The Guardian
– by Erin Sheridan
Revolution starts small, attorney Andrea Henson told the crowd around her. It was mid-October, and press had gathered on a quiet intersection in Berkeley, California. Behind Henson was a row of tents, some painted red and black with words posing the same question: “Where do we go?”
What started in September as a group of tents pitched on the lawn of Berkeley’s Old City Hall has since swelled to more than half a dozen protest encampments scattered across the city’s public spaces. They are set up by a coalition of housed and unhoused residents demanding an end to policies that criminalize unsheltered homelessness.
This occupation is a last-ditch effort to claim safe public space, following the US supreme court’s overturning of Johnson v Grants Pass, which re-legalized criminal penalties against residents who violate cities’ anti-camping ordinances, even when no alternative shelter is available.
Following the ruling, dozens of cities around the US issued new, harsher anti-camping policies. Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Center, said his organization had seen at least 60 cities pass “anti-homeless, anti-camping laws”, and at least 40 additional cities have pending legislation.
In California, which is home to the largest unsheltered homeless population in the US, Governor Gavin Newsom cited Grants Pass when he signed an executive order requiring cities to make reasonable efforts to clear encampments and threatening reduced funding for cities that fail to do so.
In the wake of Newsom’s order, Berkeley, and neighboring Oakland, both made it easier for authorities to remove encampments. The changes, the activists say, unfairly target people of color, people with disabilities and senior citizens who are disproportionately represented in the unhoused population, and they are not planning to end their occupation until they are rolled back.
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Organizers say the encampments are meant to be a safe place for residents displaced from existing encampments across the East Bay. There’s 24/7 access to community, food, water and restrooms. At Ohlone Park, organizers have created a free store. Protesters say they will also be demanding legal protections for unhoused people living in encampments, similar to the due process rights afforded to tenants during evictions.
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Neither Berkeley nor Oakland have enough shelter capacity to cover its unhoused residents. Berkeley’s availability fluctuates daily, the city said, with approximately 350 beds available in both congregate and non-congregate to serve an unhoused population that was estimated in January to be 844, nearly 400 of whom were unsheltered. Oakland’s 1,627 beds, including group facilities, cabins and RV parking sites, serve an estimated 5,500 people, over 3,600 of them unsheltered.
The number of unhoused people in both cities, collected through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s annual Point in Time Count, is widely thought to underestimate the scale of homelessness.
And even when beds are available, barriers to entry are manifold, advocates, attorneys and outreach workers said.
“This is a huge civil rights issue,” said Brigitte Nicoletti of the East Bay Community Law Center.
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Stepped-up encampment sweeps risk stalling efforts to get people into stable housing, argued Ian Cordova Morales, the board president of Where Do We Go Berkeley? and a housing navigator for Oakland’s Homeless Action Center.
The application for supportive housing in Alameda County, where Oakland is located, can take up to two years, Cordova Morales said, and requires that his clients obtain all necessary identification and documents, as well as proof of a source of income, before they can qualify. “And then a sweep happens, and we can’t find them, and they miss these housing matches,” he said.
Photo credit: Erin Sheridan, KQED
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