Activism

Protesters Demand Hotel Rooms for Homeless During Rally and Occupation

Published

6 years ago

May 27, 2020

53 year old lifelong Bay Area resident Romalita poses during a rally outside Palms Motel on Fri May 22. An unidentified legal observer stands in the background. Photo by Zack Haber.

On Fri May 22 to Sat May 23, housed and unhoused protestors gathered outside Palms Motel for a little over 16 hours to call for 37MLK, a community of mostly elder female lifelong Bay Area unhoused residents, to be sheltered in hotel rooms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over 40 people showed up throughout the 16 hours, with the peak crowd reaching around 30 as one protester, Stefani Echeverría-Fenn, occupied a Palms Motel room by barricading herself to security bars in the room’s bathroom.

The protest started around 11 a.m. People displayed signs emphasizing the urgency of sheltering homeless people. Signs read “HOTELS NOT GRAVES,” and “KEEP US ALIVE.” Echeverría-Fenn wore a shirt that read “I WON’T LET MY UNHOUSED FAM DIE QUIETLY.”

Some 37MLK residents are especially at risk to the dangers of the outdoors and to COVID-19 due to medical conditions and disabilities. Alice, who’s 52, relies on a colostomy bag to digest properly.

“[Cleaning the bag] is a pretty easy procedure but it’s not so easy when you can’t just go turn on water,” she said.

Alice also works as a certified nursing assistant doing in-home care. Her inability to isolate puts her and her client at a heightened risk for contracting COVID-19.

“My main thing is to keep [my colonoscopy bag] clean so I can be healthy for my client,” she said.

Romalita is 53 and is badly in need of hip surgery. She can’t stand for more than 10 minutes at a time. At the protest, she told The Oakland Post the doctors wouldn’t perform the surgery if she didn’t have stable shelter.

“The surgical doctor doesn’t want me to get an infection being outside,” she said.

Both Alice and Romalita had stayed at Palms Hotel for a week, but on Friday, funds that had been acquired through donations had run out, and they planned to live outdoors at 37MLK, where they’d sleep in tents.

Another sign at the protest read “CALL LIBBY OPEN THE EMPTY ROOMS 510-238-3141,” listing Mayor Libby Schaaf’s work phone number. 37MLK residents as well as the mutual aid and housing justice group, Love and Justice in The Streets (LAJITS), have been encouraging residents to call Mayor Schaaf to use hotel rooms, the vast majority of which sit empty due to COVID-19, to shelter homeless people.

LAJITS has pointed out that Oakland Code of Ordinance 8.50.050 allows the city administration of Oakland to “obtain vital supplies, equipment and such properties found lacking and needed for the protection of life and property,” during a state or local emergency, both of which have been declared due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Under the code, Oakland city administration has the power to commandeer such resources.

The Oakland Post emailed Justin Berton, spokesperson for Mayor Schaaf, mentioned Oakland Code of Ordinance 8.50.050, and asked: “Are hotel rooms considered vital and found lacking to protect life in Oakland?” and “If so, are their plans to obtain hotel rooms through the city for homeless residents?”

Berton sent a prepared statement from the director of communications, Karen Boyd.

Boyd’s statement did not say if the city was providing funds for hotels, or if the city planned to obtain or commandeer hotel rooms but said, “We continue to support the county in making referrals into their hotel programs.”

Project Roomkey, which is funded by the state and the county, has secured space for about 520 people including homeless, COVID positive, and high-risk Alameda County residents. In a meeting in mid-May, the county revealed about a third of Project Roomkey’s rooms were still vacant. The program moved its first Oakland homeless resident in on March 25, who showed symptoms of COVID-19. The 2019 point in time (PIT) count lists Alameda County’s homeless population at 8,022, though activists and policymakers largely agree that PIT counts undercount homeless populations, so the true number is likely higher.

Boyd’s statement also said, “our emergency COVID-19 budget proposed additional support for motel vouchers and for funding to help people exit homelessness into permanent housing.” The proposed voucher program would offer 50,000$ in state funds for hotels, less the yearly salary of a first-year Oakland Police officer. The statement also said 56 people are currently being sheltered in trailers provided by the state through Operation Homebase.

Due to the number of hotel rooms available and the slow pace in which the county is filling them, activists are continuing to push the city of Oakland to secure rooms itself while collecting private donations to lease them at loveandjusticeinthestreets.com and through Venmo at @ars_hoetica.

Echeverría-Fenn remained barricaded in the Palms Motel room until around 3 a.m, as protestors continued to be present outside to ensure her safety, when she voluntarily left. Oakland Police came between around and 11:30 pm till 12:30 am but made no arrest nor forced her to leave.

Although she was not arrested, the threat of arrest was real as she hadn’t paid for the room. In a livestream on Facebook as police were present, she said “There can be no business as usual while Oakland is in a public health crisis, a human rights crisis, a civil rights crisis. Members of the unhoused community who are very dear to me personally are literally dying on the street. We lost three of our unhoused comrades in the last one month alone. So I feel like whatever can happen to me in the course of my arrest cannot possibly be as traumatizing as the day to day experience of unhoused folks in Oakland.”

Zack Haber

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of February 11 = 17, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – February 11 – 17, 2026

Published

2 days ago

February 16, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

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Discrimination in City Contracts

The report was made public by Councilmember Carroll Fife, who brought it this week to the Council’s Life Enrichment Committee, which she chairs. Councilmembers, angry at the conditions revealed, unanimously approved the informational report, which is scheduled to go to an upcoming council meeting for discussion and action. The current study covers five years, 2016-2021, roughly overlapping the two tenures of Libby Schaaf, who served as mayor from January 2015 to January 2023.

Published

5 days ago

February 13, 2026

Oakland Post

Dr. Eleanor Ramsey (top, left) founder, and CEO of Mason Tillman Associates, which conducted the study revealing contract disparities, was invited by District 3 Councilmember Carroll Fife (top center) to a Council committee meeting attended by Oakland entrepreneur Cathy Adams (top right) and (bottom row, left to right) Brenda Harbin-Forte, Carol Wyatt, and councilmembers Charlene Wang and Ken Houston. Courtesy photos.

Disparity Study Exposes Oakland’s Lack of Race and Equity Inclusion

Part 1

By Ken Epstein

A long-awaited disparity study funded by the City of Oakland shows dramatic evidence that city government is practicing a deeply embedded pattern of systemic discrimination in the spending of public money on outside contracts that excludes minority- and woman-owned businesses, especially African Americans.

Instead, a majority of public money goes to a disproportionate handful of white male-owned companies that are based outside of Oakland, according to the 369-page report produced for the city by Mason Tillman Associates, an Oakland-based firm that performs statistical, legal and economic analyses of contracting and hiring.

The current study covers five years, 2016-2021, roughly overlapping the two tenures of Libby Schaaf, who served as mayor from January 2015 to January 2023.

The amount of dollars at stake in these contracts was significant in the four areas that were studied, a total of $486.7 million including $214.6 million on construction, $28.6 million on architecture, and engineering, $78.9 million on professional services, and $164.6 million on goods and services.

While the city’s policies are good, “the practices are not consistent with policy,” said Dr. Eleanor Ramsey, founder and CEO of Mason Tillman Associates.

There have been four disparity studies during the last 20 years, all showing a pattern of discrimination against women and minorities, especially African Americans, she said. “You have good procurement policy but poor enforcement.”

“Most minority- and women-owned businesses did not receive their fair share of city-funded contracts,” she continued. “Over 50% of the city’s prime contract dollars were awarded to white-owned male businesses that controlled most subcontracting awards. And nearly 65% of the city’s prime contracts were awarded to non-Oakland businesses.”

As a result, she said, “there is a direct loss of revenue to Oakland businesses and to business tax in the city… There is also an indirect loss of sales and property taxes (and) increased commercial office vacancies and empty retail space.”

Much of the discrimination occurs in the methods used by individual city departments when issuing outside contracts. Many departments have found “creative” ways to circumvent policies, including issuing “emergency” contracts for emergencies that do not exist and providing waivers to requirements to contract with women- and minority-owned businesses, Ramsey said.

Many of the smaller contracts – 59% of total contracts issued – never go to the City Council for approval.

Some people argue that the contracts go to a few big companies because small businesses either do not exist or cannot do the work. But the reality is that a majority of city contracts are small, under $100,000, and there are many Black-, woman- and minority-owned companies available in Oakland, said Ramsey.

“Until we address the disparities that we are seeing, not just in this report but with our own eyes, we will be consistently challenged to create safety, to create equity, and to create the city that we all deserve,” said Fife.

A special issue highlighted in the disparity report was the way city departments handled spending of federal money issued in grants through a state agency, Caltrans. Under federal guidelines, 17.06%. of the dollars should go to Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBEs).

“The fact is that only 2.16% of all the dollars awarded on contracts (went to) DBEs,” Ramsey said.

Speaking at the committee meeting, City Councilmember Ken Houston said, “It’s not fair, it’s not right. If we had implemented (city policies) 24 years ago, we wouldn’t be sitting here (now) waiving (policies).”

“What about us? We want vacations. We want to have savings for our children. We’re dying out here,” he said.

Councilmember Charlene Wang said that she noticed when reading the report that “two types of business owners that are consistently experiencing the most appalling discrimination” are African Americans and minority females.

“It’s gotten worse” over the past 20 years, she said. “It’s notable that businesses have survived despite the fact that they have not been able to do business with their own city.”

Also speaking at the meeting, Brenda Harbin-Forte, a retired Alameda County Superior Court judge, and chair of the Legal Redress Committee for the Oakland NAACP, said, “I am so glad this disparity study finally was made public. These findings … are not just troubling, they are appalling, that we have let these things go on in our city.”

“We need action, we need activity,” she said. “We need for the City Council and others to recognize that you must immediately do something to rectify the situation that has been allowed to go on. The report says that the city was an active or inactive or unintentional or whatever participant in what has been going on in the city. We need fairness.”

Cathy Adams, president of the Oakland African American Chamber of Commerce, said, “The report in my opinion was very clear. It gave directions, and I feel that we should accept the consultant Dr. Ramsey’s recommendations.

“We understand what the disparities are; it’s going to be upon the city, our councilmembers, and our department heads to just get in alignment,” she said.

Said West Oakland activist Carol Wyatt, “For a diverse city to produce these results is a disgrace. The study shows that roughly 83% of the city contracting dollars went to non-minority white male-owned firms under so-called race neutral policies

These conditions are not “a reflection of a lack of qualified local firms,” she continued. “Oakland does not have a workforce shortage; it has a training, local hire, and capacity-building problem.”

“That failure must be examined and corrected,” she said. “The length of time the study sat without action, only further heightens the need for accountability.”

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COMMENTARY: The National Protest Must Be Accompanied with Our Votes

Just as Trump is gathering election data like having the FBI take all the election data in Georgia from the 2020 election, so must we organize in preparation for the coming primary season to have the right people on ballots in each Republican district, so that we can regain control of the House of Representatives and by doing so, restore the separation of powers and balance that our democracy is being deprived of.

Published

1 week ago

February 10, 2026

Oakland Post

Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper. File photo..

By Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper

As thousands of Americans march every week in cities across this great nation, it must be remembered that the protest without the vote is of no concern to Donald Trump and his administration.

In every city, there is a personal connection to the U.S. Congress. In too many cases, the member of Congress representing the people of that city and the congressional district in which it sits, is a Republican. It is the Republicans who are giving silent support to the destructive actions of those persons like the U.S. Attorney General, the Director of Homeland Security, and the National Intelligence Director, who are carrying out the revenge campaign of the President rather than upholding the oath of office each of them took “to Defend The Constitution of the United States.”

In California, the primary comes in June 2026. The congressional races must be a priority just as much as the local election of people has been so important in keeping ICE from acquiring facilities to build more prisons around the country.

“We the People” are winning this battle, even though it might not look like it. Each of us must get involved now, right where we are.

In this Black History month, it is important to remember that all we have accomplished in this nation has been “in spite of” and not “because of.” Frederick Douglas said, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle.”

Today, the struggle is to maintain our very institutions and history. Our strength in this struggle rests in our “collectiveness.” Our newspapers and journalists are at the greatest risk. We must not personally add to the attack by ignoring those who have been our very foundation, our Black press.

Are you spending your dollars this Black History Month with those who salute and honor contributions by supporting those who tell our stories? Remember that silence is the same as consent and support for the opposition. Where do you stand and where will your dollars go?