This ‘calamity … will force more unhoused people onto the streets and into other Oakland neighborhoods,’ says housing rights activist James Vann

By Ken Epstein

Federal Court Judge William Orrick, who one month ago blocked the city of Oakland’s eviction of unsheltered residents off Wood Street in West Oakland, has now ruled the city can proceed with removing the encampment after he determined that Oakland has shown it has enough shelter beds for those who are displaced.

The city says it wants to clear the site to build 170 units of affordable housing. Residents of Wood Street, who have developed a self-help community at the site, want the judge to continue to protect the encampment, at least until alternative shelter sites are in operation.

Said Orrick, “The city’s obligation is to provide, in this context, alternative shelter. That’s the thing that I required of them. They have done that. It’s not preferable for you, but that is what they have now been able to put together.”

Responding to the judge’s decision, housing rights advocate James E. Vann, co-founder and advisor to the Oakland Homeless Advocacy Working Group (HAWG), said Orrick’s Feb. 3 decision to reverse his original temporary restraining order was not unexpected.

However, Vann said the city has “misrepresented” the facts to the judge. The city does not have “adequate replacement housing” available for the residents of Wood Street, he said.

“The calamity that will follow is another instance of the city’s failure to acknowledge the homelessness crisis as real and to implement timely actions to assure adequate accommodations and health and safety of the affected unhoused residents,” said Vann.

“Armed with the judge’s lifting of the restraining order, the city will proceed, beginning this week, to force more unhoused people onto the streets and into other Oakland neighborhoods,” said Vann.

He said Wood Street residents have organized themselves and made clear to the city “the solidarity of their mutually helpful and caring community … (and) the desire of the residents to remain a community and not be thoughtlessly dispersed throughout the city.”

The city failed to reveal to the judge that “many of the evicted and unhoused Wood Street residents will be rejected by shelters for an overnight stay because of rules preventing evictees from bringing their pets and belongings. Rest on a cot offers a temporary respite that must be vacated the following day between the hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.,” said Vann.

“It is unfortunate that the city’s homelessness administrator was not up to the job and failed to interact with the unhoused residents, or to make adequate plans for temporary tiny house accommodations prior to the funding deadlines for the new housing development,” he said.

This action, once again, demonstrates “the city’s ineptness (and) its undefined homelessness program, (which) will force many unhoused residents onto the streets during the worse imaginable weather,” where they will face the ravages of hypothermia, frostbite, and continuing pandemic, said Vann.

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