Can Oakland Better Support Residents Living in Homeless Encampments?

Milton Murphy crowds in with a small group under the freeway at 35th and Peralta streets in West Oakland on a recent Wednesday morning. Several people who have been living in this camp over the past few months are standing around, some sweeping their spaces, while the sidewalks fill with stacks of their belongings ready to be picked up and either stored or thrown away by the city.

It's the scene of a homeless encampment about to be cleared.

“We have scouts going out to figure out the best place that would be comfortable and suitable for us as homeless people,” said Murphy, who says he's been living on the streets for about 12 years.

A paper sign on a nearby concrete pillar says, “Notice to Vacate: Illegal Encampment,” in stark all-caps lettering.

In the last eight months of 2015, Oakland cleared homeless encampments 162 times, according to the city. The residents, who often seek shelter under overpasses or in areas tucked away from view, pick up their things and move what they can. Many of them won’t use services offered by the city and nonprofits to find housing, and housing in the East Bay is increasingly hard to come by.

San Francisco and other major cities are seeing more homeless encampments. There are an estimated 2,100 homeless people in Oakland, according to a recent count conducted throughout Alameda County.

And as the Bay Area's housing crisis creates more scarcity in Oakland, the city is considering what other options it has.

Camps Often Come Back

Homeless encampments in Oakland often begin with just one tent, Murphy tells me. Then they grow and grow. On the morning last week when Murphy and others were cleared from 35th and Peralta, around a dozen tents were still standing, while others had been taken down, their owners in the process of leaving.

“It only took about a month for everybody to get here,” he said.

Camp clearing is driven by complaints that get funneled through the city’s Public Works Department. The city will alert an encampment 72 hours before crews clean the site, sometimes with the help of police, said Joe DeVries, the Oakland staffer who receives the complaints. DeVries takes offense when people say the city “closes” homeless encampments.

“We’re really providing a cleaning,” he said. “We have rat infestations, human waste, feces.”

Depending on where the encampment is located, the previous inhabitants will often resettle in the same spot a day later, he said.

So clearing a camp isn't a permanent answer to the city’s homelessness problem.

“We do want to provide something different and better than what we’re doing now,” DeVries said. “But there is a certain level of housekeeping that we have to do, or it’s just going to get out of control.”

Berkeley Students Challenge 'Status Quo'

Oakland is currently considering alternative solutions that would better serve the growing number of people living on the streets. The city spends around $240,000 annually on its homeless outreach to try and connect homeless people with services, according to DeVries.

But sometimes that outreach doesn't work, or people don't want to use the services. Plus, some of the encampments have really intricate home designs made out of very little.

“If we could provide an area for people where they could live temporarily while we navigated them into a permanent supportive housing -- I do believe that would be really helpful,” DeVries said.

Legalizing homeless encampments was one recommendation in a report written by students at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, which concluded that “the status quo [regarding the camp-clearing process] serves as a cyclical disruption for camp residents and creates an additional barrier on their pathway to housing.”

People who work with the homeless, whether through the city or a network of nonprofits, are currently committed to finding housing for homeless individuals first, said Peter Radu, one of the five students who co-authored the report for the city’s Human Services Department.

“The problem now is that the East Bay housing market is just so tight and so expensive,” he said.

Even with outreach and case managers striving to provide one-on-one help for homeless people, it’s still hard to find permanent housing.

“In the meantime, there are folks on the street tonight with nowhere to go,” Radu said. “There are not enough shelter beds. And even if there were shelter beds, a lot of folks are unable or unwilling to use those shelter beds because of a lot of personal issues.”

Legalizing homeless encampments wasn’t among the six possible investments to respond to homelessness proposed to the City Council last week. There were, however, other ideas with “low barriers to entry," including creating tiny homes, converting shipping containers into interim housing or modifying a large warehouse for shelter.

“The spirit of our recommendation is definitely being met and we’re very excited,” Radu said.

The council plans to vote this week on spending $180,000 more on emergency winter shelters, which could double the number of beds currently available in the city. But funding a larger system, which could provide better accommodations for unsheltered people and also lead to permanent housing, is a more complicated feat.

More Respect on the Streets

Within two days, a dozen tents have already reappeared under the overpass at 35th and Peralta streets. The sidewalks have been swept and the belongings that lay around just a couple of days ago are gone.

When I approach Terrance Dixon, he is lying in his tent, speaking to a friend who sits on a chair right outside the flap. Dixon tells me he is an ex-felon who is addicted to drugs. He's been homeless for a couple of years by choice.

He points out the tents down the street and says his cousin and friend live down the sidewalk from him. It's a community.

“We all out here," he said, "and we’re struggling together out here.”

Dixon shows me bags of donated food supplies. The bags have soap, a blanket, toothpaste, Kleenex, hand wipes and a toothbrush. He says that he’d rather live on the streets than have to compete for housing and income in the ways society expects him to.

“Even though I’m in a tent, I get more respect than an average man who has got a house got,” he says.

As Dixon begins to tear up, his wife comes over and gives him a hug, telling him it's all right.