Behind the lens: the making of Wood Street

I first met the Wood Street community while working as a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle. I was immediately drawn in by this vast community living under the highway in West Oakland. They’d built a life for themselves in a place that remained hidden to much of the outside world. People lived in fenced-in compounds, in RVs and hand-built homes (with at least one fully functioning shower and toilet!). They cared for pets and loved ones, played music and made art together, and lived with a sense of freedom I’d seldom seen elsewhere. 

After my first visit to Wood Street, I started pitching story ideas to the Chronicle. That turned into several podcast episodes that followed the community as they organized to fight an eviction from Caltrans, who owned the parcel they lived on. At Cob on Wood—the community garden built under the highway alongside like-minded, housed advocates—residents coordinated meetings and attended virtual court hearings. The visual of this scene just drew me in. I had never before seen unhoused people advocating for themselves on a scale like this, hiring lawyers, and fighting for their rights. I knew then that I wanted to follow this story long term. 

I was nervous, but ready to move on from my job at the Chronicle. I had some savings, and a supportive community that encouraged me to take the leap. I quit my job, bought a camera, and started following Wood Street on a daily basis. I didn’t know that I was embarking on the first steps of making a feature documentary at the time, I just knew this story held something for me. It was powerful to watch this group of people, who are continually demonized and demeaned, fight to take their power back.

I think I was drawn to telling this story in part because of my childhood experiences watching my dad struggle with addiction and mental illness. After our family home went into foreclosure and my parents divorced in the early 2000s, he fell deeper into unhealthy coping mechanisms, and out of my life. Since then, my father has briefly experienced homelessness and long struggled with unstable housing.

While I was in college, I started volunteering at a daytime shelter. It was there that I met men and women who were struggling with homelessness and housing insecurity, and built friendships with many of them. I remember feeling a clear line between my desire to connect with these people and feelings of loss around my relationship with my father. At the time, I saw reflections of him in many of the people who passed through those shelter doors. 

Since then, my understanding of homelessness has evolved, in large part thanks to the people I met at Wood Street. I followed the community with my camera, starting from the Caltrans eviction in the summer of 2022. Throughout this time, they were holding organizing meetings, trying to strategize ways to stop or slow the eviction, and later, trying to find alternate places the community could move and stay together. Despite some problems, the folks at Wood Street really valued the power of community—sharing food, clothing, and shelter as a unified group that had banded together against a world that often saw them as disposable.

The film focuses on John Janosko and LaMonté Ford, two residents turned leaders who helped guide the community through their struggle against displacement. Janosko, Ford, and other residents regularly attended city council meetings, pitched tents outside city hall, and tried desperately to get in touch with then-mayor Sheng Thao in an effort to stop the final Wood Street eviction.

During my year of filming with the Wood Street community, I watched them struggle through continued evictions—from private land leased to the city, from a Caltrans-owned parcel on Mandela Parkway, and finally, from the lot at 1707 Wood Street—known as Wood Street Commons—where many people had lived for years.

Since that final eviction, Wood Street residents have tried their best to stick together. Some people moved into permanent housing through Alameda County’s Coordinated Entry system, others transitioned to a new city-run cabin site nearby, which closed its doors just last month. Several people simply relocated to Raimondi Park or adjacent blocks along Wood Street, trying their luck at camping in a different location but staying close to their community. Now, over two years later, Wood Street Commons has organized to form a nonprofit, and they’re working on a plan to run their own city-sanctioned encampment. They’re also working with architect Michael Pyatok to design a deeply affordable, tiered housing site in Oakland. 

Among many things, the people who lived at Wood Street have taught me that homeless people are the best experts on their own experience. As journalists, we’re taught to refer to outside experts, often over people who experience injustice first-hand. But sometimes closeness is necessary. Sometimes you need lived experience to fully understand the root cause of an issue, and how it may be repaired. Following the Wood Street community with my camera for a year has shown me the depths of their knowledge and authority on the experience of living unhoused.

The film focuses on Janosko, Ford, and the rest of the Wood Street community as they navigate their personal struggles with addiction and mental health while simultaneously attempting the impossible—to save their often-reviled community from destruction. My goal is to allow communities across the country—specifically housed audiences—the space to really feel the stress and anxiety of an encampment sweep, to show what that level of continued instability can do to a person. 

The film aims to show a multifaceted story of lives lived outside. Janosko and Ford are portrayed as complex individuals struggling against insurmountable odds. I believe it is critical to subvert the politics of appeal that viewers often see in films and media about homelessness. My work does not seek to humanize this community—they’ve always been human. I’m just pointing a lens at what they’re doing, and trying to tell their story as accurately as possible.

We’re currently in post-production, with the goal of completing the film by early fall. We plan to submit to film festivals and are seeking distribution. We’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign that ends August 9, and have planned several in-person events in San Francisco and Oakland to show scenes from the film in-progress. Our supportive community has been vital to bringing this film to life, thank you for helping us bring this film to the world.

To support post-production costs for Caron Creighton’s feature-length documentary film, Wood Street, visit their crowdfunding page on Seed and Spark.