Mayor Sheng Thao (right) and Assistant City Administrator Harold Duffey (left) announce Executive Order 2024-1 from the recently cleared encampment at MLK Jr. Way and 23rd Street, September 23, 2024. Credit: @MayorShengThao, YouTube

In Alameda County, homelessness has more than doubled since 2017. Local jurisdictions have been under increasing pressure to address this problem, but in the absence of efforts to affect meaningful, positive change, Oakland has begun to rely on old tactics to address its problems—sweeping and criminalizing—despite the mountains of evidence that show, without any doubt, that these tactics not only don’t work, but in fact make the problem worse.

Since last summer, the City of Oakland has dramatically ramped up its encampment sweep operations. Emboldened by the Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson and Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order N-1-24, Mayor Sheng Thao signed Executive Order 2024-1 in September 2024 to expand “emergency” criteria for encampment closures, stating that “in no case, will emergency or urgent closures be delayed for shelter unavailability.” 

Since then, the city’s Encampment Management Team (EMT) has moved away from the shelter provisions of its Encampment Management Policy (EMP) and begun sweeping encampments without offering alternative shelter to the unhoused residents they displace. 

City officials will imply that sweeps work to reduce homelessness, but simultaneously admit that they don’t, often blaming homeless people’s refusal of shelter offers as the primary reason. In reality, the City of Oakland does not have the resources or capacity to effectively house people affected by sweeps, as clearly stated in Thao’s executive order:

“…the current number of homeless individuals living in Oakland far outpaces the number of existing safe parking spots, shelter beds, transitional housing or permanent supportive housing units available in the City.”

The city’s approach to encampment sweeps in the post-Grants Pass era is one of self-contradiction and dishonesty, which is also evident in its handling of a number of state-funded evictions announced last year.

In April 2024, the City of Oakland released a statement announcing a $7.2 million Encampment Resolution Funding (ERF) grant—a state program that provides funding to jurisdictions to “resolve” homeless encampments—to close “the long-standing encampments at Martin Luther King Jr. Way and 23rd Street, Mosswood Park, and East 12th Street…by Fall 2024.” According to the city’s ERF announcement, “over 150 people residing in these encampments” were to receive “wrap-around supportive services, be offered temporary shelter, and then [transitioned] to permanent supportive housing.” 

“Utilizing the ERF grant,” the release states, “a hotel site will be converted into an interim shelter. Participants will have a private room with a bed, private restroom, refrigerator, closet/dresser, microwave, and desk space.” 

In the months that followed, the city issued no further public statement regarding the ERF operation or acquisition of a hotel site, but in early September, one of the encampments named in the proposal—MLK Way and 23rd Street—appeared on the publicly posted EMT sweep schedule.

A sign taped to the fence near MLK Jr. Way & 23rd Street during the encampment sweep, September 16, 2024. Photo by Yesica Prado

On September 16, a week before Thao issued her executive order, the EMT began a week-long “full-closure” operation of the encampment, evicting all residents at the site without providing them with any of the provisions named in the ERF application, which clearly states that each resident would be offered a room at a transitional motel before receiving placement in permanent housing by Fall 2025.

According to the ERF application, “68 people were observed at the MLK Encampment, [and] 44 have been engaged by City and County teams.” But in a statement from the City of Oakland on September 18 regarding outreach efforts during the sweep, nine residents were enrolled in the pre-existing community cabin shelter program, five were sent to medical respite facilities, eight declined shelter, and “some placements into shelter [were] in process.”

So what happened? The city claimed that a series of “health and safety concerns” prompted the operation, including a double homicide on September 7, but there are additional factors we ought to consider.

First, Oakland City Council had recently passed legislation to redesignate the hotel identified in its ERF proposal, the Jack London Inn, for use by residents of another city-leased shelter, the Lake Merritt Lodge, after owners of the Lodge informed the city of their intentions to sell the building. 

Second, the State of California had delayed finalization of the ERF contract by over five months. Originally scheduled for May, the contract was officially executed on September 26, mere days after the city had completed its sweep operation at MLK Jr. Way and 23rd Street.

In addition to these broader systemic factors, the city’s decision may have been in part motivated by the looming local elections, in which the mayoral fate of Sheng Thao hinged on the outcome of a politically contentious recall vote. It is plausible that in the act of sweeping one of the city’s largest encampments in the heavily gentrified Uptown neighborhood, the Mayor perceived an opportunity to curry favor with voters and thus salvage her political career. 

Whatever the reasons, the operation was nothing short of devastating for residents of the encampment. Many had been anticipating housing offers after learning of the April ERF announcement. But after the sweep, those hopes were effectively broken. Legally speaking, the only thing tying residents to the ERF grant provisions was their residency at the site, and since MLK and 23rd was evicted before the ERF was finalized, their place in the proposal was no longer guaranteed. 

Moreover, of the three sites named in the city’s ERF application, MLK and 23rd was the largest and most vulnerable by population. Its residents were disproportionately Black, disabled, and elderly, relative to the two other sites. Per the results of a demographics survey conducted by the city for its ERF application, 90 percent (39/44) of all residents surveyed at the MLK and 23rd self-identified as Black, whereas at Mosswood and East 12th Street, Black residents self-reported at rates of 33 percent and 12 percent, respectively. Thus, according to the city’s own data, its September 16 sweep at 23rd and MLK had a disparate impact on the Black residents in its ERF proposal, potentially removing as much as 80 percent of all Black residents from its plan.

In the months since the sweep, the city located a new ERF-designated hotel site—the Extended Stay America on Mandela Parkway in West Oakland—and Oakland City Council has passed legislation authorizing the lease agreement, allowing the plan to proceed. As of this writing, the City of Oakland has not publicly announced when the Extended Stay hotel will be open and operational. 

It’s worth noting that in a November 4 report regarding authorization of the hotel lease agreement, the City Administrator’s office mentions residents of MLK and 23rd as recipients of ERF-funded housing opportunities, stating that “12 residents who opted to relocate are actively supported and engaged by the City of Oakland outreach teams.” By their own numbers, the city’s eviction of MLK and 23rd retained only 27 percent of the 44 individuals who were intended to receive housing and services under the ERF application. Furthermore, for the 12 residents who did accept services, there is no guarantee that their forthcoming tenancy at the Extended Stay site will result in permanent housing placement.

For the first 12 months of the hotel’s operation, the site will operate as temporary housing for displaced residents of the ERF-designated encampments, then transition into permanent supportive housing (PSH) as part of Alameda County’s Coordinated Entry System (CES)—a county-wide program that provides PSH to applicants based on risk assessment and housing availability. Due to the shortage of PSH in Alameda County, approximately 50 percent of its homeless residents do not qualify. If an individual is not approved for permanent housing during the 12-month temporary housing period, they will be exited to another shelter or back out onto the streets.

As the city gears up to sweep Mosswood and East 12th Street in the coming months, it is imperative that the City of Oakland is held accountable to the proposals, policies, and promises it has made to support the people they displace. These long-standing communities have spent years creating spaces of refuge and mutual support amidst the extremely harsh and challenging conditions of living unhoused in the streets of Oakland. When these communities are dispersed without adequate services and accommodations, too often it results in tangible harm to their well-being and a subsequent distrust in the system.

When the city haphazardly moves in to close these sites, often violating their own policies in the process, our unhoused neighbors inevitably fall through the cracks of the system. They deserve better.

Emma Welty is an outreach worker at the Homeless Action Center with a background in mutual aid & harm reduction.