I have to admit being happily surprised a week ago when, on my way to the gym, I noticed that the lawn on the Harrison Street side of the Senior Center/V.A. Center, which is just a block from my home, had been cleared of tents. For a dozen years, that area was a disaster. Some of the campers kept their tents neat and tidy, but others had vast, ugly piles of trash, shopping carts, broken bicycles, rotting garbage and soiled clothing that were dangerous and unsightly. Many campers over the years were obviously mentally ill, screaming and ranting and brandishing pieces of metal as weapons. At least 5 fires over the years had torched trees and bushes, threatening the entire neighborhood. And this was all at the intersection of Grand and Harrison, an important portal to the city’s Uptown District and thence to downtown.
We residents of the neighborhood tried for years to get the city to clean it up, because a Senior Center that doubles as a Veteran’s Center, where on school days kids from St. Paul’s School play, seems like the most inappropriate place conceivable for an encampment. Lynette Gibson-McElhaney did her best but made no headway. Her successor, Carroll Fife, of course, couldn’t have cared less.
Thus my surprise when the tents disappeared. That same day I ran into Vincent Williams on Webster Street. You may remember Vincent from my profile of him and also because the Coalition gave him our first annual Person of the Year award. Vincent told me that he and his group, the Urban Compassion Project, were largely responsible for persuading the Senior Center/V.A. Center campers to leave; he’d worked individually with each of them and found new places for them to live, such as the Lake Merritt Lodge. So after a dozen years of inaction, this amazing young man was able to do what no one else could.
Yesterday, I noticed orange-vested workers cleaning up the site. Although most of the larger pieces of debris had already been removed by Public Works, the grass was in terrible shape, killed by the tents and garbage, and the dirt had all kinds of nasty stuff in it, the refuse of years of unsanitary human habitation. The workers were raking and cleaning everything and they even got into the weeds and bushes along San Antonio Creek, which had repeatedly been befouled by the campers. As I was watching, one of the orange-vested guys came up to me with a big smile. He gave me a flyer that identified the crew as coming from The Beautification Council (TBC), a 501(c)3 nonprofit that works with the City of Oakland and Alameda County. They do all sorts of good stuff (check out their website), including what they call Operation Blight Mitigation, which clears up empty lots where encampments used to be.
Nonprofits like the Urban Compassion Project and The Beautification Council (and the Coalition for a Better Oakland!) depend on the public’s generosity to keep going. If you have a few extra dollars, would you please consider making a donation to one, or all, of these three organizations? And to The Beautification Project, thank you so much for what you to do make Oakland more beautiful than it already is. We’re profoundly grateful.
Steve Heimoff