The weird thing about the City Council’s proposal to house 1,000 homeless people in a gigantic camp at the old Oakland Army Base is that it was sponsored by Carroll Fife. In other words, Fife has finally come around to agreeing with the Coalition for a Better Oakland: for the past year, we’ve urged that the former Base be used to transfer as many tent-dwellers as possible off our streets and to that location.
Fife first notified her colleagues of her idea on April 21, in a memo entitled “Homeless Intervention at the North Gateway Parcel, a 22-acre expanse west of the 980 freeway, bordering the Bay. At times over the months, whenever I floated that same suggestion, I expected to be attacked by pro-homeless forces as desiring to erect concentration camps for unhoused Oaklanders. Someone even referred to “District 9,” the 2009 movie in which aliens from outer space are forced to live in a gigantic, barbed-wired camp, District 9, that separated them from humans. Now, fortunately, I no longer have to fear being labeled a fascist, since Fife herself has accepted my idea.
Fife proposed ordering the City Administrator, Ed Reiskin, “to study the feasibility of establishing a temporary homeless intervention, to house at least 1,000 residents,” including a fiscal analysis and an environmental assessment. Under the proposal, Reiskin would have to report his recommendations back to the Council by its first meeting in June.
This is quite a turn for Fife, who for years insisted on the right of homeless people to dwell wherever they wished. What could possibly have prompted her to shift her position so dramatically? Her own explanation, in her memo to the Council, is that “homeless interventions have not kept pace with the level of need; there continues to be a record number of people living on the streets with very little to no support.” This is clearly true; as we’ve been pointing out for a long time, nothing the city is doing to “solve” homelessness is working, or is likely to work, because the City Council up to now hasn’t been serious about solving homelessness.
Let us delve into the real reasons Fife wrote her memo. First, she’s on the losing side of the homelessness issue and she knows it. The public has becoming increasingly alarmed and fed up by the camps and their associated garbage and crime; even Fife’s own liberal constituents are letting her know they want the camps cleaned up, if not gone altogether. Fife herself has written of her frustration and annoyance at the blowback she gets from voters; she’s even suggested she might not run again in 2024. It seems likely to me that Fife is now “toughening” her stance on encampments in direct response to the blowback. This tells me that she is planning on running again. It wouldn’t be the first time an ambitious politician pulled a 180 in order to win an election.
At any rate, Fife’s proposal was unanimously approved by the Council on May 3, with 8 in favor and none against.
We in the Coalition strongly support Council Member Fife’s proposal to move 1,000 homeless people to the old Army Base. We respectfully recommend that more acreage be found there to house up to 3,000 additional people. We desire the City Council to authorize the use of compulsion to deal with recalcitrant campers who refuse to be relocated. And, of course, we expect the City to offer these relocated campers the full range of services at their new home in the North Gateway Parcel.
Steve Heimoff