In 2013, a Bulb resident drafted a letter to visitors of the landfill, painting it on concrete slabs along the southern shoreline. The open-air treatise weathered with time, but has recently been amended.
At one point (not yesterday, not last week, but over a decade ago), this place came up as a subject of discussion before the Albany City Council, and that council made a decision: “We must remove the people who live on the Albany Bulb.”
That decision was made by people who had nothing to do with what went on here day to day. Their understanding of this place was framed largely by filed reports, brief walks, and political pressure. Because of this, the City Council acted hastily and made mistakes. Mistakes that did a lot of harm although they pretended as though they made them with the best of intentions.
You very likely only know this place in its current incarnation. You have walked here, heard the waves, and witnessed the unique beauty. You have looked across the water at the San Francisco skyline. You have, in common with those of us who lived here, an appreciation of this place as an escape, as an alternative. And this is very valuable.
If you had come here just over 11 years ago you would have passed by our homes, seen our tarps set against the rain, and glimpsed jugs of water placed near our tents. You would have seen we dealt closely with the same daily challenges others deal with at a distance through the intermediaries of property owned, bills paid, rent spent. You would have seen evidence of our needs and how we met them. But, would you have seen how valuable it was to us?
If you had been aware of these valuable aspects of the Bulb, would you have spoken out when the politicians made the mistake of characterizing us as weak, passive, and inhuman?
They said we had no choice but to be out here, that this is where some of us landed after falling through regrettable but sadly inevitable cracks. They thought that we were too lazy, too slow, too stupid, or too weak-willed and that, in some sense, we had painted ourselves into a corner by making bad decision after bad decision.
They pretended to be making decisions on our behalf to ‘save’ us. However, they weren’t fooling anyone. They made their decision as if we were merely annoyances or obstacles.
You see that this place has many fine qualities. But, would you have spoken up and said that it is possible many of us wanted to live here because of these qualities, and not because nowhere else would have us?
Would you have stood alongside us and declared that we were not negligent or lax; rather, we dealt with our needs directly in ways many would find difficult. By saying these things, you might have been able to help the politicians understand that we are human beings. Perhaps you could have helped them understand that we, like everyone, reside in a complex interplay between social and personal dimensions, not relegated to one or the other in order to suit whatever narrative might have been expedient and easy on the conscience for those who made the distinction. Maybe you could have helped them understand that we were not agentless statistics, we were not summed up neatly by a term like “homeless,” we were not without intelligence, and we were not without voices.
We were not without voices.
Most of the politicians never really became convinced of our humanity. But the few who did still made a big mistake: the mistake of thinking they could put themselves in our shoes. They thought they already knew how to treat us humanely, because they assumed that we would want the same things they wanted. Their decisions did not account for the particulars of our experiences—both of this place and of our lives here— which were very different from theirs, and even from yours.
Many people gave their own accounts of us and joined us in demanding our right to give an account of ourselves, and in demanding that our perspectives play a critical role in shaping decisions about the future of this place we called home.
It may seem this would have been asking a lot of you, and perhaps it would have been. But we would not have been asking you to do our work for us. Of course we tried to be heard. But it quickly became evident that the political process was operating in such a way that important voices like ours were not going to be heard, or listened to, or understood, even though many of our voices were loud, and strong, and articulate. The walls of the political structure can be very thick when approached from certain angles. You, on the other hand, might have come from a direction from which it may have been easier to get through.
In asking for your support the hope would have been to appeal not only to your awareness of our humanity, and not only to your appreciation of our unique and essential perspective, but also to your own self-interest.
You have felt the special qualities of this place. It is still beautiful even though we are not here. It is still symbolically powerful even though we are not here. But we added something.
This landfill is made from the shattered remnants of buildings and structures that not so long ago were whole and standing, framed in concrete and steel, expected and intended to last. Now, through the concrete, the grasses make their way. Atop the plateau a eucalyptus drives its roots down through the cracks. Waves constantly erode the shoreline and wash out the edge of the road. And, until 2014, here and there, in sections leveled and cleared of rebar, our dwellings were hidden away. Some of the spaces that remain popular hangout spots to this day, were originally built by those of us who called the Bulb our home.
We lived around, and with, and in the rubble. Lived. Not merely survived. If only you could have seen how hopeful it was.
The Bulb was not utopia. It was not free from strife, and chaos, and cruelty, but neither is anywhere else. It was flawed, but it wasn’t broken and it shouldn’t have been treated that way. We too were flawed. But we were not broken. Sadly, once the politicians had made their decision, a lawsuit was the only thing that ensured that we were not entirely treated that way.
Now those of us who still walk this earth are destined to do so yearning for the days when we fell asleep to the sounds of waves and wind and woke up to the sound of birds.
Enjoy the Bulb. It is yours as much as it was ours, or ever will be anybody’s.
Bulb Resident, 2025