Activism

Protesters Demand Hotel Rooms for Homeless During Rally and Occupation

Published

4 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

Posts by Zack Haber

Activism

‘Respect Our Vote’ Mass Meeting Rejects Oakland, Alameda County Recalls

The mass meeting, attended mostly by members of local Asian American communities, was held in a large banquet room in a Chinese restaurant in Alameda. The Respect Our Vote (ROV) coalition, consisting of concerned community members and groups, is organizing meetings in Oakland and around Alameda County leading up to the November election.

Published

1 week ago

September 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Some of the leaders who spoke at the Respect Our Vote – No Recalls!” mass meeting were (left to right): Elaine Peng, Mariano Contreras, Pastor Servant B.K. Woodson, and Stewart Chen. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

A recently organized coalition, “Respect Our Vote – No Recalls!,” held a standing-room only mass meeting on Sept. 14, urging residents to vote ‘No’ on the two East Bay recalls funded by conservative billionaires and millionaires with the help of corporate media and instead to support the campaign to protect residents’ democratic right to choose their representatives.

The mass meeting, attended mostly by members of local Asian American communities, was held in a large banquet room in a Chinese restaurant in Alameda.

The Respect Our Vote (ROV) coalition, consisting of concerned community members and groups, is organizing meetings in Oakland and around Alameda County leading up to the November election.

Speaking at the meeting, prominent East Bay leader Stewart Chen said that local leaders, like Alameda County D.A. Pamela Price and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, worked hard to get elected, and our system says they get four years to carry out their policies and campaign promises. But rich people have “broken” that system.

Within two months after they took office, they were facing recalls paid for by billionaires, he said. “(Billionaires’) candidate did not get elected, so they want to change the system.”

“(Our elected leaders) were elected through the process, and the people spoke,” said Chen. “It’s the entire system that the billionaires are trying to (overturn).”

“If a candidate does something wrong or enacts a policy that we do not like, we let it play out, and in four years, we do not have to vote for them.

“The democratic system that we have had in place for a couple of hundred years, it needs our help,” said Chen.

Pastor Servant B.K. Woodson, a leader of the coalition, emphasized the diversity and solidarity needed to defend democracy. “We need each other’s wisdom to make our nation great, to make it safe. We are deliberately African American, English-speaking, Latino American, Spanish-speaking, and all the wonderful dialects in the Asian communities. We want to be together, grow together, and have a good world together.”

Mariano Contreras of the Latino Task Force said that people need to understand what is at stake now.

The recall leaders are connected to conservative forces that will undermine public education, and bilingual education, he said. “The people behind (the recalls) are being used by outside dark money,” he said. The spokespeople of these recalls are themselves conservatives “who are wearing a mask that says they are progressives.”

In 2017, Oakland passed an ordinance that gave teeth to its “Sanctuary City” policy, which was brought to the City Council and passed because it was supported by progressive members on the council.

“That would not be possible anymore if the progressive alliance – Sheng Thao, Nikki Fortunato Bas, and Carroll Fife – if they are pushed out,” he said.

Elaine Peng, president of Asian Americans for Progressive America, said, “I strongly oppose the recalls of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price.”

Citing statistics, she said Alameda County’s murder rate was higher when Alameda County D.A. Nancy O’Malley was in office, before Pamela Price was elected to that position.

“The recall campaign has been misleading the public,” said Peng.

She said Oakland is making progress under Thao. “Crime rates are falling in Oakland,” and the City is building more affordable housing than ever before and is creating more jobs.

Attorney Victor Ochoa said, this recall is “not by accident in Oakland – it is a political strategy.”

“There is a strategy that has been launched nationwide. What we’re seeing is oligarchs, (such as Phillip Dreyfuss from Piedmont), right wingers, conservatives, who can write a check for $400,000 like some of us can write a check for $10.”

“They aligned themselves with so-called moderate forces, but they’re not moderates. They align themselves with the money, and that’s what we have seen in Oakland.”

Ochoa continued, “You got to put up signs, you’ve got to talk to your neighbors, volunteer whatever hours you can, have a house meeting. That’s the way progressives win.”

Pecolia Manigo of Oakland Rising Action spoke about what it will take to defeat the recalls. “This is the time when you are not only deputized to go out and do outreach, we need to make sure that people actually vote.

“We need everyone to vote not just for the president, but all the way down the ballot to where these questions will be. Remind people to fill out their ballot, and mail it back.”

Former Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who had herself faced a recall attempt, said, “In this recall, they used a lot of money, had paid signature gatherers, and they moved very fast. I talked to many of the people gathering signatures. They didn’t know what was going on. Many of them didn’t live in Oakland. It was just money for them.”

“Sam Singer, the guy who is their spokesperson, is a paid PR guy. He has media ties, so they’ve swamped the media against Sheng,” Quan said.

‘Oakland is… a city that implemented some of the first rent control protections in the country. So, developers and big apartment owners would love to get rid of rent control,” said Quan.

“We also established ranked-choice voting, which allows people with less money to coalesce and win elections,” she said. “That’s too democratic for people with big money. They would rather have elections the way they were.”