Singin' those Wood Street Blues

Important Notice: Please stop by our live conversation with mayoral candidate Seneca Scott today at 5 p.m. It’s at the Coalition for a Better Oakland’s Facebook group page.

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When the United Nations said that conditions at the Wood Street homeless encampment are among the worst in the world, it put Oakland on the map—for all the wrong reasons. We’re now alongside Sudan, Zimbabwe and Afghanistan when it comes to squalor.

The first time I saw the Wood Street slum that extends for more than a mile in West Oakland, I was shocked beyond words. Twenty-five blocks of garbage, rat-infested shanties and burned-out vehicles. If that wasn’t Armageddon, I didn’t know what was.

Yesterday’s news that California is giving Oakland $4.7 million to begin to clean up Wood Street comes as a pleasant surprise, but we have to ask why conditions were allowed to get this bad in the first place. For me, the finger of blame points squarely at Libby Schaaf. She’s been Mayor since 2015, meaning that, while homelessness didn’t begin on her watch, it greatly increased under it. At any point, Mayor Schaaf could have instructed her police and public safety departments to clean up the mess, not just at Wood Street but everywhere. She could have been out there on the hustings arguing for tougher enforcement of loitering, camping, fire and other laws; had she done so in 2016, 2017, 2018, she would have had public opinion on her side. Instead, the mayor did nothing, and into the void stepped “homeless advocates,” who filled the information vacuum with their own message: that it’s the public’s (i.e, taxpayers’) duty to “our unhoused sisters and brothers” to spend whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to get roofs over their heads, and provide them with mental and physical health care, job counseling, addiction services, and everything else that the advocates wanted.

However welcome Gov. Newsom’s millions are, there can be no doubt that Wood Street’s problems will only get worse. For one thing, if all goes as planned (and it never does), the money will provide shelter for only 50 people, one-sixth the encampment’s total population of 300. For another thing, some homeless people already are complaining that the proposed cabins are “unsuitable” because “they’re too densely packed together.” Talk about ungrateful. As I posted previously, temporary shelter is never going to be a suite at the Ritz.

What may be the most intractable challenge of all, though, is the tenacity of the residents to remain where they are—in their tents, huts, shanties and vehicles. Over the past 5 or 6 years, they’ve become emboldened. They know that progressive City Council members (Fife, Kaplan, Bas, Thao) have their backs, and will not permit them to be pushed around. They know they can refuse to do anything the city requires of them and suffer no consequences. Many of them, obviously, are mentally ill, and/or addicted to street drugs; they’re not the easiest people to reason with. Again, had the city been tougher on them five years ago, we might have avoided this mess. But the Schaaf administration let it happen.

One can still hope that newly elected officials will be firmer in their resolve to clean up encampments once and for all. We have an election in November. There’s a chance—possibly Oakland’s last—that a more pragmatic City Council and mayor will take the steps that a normal city should take, using compulsion to remove campers if they won’t remove themselves. Yes, they lead tough lives, and have been through many hardships. I know. But that’s no excuse for allowing encampments to thrive (if that’s the right word). Oakland is deteriorating. Everybody knows it. The city is headed to hell while the politicians who run it are conducting the train, looking at their own careers and incomes and not giving a damn about right and wrong. Wood Street is wrong. Every encampment in Oakland is wrong. The politicians who do nothing in the face of this catastrophe are wrong.

Those same politicians on the City Council are having a meeting today (Tuesday, May 10) to develop an “action plan” regarding police retention, which as everyone knows has brought OPD’s staffing levels to historic lows. The Council will examine “specific reasons for [cops] leaving” OPD. Does the City Council really need to have another meeting to answer this question? It’s been reported extensively in the media for years. Cops leave OPD to work at nicer, safer places—Tracy, Alameda County Sheriff’s department, Brentwood. Oakland cops are tired of the hassle, the disrespect, the ugly rhetoric hurled their way by the likes of Cat Brooks and her cabal of enablers that includes Carroll Fife. They’re also tired of a Police Commission that treats them like dogshit. They’re tired of Mr. Warshaw and his self-promotional stunts. They’re tired of having their every move criticized. You, dear readers, might consider emailing your Council person and telling them that the times they are a-changing; we the people demand respect for law enforcement. Instruct the City Council to tell the Anti Police-Terror Project cult that Oakland is pro-cop. Tell Bas she’s toast in the upcoming election if she doesn’t apologize for her past hatred of the police. Tell Thao you won’t vote for her for mayor unless she commits to an 1,100-cop OPD. Below is a list of City Council member emails, as well as those of the mayor and City Manager. Remember, these people work for you!

Steve Heimoff