who later were not required to move, lived. Then, on August 24, the Oakland Police Dept. placed orange parking violation stickers on RVs and vehicles that serve as people’s homes in the area, instructing them to move their vehicles by Aug. 27 or face impoundment.

But just before 4:00 p.m. on Aug. 24, Oakland’s Homelessness Administrator Daryel Dunston sent an e-mail to City Council members, City administrators and members of Mayor Libby Schaaf’s media team, which set out plans that contradicted the original flyers and notices.

“I am writing to clear up any miscommunication regarding the encampment operation scheduled tomorrow at 38th & Manila,” reads the e-mail, which stated that the City “will be conducting a cleaning.”

“No one’s vehicle dwelling will be towed,” Dunston wrote and specified that only people living within a small “collapse zone” of a building set to be demolished would be relocated.

Five people living in tents and one person living in a vehicle lived in the collapse zone and the City forced them to move on Aug. 27. On the same day, the City did a deep cleaning of the east side of Manila Avenue, which required residents to temporarily move their belongings or have them discarded.

Until the day of the operation, neither the City nor OPD informed residents that the plans initially stated on the flyers or parking violation stickers would not be carried out.

One resident said he thought they had to leave and drove his vehicle around the corner a day before the operation. He described the move as easy but he also noted that his neighbor, whose vehicle did not run, arranged a tow to keep her home safe, an expense and an effort that ended up being unnecessary.

During the clean-up and relocation operation, some residents said they felt rushed and that the City did not give them adequate time to safely move their belongings. One resident lost a prescription for his dog. Another resident’s tent was damaged while she was relocating. A local grassroots organization, the North Oakland Restorative Justice Council, brought her a replacement tent the next day.

About 25 residents, most of whom were housed, showed up on August 27 to help residents with the move and clean-up, including some people from the neighborhood and others from East and West Oakland.

About a half dozen showed up on August 28, when the City did a smaller clean-up operation on the west side of Manila Avenue and no one was moved. One resident reported losing her living room on Friday after the city forced her to remove a tent from a seldom-used sidewalk. She now lives exclusively in her vehicle.

“I showed up to help people move their stuff and protect their rights because often times if they’re left alone, [the City], can steamroll people,” said Colleen Donovan, a 26-year-old Oakland resident and member of the United Front Against Displacement, a mutual aid and housing justice grassroots organization. “It helps when there’s pressure and [the City] realizes housed residents of Oakland are paying attention.”

Several police cars and officers were present who monitored but did not engage with any unhoused residents.

Residents questioned why the operation was scheduled while wildfires throughout California had caused smoke to blow into Oakland, at times making the air quality unhealthy.

“The air is trash,” Amber Rockwood, a housed neighbor in the area wrote on Twitter after seeing City workers posting flyers. “How are they really gonna evict some houseless people during all this.”

During the first day of the City operation, AirNow classified the air quality as “moderate,” but during the clean-up on the second day, AirNow classified the air quality as “unhealthy.” The City did not provide workers or unhoused people with N95 masks as they moved possessions and disposed of trash outside for several hours.

The Oakland Post has chosen not to name the unhoused residents in this area, many of whom have claimed that publicizing their unhoused status could make it difficult for them to receive housing or employment in the future.

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Activism

MAYOR LONDON BREED NOMINATES CITY ATTORNEY DENNIS HERRERA TO LEAD THE SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION

As the new General Manager of the SFPUC, Herrera would bring decades of experience serving San Francisco residents and advancing the fight for significant environmental policies.

Published

1 week ago

April 29, 2021

Staff Post

San Francisco, CA — Today Mayor London N. Breed nominated City Attorney Dennis Herrera to serve as the next General Manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC). Herrera was elected as City Attorney of San Francisco in 2001, and will bring decades of experience serving City residents and advancing environmental policies through his nationally-recognized office.

The SFPUC provides retail drinking water and wastewater services to the City of San Francisco, wholesale water to three Bay Area counties, green hydroelectric and solar power to Hetch Hetchy electricity customers, and power to the residents and businesses of San Francisco through the CleanPowerSF program.

“I am proud to nominate Dennis Herrera to serve as General Manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission,” said Mayor Breed. “Dennis has been a great champion in San Francisco across a wide range of issues from civil rights to protecting our environment, and most importantly he has been someone who always puts the people of this City first. By bringing his experience in office and his commitment to public service to this new position, I am confident the SFPUC will be able to deliver the high-quality services our residents deserve while continuing to advance nationally-recognized programs like CleanPowerSF and pursue ambitious efforts like public power. Dennis is the right leader for the hard-working employees of the SFPUC and this City.”

“I will always cherish the groundbreaking work we have done in the City Attorney’s Office over these nearly 20 years,” Herrera said. “We advanced equality for all, pushed affordable housing at every turn, gave our children better opportunities to grow and thrive, and took innovative steps to protect the environment. We never shied from the hard fights. Above all, our approach to government has had an unwavering focus on equity, ethics and integrity.”

“It is that focus that drives me to this new challenge,” Herrera said. “Public service is an honor. When you see a need, you step up to serve. The test of our age is how we respond to climate change. San Francisco’s public utility needs clean, innovative and decisive leadership to meet that challenge. I am ready to take the lead in ensuring that all San Franciscans have sustainable and affordable public power, clean and reliable water, and, overall, a public utility that once again makes them proud. I want to thank Mayor Breed for this unique opportunity to stand up for ratepayers and usher in a new era of clean leadership at the top of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.”

The next step for the nomination is for the five-member commission that oversees the SFPUC to interview City Attorney Herrera and forward him as a formal recommendation to the Mayor. After this, and once a contract is finalized, City Attorney Herrera would be officially appointed by the Mayor and confirmed by the Commission. This process will take a number of weeks.

For nearly two decades, Herrera has been at the forefront of pivotal water, power and sewer issues. He worked to save state ratepayers $1 billion during PG&E’s first bankruptcy in the early 2000s and has been a leading advocate for San Francisco to adopt full public power for years. In 2009, he reached a key legal agreement with Mirant to permanently close the Potrero Power Plant, San Francisco’s last fossil fuel power plant. The deal also included Mirant paying $1 million to help address pediatric asthma in nearby communities. In 2017, Herrera sued the top five investor-owned fossil fuel companies in the world, including ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, seeking billions of dollars for infrastructure to protect San Francisco against sea-level rise caused by their products, including large portions of the SFPUC’s combined sewer and stormwater system.

In 2018, Herrera defeated an attempt to drain Hetch Hetchy Reservoir, the crown jewel of the SFPUC system, which provides emissions-free hydroelectric power and clean drinking water to 2.7 million Bay Area residents. He is also leading efforts before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the courts to fight PG&E’s predatory tactics to grow its corporate monopoly by illegally overcharging public projects like schools, homeless shelters and affordable housing to connect to the energy grid.

Herrera was first elected City Attorney in December 2001, and went on to build what The American Lawyer magazine hailed as “one of the most aggressive and talented city law departments in the nation.”

Herrera’s office was involved in every phase of the legal war to achieve marriage equality, from early 2004 to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark rulings in June 2013. Herrera was also the first to challenge former President Trump’s attempts to deny federal funding to sanctuary cities. He repeatedly defeated the Trump administration in different cases as it sought to punish sanctuary cities, deny basic benefits like food stamps to legal immigrants, and discriminate in health care against women, the LGBTQ community and other vulnerable groups. He brought groundbreaking consumer protection cases against payday lenders, credit card arbitrators and others. He also brought pioneering legal cases to protect youth, including blocking an attempt to strip City College of San Francisco of its accreditation and getting e-cigarettes off San Francisco store shelves until they received required FDA approval.

Activism

Bay Area Officials and Leaders React to the George Floyd Verdict

Almost 11 months ago, the world watched as Officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on the back of George Floyd’s neck. He kept it there for eight minutes and 46 seconds, but it felt like an eternity. The systemic injustice from hundreds of years of racism and mistreatment of Black Americans was put into plain view on video, and the country and the world erupted in protest.

Published

2 weeks ago

April 22, 2021

Kiki

Photo Credit: Christy Price

San Francisco Mayor London Breed, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) and the Greenlining Institute President and CEO Debra Gore-Mann issued statements in reaction to Tuesday’s triple guilty verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, ex-Minneapolis police officer for killing George Floyd in May, 2020.

Mayor London Breed’s statement:

“This verdict does not bring back the life of George Floyd. It can’t replace the years of his life that were robbed from him, nor the life experiences and memories that would have been made with his friends and family. What this verdict does reflect is that the tide is turning in this country, although still too slowly, toward accountability and justice.

While we’re now months removed from the height of those protests, the need for action is as critical as ever. This is about more than prosecuting the officer who killed George Floyd, though that is an important step. It’s about fundamentally restructuring how policing is done to move away from the use of excessive force. It’s about shifting responses to non-violent calls away from an automatic police response to something better equipped to handle the situation. It’s about reinvesting in communities in which years of systematic disinvestment has made it nearly impossible for people to thrive. It’s about changing who we are as a country.

That’s what we’re trying to do in San Francisco. Our Street Crisis Response Teams, consisting of paramedics and behavioral health specialists, are now often the first responders to non-violent 911 calls relating to mental health and substance use.

Our Dream Keeper Initiative is redirecting $120 million to improve the lives of Black youth and their families through investments in everything from housing, to healthcare, to workforce training and guaranteed income. And our sustained, multi-year efforts to reform our police department has resulted in a 57% reduction in instances of use of force and a 45% decrease in officer-involved shootings since 2016.

While this tragedy can never be undone, what we can do is finally make real change in the name of George Floyd. Nothing we can do will bring him back, but we can do the work to prevent others from facing his fate in the future. That is the work we need to do. It’s ongoing, it’s challenging, but if we are committed, we can make a real and lasting difference in this country.”

OPD Statement

We all must recognize that this moment is about accountability, justice, and reform. We must be compassionate, empathic, and forgiving, the Oakland Police Department declared in a statement released on Tuesday.

All sides must unite as one community to effectively communicate. Together we will work towards rethinking policing in America.

In unity, we will move towards finding solutions for the safety of all people, notwithstanding your age, race, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability.

We stand as one community grieving and healing as we move towards finding real solutions to effect change as we seek to strengthen police and community relations.

We extend our deepest condolences to George Floyd’s family and all communities.

Greenlining Institute President and CEO Debra Gore-Mann:

“Today, we experienced a small measure of justice as Derek Chauvin was convicted and the killing of George Floyd was recognized as the criminal act it was. But we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that one conviction of one cop for a killing the whole world witnessed on video will change a fundamentally racist and dysfunctional system. The whole law enforcement system must be rethought and rebuilt from the ground up so that there are no more George Floyds, Daunte Wrights and Adam Toledos. But even that is just a start.

“Policing doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Systemic racism exists in policing because systemic racism exists in America. We must fundamentally uproot the disease of racism in our society and create a transformative path forward.”

City Government

Council Unanimously Approves Local Business Empowerment Ordinance

The Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce (OAACC) and Post News Group joined with District 6 Councilmember Loren Taylor to host a town hall to discuss ways to mitigate local contracting disparities.

Published

3 months ago

February 18, 2021

Post Staff

District 6 Councilmember Loren Taylor

Vice Mayor Rebecca Kaplan, and the staff of District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife also joined the town hall meeting to add their support for full implementation of the plan to bring a more equitable distribution of the city’s contracting dollars.

A direct response to the city’s 2017 Disparities Study, conducted by Mason Tillman Associates, showed more than $56M in lost contract dollars for the Black community during the five-year study period. The purpose of the town hall was to receive community input on potential solutions, including Taylor’s Local Business Empowerment Through Contracting (LBETC) Resolution & Ordinance.

While the resolution was passed unanimously during the Council’s meeting on January 12, questions of financial and operational impact delayed the ordinance’s second reading to this week’s council meeting. Co-sponsored by District 7 Councilmember Treva Reid, the ordinance was also unanimously approved by the councilmembers present in a 7-0 vote, following immense public support mobilized by OAACC President Cathy Adams prior to and during the council meeting.

Taylor thanked the OAACC and the many groups and individuals who urged transparent and regular public reporting of all contracts, even those that are awarded at staff’s discretion for amounts less than $50,000 without council approval.

Taylor said quick action is required because, “Our local diverse business owners are currently missing out on millions of dollars in city contracting opportunities. There is still much work to do moving forward.”

Paul Cobb, publisher of the Post, said “We will regularly publish the names and amounts of all contracts awarded to companies and individuals. With diligent monitoring we can reverse the drain of Oakland’s tax dollars and reverse the cashflow characteristics to help create jobs for Oakland residents.”