I have to admit feeling a great deal of unease when I learned that the old Lake Merritt Lodge was being turned into apartments for homeless people.
The lodge is two blocks from my house, in Adams Point. Our neighborhood has been impacted for years by homelessness. There’s no way to prove that homeless people are the ones who overturn garbage and recycling bins at night, or break into cars, or steal packages from doorsteps, or litter the streets with refuse, or are the ranters who wander around like zombies. But I think that the more homeless people there are in the neighborhood, the more these things occur. So Lake Merritt Lodge made me worry.
It’s been a few months now, and I can tell you that the situation seems well under control. I walk past Lake Merritt Lodge almost every day going about my business, and I’ve never seen anything untoward. There are several scores of people living there, but I seldom see anyone coming and going. Occasionally someone’s smoking out on Harrison Street. In the Lodge’s fenced-in garden, which abuts a driveway between it and the Oakland Senior Center, a few people will be sitting on a nice afternoon, chatting or dozing in the sun.
The Lodge was purchased by the City of Oakland after a lobbying campaign by the organization Homeless Advocacy Working Group (HAWG). This same group rather violently opposed the Encampment Management Policy, which our Coalition for a Better Oakland strongly supports. HAWG implied that the EMP was racist, even though it was based on polling that was among the most comprehensive in Oakland’s history, and was passed unanimously by the City Council, which can hardly be accused of racism.
Be that as it may, kudos to HAWG. Lake Merritt Lodge seems to be succeeding as a temporary place to house the homeless. Its 92 units were filled to capacity by mid-June.
Its financial cost is hard to determine. Oakland is supposedly going to be reimbursed by FEMA through September, next month, but whether that has happened or will, I don’t know; and what will happen after that is also unclear. It seems to me that the problem with all these “temporary housing” interventions is that no one has explained how long “temporary” means, or what it actually costs taxpayers. If residents are kicked out after a certain amount of time, where are they supposed to go?
I suppose we’ll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, Lake Merritt Lodge, as well as a few other similar sites scattered across the city, seems to be working. It’s not making much of a dent in Oakland’s homeless numbers, but at least some people are off the streets who otherwise would be there.
Steve Heimoff