March 25, 2025 • 43 mins
Mia talks with Emma and Sathya, who do advocacy and support work for unhoused people, about Oakland's brutal regime of encampment sweeps.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Calls media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to it happened here a podcast about bad things.
Usually I don't know, this is mostly a bad things episode.
I am your host, Miya Wong. And one of the
kind of things we've emphasized on the show a lot
is that a lot of the structure of the kind
of open fascism that we're seeing now is stuff that
was put in place under liberal administrations, and it's practices
(00:28):
that are carried out by Democrats, and one of the
biggest ones of those and this is something that I
think you can trace the violence here and you can
trace the politics that it inspired directly to how we
got to Trump being in power. Is the just continuous
crisis in the US of governments doing sweeps of encampments
of unhoused people. And to talk about really one of
(00:50):
the most horrifying things that happens regularly in a country
of just unhinged and hideous horror is Emma, who does
advocacy work for on house and disabled people. And I'll
to County and Satia, who does support dream sweeps in
Oakland when yeah, this fucking hintshit happens. So both of
you two, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you, appreciate the chance
to talk with you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I always want to say that I'm excited and like
it is true. However, I wish I ran a podcast
that was about like good things, so that way I
could talk to people. It wasn't like, it wasn't me
being like, yeah, I'm excited to talk about like the
worst thing that happened. So I think a place to
start on this is when we talk about what a
sweep actually is on a physical level of what happens,
(01:39):
because I think people really don't have a sense of that.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, yeah, I think softya, maybe you want to take
this one.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, I'm happy to take this one. Yeah, thank you.
I feel like, first of all, before I even go
into it, yes, I think a lot of people who
have never experienced a sweep or don't have loved ones
who have been sweat I think a lot of people
have no idea what a sweep actually consists of, even
if in a general sense they feel that it's a
bad thing or a wrong thing. And I think part
(02:09):
of that is deliberate. Sweeps usually happen during business hours,
during nine to five hours, because at least in Oakland,
they're conducted by the Department of Public Works. They're city employees.
They work nine to five, so accept in cases where
they work over time or when the city uses loopholes
to get around posting notice and ends up doing a
(02:30):
sleep on the weekend. They're usually happening when a lot
of middle class housed folks are at work and not
out and about seeing what's going on. So a sweep,
and I'm primarily talking in the context of Oakland, California,
but I think it's safe to assume that these operate
in similar ways around the country. Generally, what will happen
(02:51):
is you, let's say you're living in an encampment. A
sweep has been posted. In Oakland, there is policy that
states that you're supposed to have received at least week's notice. However,
a lot of people don't receive this notice, so you
might not even know that it's happening. You might wake
up at around nine am to a bunch of heavy
machinery pulling up dump truck, small bulldozers, other types of
(03:13):
sort of like heavy equipment, and then you'll have somebody
from the city administration, like a city administrator's assistant, going
around announcing that the city of Oakland is there, you know,
making noise that your tent or your car or wherever
you're staying, saying, hey, this encampment is being closed down.
You have to be out of here. There usually are
(03:34):
representatives of the city's contracted outreach organization called Operation Dignity.
They're supposed to be there. Very rarely do they actually
have referral for somewhere to go. They'll basically just be like, hey,
do you want services. They won't usually specify what the
services are. They'll just show up and be like, hey,
do you want services. If you say yes or have
(03:54):
questions about what services are available, they may give you
a sort of very rundown of whatever might be available
that day, because they don't usually even find out what
openings are available until ten am on any given day,
so at the time that they roll up, they usually
don't even know what's available yet. So it kind of
(04:15):
progresses from there. I mean, every sweep is a little different,
but the commonality between all of them is that what
the city is there to do is essentially to erase
all signed that anybody ever lived there. So either you
are able to pack as much stuff as you can
and get it out of the eviction zone before the
city decides that it's your turn to be targeted or
(04:35):
all of your stuff ends up in the back of
a dump truck. There are other sort of specific pieces
of policy and operational things that can vary from time
to time, like, for example, they're supposed to follow a
bag and tag policy, which means that they're expected to
store up to a cubic yard of somebody's belongings for
ninety days at a storage location in East Oakland. They
(04:58):
rarely do this unless how to do so, and most
of the time, the actual process of going back and
reclaiming your belongings from that location has enough barriers that
almost nobody ever manages to do it.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
So, so to just make this clear, the thing that
they're doing is they show up and that they fucking
destroil your property.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Like the thing that it most closely resembles is like
we're doing our own miniature ethnic cleansings. Like that's just
like what that is.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Ye, yes, And every suite there are at least several
police you know, depending on the size of the suite,
that can be even more. And so there is a
very real threat of police violence, like underlying every single
encampment suite and so the suite that Oakland this week.
(05:49):
Practices that Oakland has set up are like very kind
of odd, and they are associated with different like lawsuits
that have occurred and the past couple of actually since
the seventies. But so there are certain requirements that the
City of Oakland is obligated to follow in like certain
(06:11):
provisions and offers that like homeless people are technically supposed
to be receiving and for a bunch of complicated reasons,
like rarely ever are so for instance, like the bag
and tag policy that Satya was just discussing, like they've
recently somebody did a PRA request to see whether or
(06:34):
not to city was actually following faithfully following that policy.
And I think in like over a year there were
I believe eight bagging tags that were registered in the
city system. And that was in that same period there
were like well over one hundred sweeps. You know, I
(06:58):
Jesus don't have the exact number on me, but are yeah,
actually five hundred and thirty seven closure two instances of
storing property. So you know that's people's their whole lives,
all their possessions, like precious items that they they're able
(07:20):
to hang on to are just yeah, destroyed and they
never see them again.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
And I would also add to the piece around like
the quote like offer of services, Like that's also something
written into their policy that they're supposed to be connecting
people to housing ahead of sweeps, and that's what they
use to continually justify the way that they operate. Is
that in for example, city council meetings and Homelessness Commission
(07:45):
meetings where city admin is questioned on their procedures because
they get complaints, like the Homeless Commission gets complaints constantly
of people being mistreated, losing all their belongings, never getting
referred to housing, and so forth. And the justification that's
constantly used is like, well, we're offering people services every time,
and they just refuse them. And I think that that
(08:06):
is pretty much the number one mythology that is continuing
to spur a lot of the like pro sweep discourse
in Oakland specifically, and I'm sure in other parts of
the country as well. And people are not, like to
be clear, most of the time, people are not actually
being offered services.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
It's just not happening.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, this is a national discourse he chose ault. I mean,
you know, I think a lot of it kind of
is concentrated in the most unhinged, like tech sectors in
the Bay. But like you hear, like officially Elon Musk
has talked about like, oh, there's like there's like a
homeless industrial complex, and like all of these people are
just like they want to live on the street, and
like they they're like turning down houses all the time,
(08:49):
and it's just like it's so it's so completely unmoored
from reality.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
But what's funny is I've actually used the term homeless
industrial complex myself. I didn't know that there is that's hilarious.
There is a homeless Yeah, it's just that the people
making money off of it are the people who are
perpetrating the sweeps. The reason that they're not actually putting
forth real solutions that will get people into safe shelter
(09:14):
and housing is because they're the ones benefiting from the
perpetuation of these economic conditions.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, there's so many things that I want to pick
up on, but I guess just on that point specifically,
Like there was an audit into California spending on homelessness.
I believe it was over a period of seven years,
and it showed that there was twenty four billion dollars
(09:41):
spent on grants to nonprofits or cities to provide people
with different services that are kind of designed around homelessness
and providing housing or legal services. Like there's a whole
range of things that's out there, but a lot of
(10:01):
the time like these are the only options that are
available to people, and they tend to produce less than
stellar results. So, out of the twenty four billion dollars
that was allocated to help homeless people in that same
period of time, homelessness in California just like skyrocketed, right,
(10:24):
So rates of homelessness increased while this money was getting
plumped into the pockets of the bank accounts of like
landlords and developers. It is an issue that people on
every side of the political compass like they like to
use this point to their own ends, right, So Elon
(10:48):
Musk talks about it, and like people on the left
will talk about it. But I think, like the experience
that people on the street have is very different than
any of these narratives that you tend to hear in
the media.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yes, unfortunately, we need to take an ad break. I
don't have a good transition here. I don't know, We'll
move of one set of horrors to a slightly different
set of horrors and go back to the first set
of horrors.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
All of this money is being dedicated to these programs,
and homelessness is only rising. I think, like one thing
that I've heard before that's a kind of useful way
to think about this kind of government spending is if
homeless people would be better off if you'd just gave
them the money directly, you know, then that kind of way,
(11:48):
it's really hard to justify these programs when that can't
be said of them, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
And I think the thing that you pointed out, Emma,
about the fact that we have huge amounts of money
allegedly being spent on my homelessness abatement or homeless services
at the same time that homelessness is skyrocketing is really
not an accident, because what that money is really being
spent on is to fuel exactly what is it, like,
the homeless industrial complex. There's a reason that most of
(12:16):
that money is going into the pockets of landlords and
developers and then sort of like these sort of large
like nonprofit almost like conglomerates of like service providers. And
it's because the primary point of homelessness services as it
exists in this country is not to get homeless people
into housing. It's to line the pockets of the people
(12:38):
that are making the most money off of the real
estate market anyway. And so because of that, it is
not an accident that you see homeless spending and homelessness
like escalating at the same time. It's because this is
the feedback loop, Like, this is the way that our
you know, economic priorities in this country are structured, are
(13:00):
such that those two things are going to feed into
each other because that money doesn't actually exist to serve
the populations that they say that they're using it to serve.
What they do get to do is by claiming that
that money is going into homelessness abatement, when clearly it isn't.
They then get to spind a narrative where they say, oh,
we've spent all this money, but the problem is just
(13:21):
getting worse. That must mean that it is the fault
of unhoused people and that they're choosing this because clearly
the services must exist to get them off the street.
In reality, that's not the case. At all.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah. I think also it's super important for people to
understand that these programs, housing programs, shelter programs, they are
out there, but they are decoupled from the sweep operations
that are occurring. Right So, the City of Oakland, they
(13:51):
are contracted with the nonprofit Softia mentioned earlier called Operation Dignity,
and they are required to check in with different encampments
that are scheduled to be closed at least a week
before the suite and the purpose of that is to
(14:14):
notify people that it's happening. The City of Oakland is
required for the terms of this lawsuit back in I
believe twenty nineteen, the Moralees lawsuit, and there was a
settlement that resulted in the city being required to provide
clear notices whenever they're going to close like a site.
(14:36):
So yeah, this nonprofit providers was to like notify people
and try to get them connected with services. However, the
services for the most part, like housing for people who
are unhoused, is largely funded through the federal government and
through this very complex and inaccessible system called coordinated Entry.
(15:04):
The coordinated Entry system is not something that the City
of Oakland or Operation dignity like that is not something
that they're providing people with during the suitep. So when
the City of Oakland, like for instance, and one of
(15:24):
the commissions on Homelessness meetings, the city administrator Harold Duffy,
he presented actually in response to a question about somebody's
wheelchair being destroyed by public works. Yeah, he gave this
really like roundabout deflecting answer where he said basically that
(15:50):
everyone who is at an encampment at the time of
the sweep has like expressly refused services like shelter or
housing or whatever, and that they kind of presumes that
the city actually has opportunities that they can provide people with,
(16:12):
which is just not the case. The Coordinated Entry System,
it is a program that is first of all, like
only people who are disabled can get what's called permanent
supportive housing through the program. But also it is in
such high demand and is so inadequate to the needs
(16:34):
that Alameda County is currently like the situation that we're
in that the wait list is like thousands of people long,
and it can take well over a year before someone
can get housing through that system. So it's just like
it's not true they do offer people what are called
(16:57):
community cabins, which are tough sheds. They're not even offering
people that they're full the full. Yeah, that's what they say.
They offer. Sorry, I had me to cut you off.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
I feel strongly about this, So I think it's also
where things like in terms of I feel like that's
a really a really useful layout, Emma, in terms of
like the way that the system is actually structured for
people not to be able to access services, I feel
like it's also worth pointing out that just day to
(17:28):
day on the ground, I feel like I feel like
I get to see a lot of sort of like
minute details and changes in the way that they're operating
in response to what they're like internal systems actually look like.
And what we have seen over the last six months
to a year is not only this pattern that e'm
I was talking about of like they're like people are
(17:48):
consistently not getting connected with services and then being accused
of refusing services just due to the conditions that they're
living under, but also everything that Oakland has and that
approaches like livable transitional housing, which is kind of laughable
in this case because we can also go into the
conditions of the transitional housing programs and shelters in Oakland
(18:09):
which are abysmal, but everything that they have that approaches
livable transitional housing is full.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
I very rarely.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Every few weeks, maybe I see one or two people
get referred to one of those programs, and far more
often I'll be in a situation. For example, I was
at a sweep over near twenty third and Northgate a
couple of weeks ago, and I was there when Operation
Dignity rolled up and I heard what they were saying
when they were talking to people, and this one dude
was going around talking to folks and he kind of
(18:38):
he wasn't even approaching talking about services. He was approaching
being like, Hey, I'm just here to let you know
that this area is going to be closed down, Like
there's a sweep that's going to be happening, so you
guys have to be out of here. So that was
what they led with. And then I prompted him because
I was there chatting with one of the guys that
he was talking to, so I prompted him. I was like,
do you have any services to offer? And then he
was like, oh, you can go over to Saint Vincent
(18:59):
de Paul, which is conger Get shelter in West Oakland
with about forty beds, and nobody is guaranteed a spot,
is just a room full of cots. A lot of
people refuse to go there because the conditions are so
terrible and they don't feel comfortable or safe sleeping in
a room full of a bunch of strangers with no
kind of security, no guarantee of being able to hold
onto their stuff. People are only allowed to bring in
(19:21):
like a backpack sort of stuff, I'm pretty sure. And
you also have to it's first come, first service. You
have to line up outside every single day, and you
are not guaranteed an indoor place to sleep even if
you line up outside. So what we have is a
situation where the availability of services varies from day to day.
I cannot think of a single sweep in the last
(19:41):
year that I have been to, and I'm at usually
multiple sleeps a week where there were enough guaranteed spots
available for every person being swept. So the implicit assumption
at every single sweep and the Operation Dignity people know
this too, like they know this, the implicit assumption when
they roll up, and the assumption that colors even the
tenor of all of their conversations that they're having with
(20:02):
people is that the majority of people are just going
to have to figure out how to pack their shit
up and find another place to camp. It's the assumption,
and it's gotten to the point where, like od employees
will roll up and like I said, they won't even
necessarily lead with an offer of services. They'll lead almost
in the hopes that the majority of people already have
a place to relocate. They'll ask do you have a
place to go? Before they offer services, or ask if
(20:25):
people are entered as services, they'll they'll ask, like, do
you have another spot to move this stuff first? Because
what they're hoping to do is eliminate as many people
as possible from their list of people that they feel
obligated to offer services to because they know they don't
fucking have anything.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, I think it's super important to just emphasize that point.
The city is telling the media. They're telling like businesses,
anyone that comes to them with problems related to like
helplessness or concerns, they're telling them that everyone is being
(20:58):
offered shelter and housing and it's just not true and
that is reflective in the city's own publicly available data,
so they actually publish like a list of all of
the encampment suites that they do throughout the year, and
(21:19):
in the Commission on Homelessness meetings, will report back to
the Commission about like service enrollment that they've done through
a certain period of time, and like from May to
September they had enrolled I believe it was sixty people
and to services like non specified services. And during that
(21:44):
period there was approximately eighty sweeps. And if you assume
there's at least five to ten people at every encampment
when they do a sweep, and usually it's more that
is like nine percent four point five percent of people
(22:05):
like getting enrolled into into services, and like of those
maybe a smaller traction getting into shelter. And when they
get into shelter, they just languish there, right, they aren't
connected with case workers who help them get through this
(22:27):
really convoluted coordinated entry process and like lengthy coordinated entry process,
and so within a few months they're just right back
on the street. You know, it's just ridiculous. And unfortunately,
because homeless people have very little like I guess you
(22:47):
could call it social capital, you know, the city can
get away with a lot of this stuff they do,
like blatantly illegal things that are against even their own policies,
and nothing happens. And I guess like maybe we should
back up a little bit and discuss the city's policy.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
It's from second at break and then we will come
back more ads. I don't know by them question mark.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
We are back.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, so yeah, let's talk about I think what the
city's policies are supposed to be versus like what they're
actually doing on the ground.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah. I mean, their policy is their cover your ass technique, right,
Their policy is what they refer back to whenever they
want to sort of like like Emma said, if they're
interfacing with businesses or house people, you know, and we
have a whole range of house people calling free one one,
which is basically their tip line for like go you
(23:58):
see a homeless person, you don't want to be seen.
But there's all a range of people. There's people that
are actively malicious and violent, and there's literally people going
out doing vigilanti shit and like destroying almost people's stuff
on their own. And then you also have people that
are well intentioned and really think the city is offering services.
So you have this whole umbrella and the narrative that
the city sells to everybody is bolstered by their policy.
(24:19):
That's the purpose their policy services, not to inform their actions,
but to inform their pr So I think it would
be helpful, Emma, how do you feel about if you
want to kind of give a breakdown of the city's
policy and then I can kind of give a breakdown
into what that translates into on the ground.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah, So this is like, it's kind of a complicated situation.
But the city has what's what they call their Encampment
Management policy, and it was initially passed in I think
twenty twenty, but it's gone through like several evolutions over
(24:55):
the past ten years or so, and it is related
to different Supreme Court cases and the settlement that I
mentioned earlier. So this policy, it provides certain very limited
protections for people who are homeless in the city limits.
(25:20):
The city is required by this policy to offer shelter.
I believe it's a week for any person who's subject
to one of their encampment closures. And also we mentioned
the bag intag policy. So if somebody, you know, they
(25:42):
are evicted and they move somewhere outside with the tent,
they bring all of their possessions with them. They are
provided with a I believe three foot by three foot
like storage space and this facility that is super inaccessible
(26:02):
and kind of like like I don't even know if
it's actually real, to be honest, because it's just like
nobody ever, I've never heard of anybody actually like getting
their stuff stored and getting back. But technically that is
a possibility. However, the city will only hold on to
it for so long before they throw it away, and
then the last protection or provision is the city was
(26:27):
until recently supposed to provide people with shelter. So a
few different Supreme Court cases are behind that provision specifically,
and I think a lot of cities kind of had
a similar policy framework that they were following until the
Grant's Pass ruling, and I guess maybe we don't need
(26:48):
to get into that too much, but basically, the whole
idea of that policy was like, if somebody is outside
the thing outside and the city suites them, they have
to provide them with some kind of alternative accommodation because
(27:10):
according to like the Ninth District Court, it was consideredly
cruel and unusual punishment to panalyze somebody for being homeless
without offering them some kind of temporary like accommodations. And
so that was more or less the city's nominal framework
(27:32):
for several years basically, and the degree to which they
actually followed these policies, you know, they really didn't, except
for in certain situations where there are like, for instance,
legal advocates who will file injunctions to stop the city
(27:56):
from doing a sweep on the basis of like failure
to provide an alternative accommodation. And typically those arise when
there is a very large encampment clearing operation that is
scheduled and a contentious issue. You know, a lot of
(28:18):
the time, for instance, they'll be people staying on city
or like California state land and the city will like
force them to move because of some development project that
they're planning to do. And so in those situations when
the media has kind of narrowed their their focus and
(28:41):
begun like discussing some of this stuff and the local press,
then like something like that became possible. But after the
Grants Past ruling this past year, the city was no
longer like obligated under federal law to all of those policies,
(29:02):
and in September of last year, the late Mayor Shankal,
she issued an executive order that more or less like
just totally rendered that policy framework irrelevant. So she put
forth a new framework that allows the city to sweep
(29:26):
encampments under a tiered system of what are called emergency suites.
So if for instance, a encampment is blocking a roadway
or a sidewalk, then it is a hazard to the
(29:47):
public quote unquote, or if it's somebody has a tent
that is up against a building of some sort, it's
a fire hazard. And so in this tiered system, there's
like different levels of safety hazards that they're doing now.
And basically what that looks like is like a fire
marshal and the city administrator will convene after somebody calls
(30:13):
in a complaint about somebody that's staying outside by their business.
And with the fire hazard one, I believe that they
can just sweep without any prior notice, whereas the other
two there is some like level of notice that they're
technically required to provide. But yeah, so the shelter provisions
(30:34):
and the notice and storage like it, they're technically still
supposed to follow that by their own city resolution, but
there is this provision that like, if for instance, they
issue somebody like a no or a one hour notice
(30:56):
to leave because of like a fire hazard, and like
add kids can't make it there because they don't really
know nobody knows it's happening, then the city can just
do that and not offer people anything. Right, So these
policies have the effect of disempowering our the ability to
(31:16):
respond to like a scheduled operation. Then the city can
really just do whatever they want because nobody's watching what
they're doing.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
I guess we can. I think we can take this
here towards something I think would probably good to start
closing on, which is, like, what can people actually do
about this?
Speaker 3 (31:36):
First of all, I think listening to all of this,
it can be really easy to feel disempowered and to
feel like, you know, the walls are closing in and
there's nothing that we can do. And that remains not
the case, you know. I think people should feel empowered
to be able to physically intervene, because the most effective
way of physically intervening with this kind of violence is
to commit to relationship building, something that I've talked about
(32:01):
a lot with sort of like fellow advocates and folks
that are kind of involved in like sweeps response and
crisis response in Oakland is that the one thing that
the city cannot take away from us that we have
an advantage over them in is relationship building. Part of
the reason that, for example, the Operation Dignity employees are
(32:22):
so inefficient and so you know, seemingly bad at their
jobs is not just the fact that they don't have
anything to offer, but also because everybody on the street
knows they're full of shit because they never show up
with anything real and addressing housed people in particular, right, like,
one of the things to get out of is sort
of like the savior mentality or the guilt mentality of like, oh,
like I don't have any housing to offer, therefore I
(32:43):
can't do anything, Like I can't fix the problem, I
can't fix the roots, so I can't do anything. In reality,
all you really need to do is to learn to
set that mentality aside and show up and like start
meeting folks where they're at, Start meeting your neighbors where
they're at, start building relationships. You need to know, like
if you live in a particular neighborhood, Think to yourself,
(33:04):
I need to know that if any unhoused person within
a mile radius of my home was disappeared, I would
need to I would need to know, you know what
I mean, Like, I would want to know if that happens.
So if you go out with that understanding that you're
starting to build lifelong relationships with the folks that are
living outside in your neighborhood, ideally a lot of other
people in your neighborhood too, you know what I mean.
(33:24):
But like, what they're banking on is right now, while
while they're still trying to use a pr cover for
what they're doing. What they're banking on is people not
talking to each other, people not finding out about the
abusis people not finding out about the violations, people not
being there, and people not having relationships that will remain
(33:45):
strong even as they try to physically scatter people's communities.
And what you can do to start is start investing
in those relationships. Make sure you know what people's names are,
make sure you would know if somebody's routine was suddenly disrupted. Hey,
Beckuy used.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
To be on that corner.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
You know, every couple days out of the week, and
now I never see him anymore what happened to him?
And I think you can start there, and there's much
more that you can concretely do. I mean, one of
the ways that I'm accustomed to showing up at this
point is direct on the ground sweeps response. So we're
still able to keep track currently of what their schedule
is on a weekly basis more or less, Like there's
definitely operations we don't find out about until after the fact,
(34:22):
but the majority of their weekday operations we do still
know about ahead of time, and so we'll show up.
We'll make sure we get there before the city does
so like by eight am ideally right, Like we show up,
talk to people, will be like what do you need?
Do you need physical help moving your belongings out of
the eviction zone. Do you need to borrow somebody's phone
so that you can call somebody who said they were
going to come help you. Do you need help pushing
(34:43):
or pulling your vehicle? Any number of things really, but
just like being willing to show up and ask questions
about necessarily knowing what answers you're going to get, and
being down to follow up and like do aftercare with
people and chicken on folks and like keep building those relationships.
I think that those are the building blocks of the
zing that we're going to need to be doing in
the future, because you know, what the city is counting
(35:04):
on is that they're going to be able to successfully
create a scapegoat, right. They want to create like a faceless,
nameless mass of people that they can pin all their
problems on and then incarce rate. And the best thing
that we can do is make sure that they can't
successfully do that, because we all have relationships to each other.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, I really appreciate those sentiments yet, and I think
like the Oakland like advocates doing like eviction defense for
people who are living outside. It's grown in size and
like capacity quite a bit in the past here, and
(35:42):
like the city has noticed that. So they've actually like
they've passed various resolutions, and honestly, a lot of their
practices and their policies, like their Encampment management team, they
seem to be like responding to the increasing effectiveness of
(36:03):
this response, just like network of community defense. And so
I think that like all of those things are are
so important, especially as the term regime starts to eliminate
the very like modest social safety net that that there was.
(36:25):
And you know, before we end this conversation, I just
want to emphasize that in Oakland, like a majority of
the people who are homeless and are subject to state violence,
they are non white, mostly black, and are homeless in
(36:48):
neighborhoods where they used to be housed. And so the
gentrification that has happened, particularly in like West Oakland, and
the influx of high income tech workers that displaced them
and moved into their family homes, they are the same
(37:12):
people who are calling three one one to push the
city to displace them again, but from a tent or
a car this time. And I think it's just so
so important that particularly like housed people try to tap
into the networks of community defense that exist in their areas.
(37:36):
I'm sure that most cities probably have something comparable to Oakland,
but with the measures that we're seeing, cities begin to take,
such as in Fremont, which is about thirty minutes south
of Oakland, where they basically banned or criminalize mutual aid
(38:00):
with unhoused people. So you can get one thousand dollars
fine or a six months in jail for dating and
a betting a homeless person, and you know, that's an.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Extremely vague law, so like giving someone a blanket could
fall under this, So you could be fined or put
in jail for giving an unhouse person a blanket and
free month currently.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
So it's very important that people try to be aware
of their city government, how they're maybe passing anti homeless
measures and there in their cities, and trying to mobilize
against against that from happening.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I also have one more thing to add that I'm
so sorry, just specifically for anybody, for anybody thinking about
getting involved or organizing strategically around community defense, sleep defense,
whatever that looks like in your particular area, I would say,
but first of all, especially if you're a house person
in this case, like invest valuable time into getting to
(39:06):
know people on an interpersonal level and getting to know
people's needs first, instead of falling into the drop of
sort of imposing what you might have learned through like
other sort of direct action organizing, because this is not
that you know, like I think, yeah, first of all,
just making sure that you're being you're organizing as being
led by the needs of you know, homemost residents that
are expressing what they need to you. But also on
(39:27):
top of that, when it comes to this particular draconian
waves of legislation that are being passed or on, like
anti homeless laws and stuff, don't preemptively obey, you know
what I mean, Like if you live in Fremont, don't
preemptively say, oh fuck, I better stop passing out blankets.
Because what we've seen in Oakland with the particular iterations
of anti homeless legislation that they've passed here is that
(39:48):
just because they've passed legislation doesn't mean that they feel
confident enforcing it yet. And what you need to do
really is step up real hard and show them you
can't enforce this the way that you want to. They
are going to push back. There's going to be this
back and forth interplay that we've seen, you know, for
example in Oakland with the safe works and ordinance, which
we can probably get into another time, because it's way
too much to get into right now, I think at
(40:10):
this point in the episode. But it's a two way street.
It's this fight that you have to play to show
them just because you've passed this legislation doesn't mean you
can enforce in a particular way, you have to give
them something to fight against, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
So that's just the other piece.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, yeah, and like and the rest of their policy
is absolutely one hundred percent evidence that if the state
doesn't want to follow the law, it isn't real. But
that also means that, like, if they can't enforce a law,
like it also effectively ceases to exist. That's just the
sort of balance of forces here.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And there is a lawsuit currently against that,
and that sounds like, you know, the City of Fremont
is probably going to be removing that aiding in a
vetting clause from the resolution, but because that specific provision
is actually like in the city's municipal code as a
(41:02):
general provision, so you know, even if they do remove it,
charges could still be brought against somebody. So like, really
the entire ordinance needs to be eliminated all together.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Yeah, I guess do you have anything else that you
want to make sure that you get in before we
close out?
Speaker 1 (41:23):
I don't think so, not nothing that comes to mind.
But yeah, again, I super appreciate you having a song
to talk about this. Yeah, you know, shit is rough
right now. I think for me personally, it's been really
helpful to direct my energy towards things in my social
(41:45):
network in a way that's like constructive and helpful to others.
So I would definitely suggest if you're feeling like any
despair or like worried about becoming like black till or whatever, like, yeah,
just try to tappen and focus on things that are
happening in your community. It's good for you and it's
(42:10):
good for the people in your community.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Yeah, just seconding that, I think like being able to
tapp in specifically with like the types of unhoused organizing
and underground economies that exist wherever unhoused people exist, and
like being able to like tap into that and like
you know, again like speaking from the perspective of a
house person, like really humble yourself and learn from that.
Like you're going to learn a whole lot more relevant
(42:36):
life skills just hanging out in social settings with people
in the street than you are in any other area
of your life. So just go balls to the wall,
just start hanging out, just like spend all your time loitering,
Like just that's that's where we need to be right now,
is loitering in the street.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
That's where the organizing is happening. So yeah, street claim Space.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Oh yeah, this has been It could happen here. Go
loiter on street Quarters and make the state's life miserable
till it cannot do the things that is doing right now.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
It could happened here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
You can now find sources for it could Happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Thanks for listening.
Calls media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Welcome to it happened here a podcast about bad things.
Usually I don't know, this is mostly a bad things episode.
I am your host, Miya Wong. And one of the
kind of things we've emphasized on the show a lot
is that a lot of the structure of the kind
of open fascism that we're seeing now is stuff that
was put in place under liberal administrations, and it's practices
(00:28):
that are carried out by Democrats, and one of the
biggest ones of those and this is something that I
think you can trace the violence here and you can
trace the politics that it inspired directly to how we
got to Trump being in power. Is the just continuous
crisis in the US of governments doing sweeps of encampments
of unhoused people. And to talk about really one of
(00:50):
the most horrifying things that happens regularly in a country
of just unhinged and hideous horror is Emma, who does
advocacy work for on house and disabled people. And I'll
to County and Satia, who does support dream sweeps in
Oakland when yeah, this fucking hintshit happens. So both of
you two, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you, appreciate the chance
to talk with you. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I always want to say that I'm excited and like
it is true. However, I wish I ran a podcast
that was about like good things, so that way I
could talk to people. It wasn't like, it wasn't me
being like, yeah, I'm excited to talk about like the
worst thing that happened. So I think a place to
start on this is when we talk about what a
sweep actually is on a physical level of what happens,
(01:39):
because I think people really don't have a sense of that.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, yeah, I think softya, maybe you want to take
this one.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Yeah, I'm happy to take this one. Yeah, thank you.
I feel like, first of all, before I even go
into it, yes, I think a lot of people who
have never experienced a sweep or don't have loved ones
who have been sweat I think a lot of people
have no idea what a sweep actually consists of, even
if in a general sense they feel that it's a
bad thing or a wrong thing. And I think part
(02:09):
of that is deliberate. Sweeps usually happen during business hours,
during nine to five hours, because at least in Oakland,
they're conducted by the Department of Public Works. They're city employees.
They work nine to five, so accept in cases where
they work over time or when the city uses loopholes
to get around posting notice and ends up doing a
(02:30):
sleep on the weekend. They're usually happening when a lot
of middle class housed folks are at work and not
out and about seeing what's going on. So a sweep,
and I'm primarily talking in the context of Oakland, California,
but I think it's safe to assume that these operate
in similar ways around the country. Generally, what will happen
(02:51):
is you, let's say you're living in an encampment. A
sweep has been posted. In Oakland, there is policy that
states that you're supposed to have received at least week's notice. However,
a lot of people don't receive this notice, so you
might not even know that it's happening. You might wake
up at around nine am to a bunch of heavy
machinery pulling up dump truck, small bulldozers, other types of
(03:13):
sort of like heavy equipment, and then you'll have somebody
from the city administration, like a city administrator's assistant, going
around announcing that the city of Oakland is there, you know,
making noise that your tent or your car or wherever
you're staying, saying, hey, this encampment is being closed down.
You have to be out of here. There usually are
(03:34):
representatives of the city's contracted outreach organization called Operation Dignity.
They're supposed to be there. Very rarely do they actually
have referral for somewhere to go. They'll basically just be like, hey,
do you want services. They won't usually specify what the
services are. They'll just show up and be like, hey,
do you want services. If you say yes or have
(03:54):
questions about what services are available, they may give you
a sort of very rundown of whatever might be available
that day, because they don't usually even find out what
openings are available until ten am on any given day,
so at the time that they roll up, they usually
don't even know what's available yet. So it kind of
(04:15):
progresses from there. I mean, every sweep is a little different,
but the commonality between all of them is that what
the city is there to do is essentially to erase
all signed that anybody ever lived there. So either you
are able to pack as much stuff as you can
and get it out of the eviction zone before the
city decides that it's your turn to be targeted or
(04:35):
all of your stuff ends up in the back of
a dump truck. There are other sort of specific pieces
of policy and operational things that can vary from time
to time, like, for example, they're supposed to follow a
bag and tag policy, which means that they're expected to
store up to a cubic yard of somebody's belongings for
ninety days at a storage location in East Oakland. They
(04:58):
rarely do this unless how to do so, and most
of the time, the actual process of going back and
reclaiming your belongings from that location has enough barriers that
almost nobody ever manages to do it.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
So, so to just make this clear, the thing that
they're doing is they show up and that they fucking
destroil your property.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Like the thing that it most closely resembles is like
we're doing our own miniature ethnic cleansings. Like that's just
like what that is.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Ye, yes, And every suite there are at least several
police you know, depending on the size of the suite,
that can be even more. And so there is a
very real threat of police violence, like underlying every single
encampment suite and so the suite that Oakland this week.
(05:49):
Practices that Oakland has set up are like very kind
of odd, and they are associated with different like lawsuits
that have occurred and the past couple of actually since
the seventies. But so there are certain requirements that the
City of Oakland is obligated to follow in like certain
(06:11):
provisions and offers that like homeless people are technically supposed
to be receiving and for a bunch of complicated reasons,
like rarely ever are so for instance, like the bag
and tag policy that Satya was just discussing, like they've
recently somebody did a PRA request to see whether or
(06:34):
not to city was actually following faithfully following that policy.
And I think in like over a year there were
I believe eight bagging tags that were registered in the
city system. And that was in that same period there
were like well over one hundred sweeps. You know, I
(06:58):
Jesus don't have the exact number on me, but are yeah,
actually five hundred and thirty seven closure two instances of
storing property. So you know that's people's their whole lives,
all their possessions, like precious items that they they're able
(07:20):
to hang on to are just yeah, destroyed and they
never see them again.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
And I would also add to the piece around like
the quote like offer of services, Like that's also something
written into their policy that they're supposed to be connecting
people to housing ahead of sweeps, and that's what they
use to continually justify the way that they operate. Is
that in for example, city council meetings and Homelessness Commission
(07:45):
meetings where city admin is questioned on their procedures because
they get complaints, like the Homeless Commission gets complaints constantly
of people being mistreated, losing all their belongings, never getting
referred to housing, and so forth. And the justification that's
constantly used is like, well, we're offering people services every time,
and they just refuse them. And I think that that
(08:06):
is pretty much the number one mythology that is continuing
to spur a lot of the like pro sweep discourse
in Oakland specifically, and I'm sure in other parts of
the country as well. And people are not, like to
be clear, most of the time, people are not actually
being offered services.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
It's just not happening.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, this is a national discourse he chose ault. I mean,
you know, I think a lot of it kind of
is concentrated in the most unhinged, like tech sectors in
the Bay. But like you hear, like officially Elon Musk
has talked about like, oh, there's like there's like a
homeless industrial complex, and like all of these people are
just like they want to live on the street, and
like they they're like turning down houses all the time,
(08:49):
and it's just like it's so it's so completely unmoored
from reality.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
But what's funny is I've actually used the term homeless
industrial complex myself. I didn't know that there is that's hilarious.
There is a homeless Yeah, it's just that the people
making money off of it are the people who are
perpetrating the sweeps. The reason that they're not actually putting
forth real solutions that will get people into safe shelter
(09:14):
and housing is because they're the ones benefiting from the
perpetuation of these economic conditions.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, there's so many things that I want to pick
up on, but I guess just on that point specifically,
Like there was an audit into California spending on homelessness.
I believe it was over a period of seven years,
and it showed that there was twenty four billion dollars
(09:41):
spent on grants to nonprofits or cities to provide people
with different services that are kind of designed around homelessness
and providing housing or legal services. Like there's a whole
range of things that's out there, but a lot of
(10:01):
the time like these are the only options that are
available to people, and they tend to produce less than
stellar results. So, out of the twenty four billion dollars
that was allocated to help homeless people in that same
period of time, homelessness in California just like skyrocketed, right,
(10:24):
So rates of homelessness increased while this money was getting
plumped into the pockets of the bank accounts of like
landlords and developers. It is an issue that people on
every side of the political compass like they like to
use this point to their own ends, right, So Elon
(10:48):
Musk talks about it, and like people on the left
will talk about it. But I think, like the experience
that people on the street have is very different than
any of these narratives that you tend to hear in
the media.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yes, unfortunately, we need to take an ad break. I
don't have a good transition here. I don't know, We'll
move of one set of horrors to a slightly different
set of horrors and go back to the first set
of horrors.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
All of this money is being dedicated to these programs,
and homelessness is only rising. I think, like one thing
that I've heard before that's a kind of useful way
to think about this kind of government spending is if
homeless people would be better off if you'd just gave
them the money directly, you know, then that kind of way,
(11:48):
it's really hard to justify these programs when that can't
be said of them, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
And I think the thing that you pointed out, Emma,
about the fact that we have huge amounts of money
allegedly being spent on my homelessness abatement or homeless services
at the same time that homelessness is skyrocketing is really
not an accident, because what that money is really being
spent on is to fuel exactly what is it, like,
the homeless industrial complex. There's a reason that most of
(12:16):
that money is going into the pockets of landlords and
developers and then sort of like these sort of large
like nonprofit almost like conglomerates of like service providers. And
it's because the primary point of homelessness services as it
exists in this country is not to get homeless people
into housing. It's to line the pockets of the people
(12:38):
that are making the most money off of the real
estate market anyway. And so because of that, it is
not an accident that you see homeless spending and homelessness
like escalating at the same time. It's because this is
the feedback loop, Like, this is the way that our
you know, economic priorities in this country are structured, are
(13:00):
such that those two things are going to feed into
each other because that money doesn't actually exist to serve
the populations that they say that they're using it to serve.
What they do get to do is by claiming that
that money is going into homelessness abatement, when clearly it isn't.
They then get to spind a narrative where they say, oh,
we've spent all this money, but the problem is just
(13:21):
getting worse. That must mean that it is the fault
of unhoused people and that they're choosing this because clearly
the services must exist to get them off the street.
In reality, that's not the case. At all.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah. I think also it's super important for people to
understand that these programs, housing programs, shelter programs, they are
out there, but they are decoupled from the sweep operations
that are occurring. Right So, the City of Oakland, they
(13:51):
are contracted with the nonprofit Softia mentioned earlier called Operation Dignity,
and they are required to check in with different encampments
that are scheduled to be closed at least a week
before the suite and the purpose of that is to
(14:14):
notify people that it's happening. The City of Oakland is
required for the terms of this lawsuit back in I
believe twenty nineteen, the Moralees lawsuit, and there was a
settlement that resulted in the city being required to provide
clear notices whenever they're going to close like a site.
(14:36):
So yeah, this nonprofit providers was to like notify people
and try to get them connected with services. However, the
services for the most part, like housing for people who
are unhoused, is largely funded through the federal government and
through this very complex and inaccessible system called coordinated Entry.
(15:04):
The coordinated Entry system is not something that the City
of Oakland or Operation dignity like that is not something
that they're providing people with during the suitep. So when
the City of Oakland, like for instance, and one of
(15:24):
the commissions on Homelessness meetings, the city administrator Harold Duffy,
he presented actually in response to a question about somebody's
wheelchair being destroyed by public works. Yeah, he gave this
really like roundabout deflecting answer where he said basically that
(15:50):
everyone who is at an encampment at the time of
the sweep has like expressly refused services like shelter or
housing or whatever, and that they kind of presumes that
the city actually has opportunities that they can provide people with,
(16:12):
which is just not the case. The Coordinated Entry System,
it is a program that is first of all, like
only people who are disabled can get what's called permanent
supportive housing through the program. But also it is in
such high demand and is so inadequate to the needs
(16:34):
that Alameda County is currently like the situation that we're
in that the wait list is like thousands of people long,
and it can take well over a year before someone
can get housing through that system. So it's just like
it's not true they do offer people what are called
(16:57):
community cabins, which are tough sheds. They're not even offering
people that they're full the full. Yeah, that's what they say.
They offer. Sorry, I had me to cut you off.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
I feel strongly about this, So I think it's also
where things like in terms of I feel like that's
a really a really useful layout, Emma, in terms of
like the way that the system is actually structured for
people not to be able to access services, I feel
like it's also worth pointing out that just day to
(17:28):
day on the ground, I feel like I feel like
I get to see a lot of sort of like
minute details and changes in the way that they're operating
in response to what they're like internal systems actually look like.
And what we have seen over the last six months
to a year is not only this pattern that e'm
I was talking about of like they're like people are
(17:48):
consistently not getting connected with services and then being accused
of refusing services just due to the conditions that they're
living under, but also everything that Oakland has and that
approaches like livable transitional housing, which is kind of laughable
in this case because we can also go into the
conditions of the transitional housing programs and shelters in Oakland
(18:09):
which are abysmal, but everything that they have that approaches
livable transitional housing is full.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
I very rarely.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Every few weeks, maybe I see one or two people
get referred to one of those programs, and far more
often I'll be in a situation. For example, I was
at a sweep over near twenty third and Northgate a
couple of weeks ago, and I was there when Operation
Dignity rolled up and I heard what they were saying
when they were talking to people, and this one dude
was going around talking to folks and he kind of
(18:38):
he wasn't even approaching talking about services. He was approaching
being like, Hey, I'm just here to let you know
that this area is going to be closed down, Like
there's a sweep that's going to be happening, so you
guys have to be out of here. So that was
what they led with. And then I prompted him because
I was there chatting with one of the guys that
he was talking to, so I prompted him. I was like,
do you have any services to offer? And then he
was like, oh, you can go over to Saint Vincent
(18:59):
de Paul, which is conger Get shelter in West Oakland
with about forty beds, and nobody is guaranteed a spot,
is just a room full of cots. A lot of
people refuse to go there because the conditions are so
terrible and they don't feel comfortable or safe sleeping in
a room full of a bunch of strangers with no
kind of security, no guarantee of being able to hold
onto their stuff. People are only allowed to bring in
(19:21):
like a backpack sort of stuff, I'm pretty sure. And
you also have to it's first come, first service. You
have to line up outside every single day, and you
are not guaranteed an indoor place to sleep even if
you line up outside. So what we have is a
situation where the availability of services varies from day to day.
I cannot think of a single sweep in the last
(19:41):
year that I have been to, and I'm at usually
multiple sleeps a week where there were enough guaranteed spots
available for every person being swept. So the implicit assumption
at every single sweep and the Operation Dignity people know
this too, like they know this, the implicit assumption when
they roll up, and the assumption that colors even the
tenor of all of their conversations that they're having with
(20:02):
people is that the majority of people are just going
to have to figure out how to pack their shit
up and find another place to camp. It's the assumption,
and it's gotten to the point where, like od employees
will roll up and like I said, they won't even
necessarily lead with an offer of services. They'll lead almost
in the hopes that the majority of people already have
a place to relocate. They'll ask do you have a
place to go? Before they offer services, or ask if
(20:25):
people are entered as services, they'll they'll ask, like, do
you have another spot to move this stuff first? Because
what they're hoping to do is eliminate as many people
as possible from their list of people that they feel
obligated to offer services to because they know they don't
fucking have anything.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Yeah, I think it's super important to just emphasize that point.
The city is telling the media. They're telling like businesses,
anyone that comes to them with problems related to like
helplessness or concerns, they're telling them that everyone is being
(20:58):
offered shelter and housing and it's just not true and
that is reflective in the city's own publicly available data,
so they actually publish like a list of all of
the encampment suites that they do throughout the year, and
(21:19):
in the Commission on Homelessness meetings, will report back to
the Commission about like service enrollment that they've done through
a certain period of time, and like from May to
September they had enrolled I believe it was sixty people
and to services like non specified services. And during that
(21:44):
period there was approximately eighty sweeps. And if you assume
there's at least five to ten people at every encampment
when they do a sweep, and usually it's more that
is like nine percent four point five percent of people
(22:05):
like getting enrolled into into services, and like of those
maybe a smaller traction getting into shelter. And when they
get into shelter, they just languish there, right, they aren't
connected with case workers who help them get through this
(22:27):
really convoluted coordinated entry process and like lengthy coordinated entry process,
and so within a few months they're just right back
on the street. You know, it's just ridiculous. And unfortunately,
because homeless people have very little like I guess you
(22:47):
could call it social capital, you know, the city can
get away with a lot of this stuff they do,
like blatantly illegal things that are against even their own policies,
and nothing happens. And I guess like maybe we should
back up a little bit and discuss the city's policy.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
It's from second at break and then we will come
back more ads. I don't know by them question mark.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
We are back.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, so yeah, let's talk about I think what the
city's policies are supposed to be versus like what they're
actually doing on the ground.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah. I mean, their policy is their cover your ass technique, right,
Their policy is what they refer back to whenever they
want to sort of like like Emma said, if they're
interfacing with businesses or house people, you know, and we
have a whole range of house people calling free one one,
which is basically their tip line for like go you
(23:58):
see a homeless person, you don't want to be seen.
But there's all a range of people. There's people that
are actively malicious and violent, and there's literally people going
out doing vigilanti shit and like destroying almost people's stuff
on their own. And then you also have people that
are well intentioned and really think the city is offering services.
So you have this whole umbrella and the narrative that
the city sells to everybody is bolstered by their policy.
(24:19):
That's the purpose their policy services, not to inform their actions,
but to inform their pr So I think it would
be helpful, Emma, how do you feel about if you
want to kind of give a breakdown of the city's
policy and then I can kind of give a breakdown
into what that translates into on the ground.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Yeah, So this is like, it's kind of a complicated situation.
But the city has what's what they call their Encampment
Management policy, and it was initially passed in I think
twenty twenty, but it's gone through like several evolutions over
(24:55):
the past ten years or so, and it is related
to different Supreme Court cases and the settlement that I
mentioned earlier. So this policy, it provides certain very limited
protections for people who are homeless in the city limits.
(25:20):
The city is required by this policy to offer shelter.
I believe it's a week for any person who's subject
to one of their encampment closures. And also we mentioned
the bag intag policy. So if somebody, you know, they
(25:42):
are evicted and they move somewhere outside with the tent,
they bring all of their possessions with them. They are
provided with a I believe three foot by three foot
like storage space and this facility that is super inaccessible
(26:02):
and kind of like like I don't even know if
it's actually real, to be honest, because it's just like
nobody ever, I've never heard of anybody actually like getting
their stuff stored and getting back. But technically that is
a possibility. However, the city will only hold on to
it for so long before they throw it away, and
then the last protection or provision is the city was
(26:27):
until recently supposed to provide people with shelter. So a
few different Supreme Court cases are behind that provision specifically,
and I think a lot of cities kind of had
a similar policy framework that they were following until the
Grant's Pass ruling, and I guess maybe we don't need
(26:48):
to get into that too much, but basically, the whole
idea of that policy was like, if somebody is outside
the thing outside and the city suites them, they have
to provide them with some kind of alternative accommodation because
(27:10):
according to like the Ninth District Court, it was consideredly
cruel and unusual punishment to panalyze somebody for being homeless
without offering them some kind of temporary like accommodations. And
so that was more or less the city's nominal framework
(27:32):
for several years basically, and the degree to which they
actually followed these policies, you know, they really didn't, except
for in certain situations where there are like, for instance,
legal advocates who will file injunctions to stop the city
(27:56):
from doing a sweep on the basis of like failure
to provide an alternative accommodation. And typically those arise when
there is a very large encampment clearing operation that is
scheduled and a contentious issue. You know, a lot of
(28:18):
the time, for instance, they'll be people staying on city
or like California state land and the city will like
force them to move because of some development project that
they're planning to do. And so in those situations when
the media has kind of narrowed their their focus and
(28:41):
begun like discussing some of this stuff and the local press,
then like something like that became possible. But after the
Grants Past ruling this past year, the city was no
longer like obligated under federal law to all of those policies,
(29:02):
and in September of last year, the late Mayor Shankal,
she issued an executive order that more or less like
just totally rendered that policy framework irrelevant. So she put
forth a new framework that allows the city to sweep
(29:26):
encampments under a tiered system of what are called emergency suites.
So if for instance, a encampment is blocking a roadway
or a sidewalk, then it is a hazard to the
(29:47):
public quote unquote, or if it's somebody has a tent
that is up against a building of some sort, it's
a fire hazard. And so in this tiered system, there's
like different levels of safety hazards that they're doing now.
And basically what that looks like is like a fire
marshal and the city administrator will convene after somebody calls
(30:13):
in a complaint about somebody that's staying outside by their business.
And with the fire hazard one, I believe that they
can just sweep without any prior notice, whereas the other
two there is some like level of notice that they're
technically required to provide. But yeah, so the shelter provisions
(30:34):
and the notice and storage like it, they're technically still
supposed to follow that by their own city resolution, but
there is this provision that like, if for instance, they
issue somebody like a no or a one hour notice
(30:56):
to leave because of like a fire hazard, and like
add kids can't make it there because they don't really
know nobody knows it's happening, then the city can just
do that and not offer people anything. Right, So these
policies have the effect of disempowering our the ability to
(31:16):
respond to like a scheduled operation. Then the city can
really just do whatever they want because nobody's watching what
they're doing.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
I guess we can. I think we can take this
here towards something I think would probably good to start
closing on, which is, like, what can people actually do
about this?
Speaker 3 (31:36):
First of all, I think listening to all of this,
it can be really easy to feel disempowered and to
feel like, you know, the walls are closing in and
there's nothing that we can do. And that remains not
the case, you know. I think people should feel empowered
to be able to physically intervene, because the most effective
way of physically intervening with this kind of violence is
to commit to relationship building, something that I've talked about
(32:01):
a lot with sort of like fellow advocates and folks
that are kind of involved in like sweeps response and
crisis response in Oakland is that the one thing that
the city cannot take away from us that we have
an advantage over them in is relationship building. Part of
the reason that, for example, the Operation Dignity employees are
(32:22):
so inefficient and so you know, seemingly bad at their
jobs is not just the fact that they don't have
anything to offer, but also because everybody on the street
knows they're full of shit because they never show up
with anything real and addressing housed people in particular, right, like,
one of the things to get out of is sort
of like the savior mentality or the guilt mentality of like, oh,
like I don't have any housing to offer, therefore I
(32:43):
can't do anything, Like I can't fix the problem, I
can't fix the roots, so I can't do anything. In reality,
all you really need to do is to learn to
set that mentality aside and show up and like start
meeting folks where they're at, Start meeting your neighbors where
they're at, start building relationships. You need to know, like
if you live in a particular neighborhood, Think to yourself,
(33:04):
I need to know that if any unhoused person within
a mile radius of my home was disappeared, I would
need to I would need to know, you know what
I mean, Like, I would want to know if that happens.
So if you go out with that understanding that you're
starting to build lifelong relationships with the folks that are
living outside in your neighborhood, ideally a lot of other
people in your neighborhood too, you know what I mean.
(33:24):
But like, what they're banking on is right now, while
while they're still trying to use a pr cover for
what they're doing. What they're banking on is people not
talking to each other, people not finding out about the
abusis people not finding out about the violations, people not
being there, and people not having relationships that will remain
(33:45):
strong even as they try to physically scatter people's communities.
And what you can do to start is start investing
in those relationships. Make sure you know what people's names are,
make sure you would know if somebody's routine was suddenly disrupted. Hey,
Beckuy used.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
To be on that corner.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
You know, every couple days out of the week, and
now I never see him anymore what happened to him?
And I think you can start there, and there's much
more that you can concretely do. I mean, one of
the ways that I'm accustomed to showing up at this
point is direct on the ground sweeps response. So we're
still able to keep track currently of what their schedule
is on a weekly basis more or less, Like there's
definitely operations we don't find out about until after the fact,
(34:22):
but the majority of their weekday operations we do still
know about ahead of time, and so we'll show up.
We'll make sure we get there before the city does
so like by eight am ideally right, Like we show up,
talk to people, will be like what do you need?
Do you need physical help moving your belongings out of
the eviction zone. Do you need to borrow somebody's phone
so that you can call somebody who said they were
going to come help you. Do you need help pushing
(34:43):
or pulling your vehicle? Any number of things really, but
just like being willing to show up and ask questions
about necessarily knowing what answers you're going to get, and
being down to follow up and like do aftercare with
people and chicken on folks and like keep building those relationships.
I think that those are the building blocks of the
zing that we're going to need to be doing in
the future, because you know, what the city is counting
(35:04):
on is that they're going to be able to successfully
create a scapegoat, right. They want to create like a faceless,
nameless mass of people that they can pin all their
problems on and then incarce rate. And the best thing
that we can do is make sure that they can't
successfully do that, because we all have relationships to each other.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, I really appreciate those sentiments yet, and I think
like the Oakland like advocates doing like eviction defense for
people who are living outside. It's grown in size and
like capacity quite a bit in the past here, and
(35:42):
like the city has noticed that. So they've actually like
they've passed various resolutions, and honestly, a lot of their
practices and their policies, like their Encampment management team, they
seem to be like responding to the increasing effectiveness of
(36:03):
this response, just like network of community defense. And so
I think that like all of those things are are
so important, especially as the term regime starts to eliminate
the very like modest social safety net that that there was.
(36:25):
And you know, before we end this conversation, I just
want to emphasize that in Oakland, like a majority of
the people who are homeless and are subject to state violence,
they are non white, mostly black, and are homeless in
(36:48):
neighborhoods where they used to be housed. And so the
gentrification that has happened, particularly in like West Oakland, and
the influx of high income tech workers that displaced them
and moved into their family homes, they are the same
(37:12):
people who are calling three one one to push the
city to displace them again, but from a tent or
a car this time. And I think it's just so
so important that particularly like housed people try to tap
into the networks of community defense that exist in their areas.
(37:36):
I'm sure that most cities probably have something comparable to Oakland,
but with the measures that we're seeing, cities begin to take,
such as in Fremont, which is about thirty minutes south
of Oakland, where they basically banned or criminalize mutual aid
(38:00):
with unhoused people. So you can get one thousand dollars
fine or a six months in jail for dating and
a betting a homeless person, and you know, that's an.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Extremely vague law, so like giving someone a blanket could
fall under this, So you could be fined or put
in jail for giving an unhouse person a blanket and
free month currently.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
So it's very important that people try to be aware
of their city government, how they're maybe passing anti homeless
measures and there in their cities, and trying to mobilize
against against that from happening.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I also have one more thing to add that I'm
so sorry, just specifically for anybody, for anybody thinking about
getting involved or organizing strategically around community defense, sleep defense,
whatever that looks like in your particular area, I would say,
but first of all, especially if you're a house person
in this case, like invest valuable time into getting to
(39:06):
know people on an interpersonal level and getting to know
people's needs first, instead of falling into the drop of
sort of imposing what you might have learned through like
other sort of direct action organizing, because this is not
that you know, like I think, yeah, first of all,
just making sure that you're being you're organizing as being
led by the needs of you know, homemost residents that
are expressing what they need to you. But also on
(39:27):
top of that, when it comes to this particular draconian
waves of legislation that are being passed or on, like
anti homeless laws and stuff, don't preemptively obey, you know
what I mean, Like if you live in Fremont, don't
preemptively say, oh fuck, I better stop passing out blankets.
Because what we've seen in Oakland with the particular iterations
of anti homeless legislation that they've passed here is that
(39:48):
just because they've passed legislation doesn't mean that they feel
confident enforcing it yet. And what you need to do
really is step up real hard and show them you
can't enforce this the way that you want to. They
are going to push back. There's going to be this
back and forth interplay that we've seen, you know, for
example in Oakland with the safe works and ordinance, which
we can probably get into another time, because it's way
too much to get into right now, I think at
(40:10):
this point in the episode. But it's a two way street.
It's this fight that you have to play to show
them just because you've passed this legislation doesn't mean you
can enforce in a particular way, you have to give
them something to fight against, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
So that's just the other piece.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, yeah, and like and the rest of their policy
is absolutely one hundred percent evidence that if the state
doesn't want to follow the law, it isn't real. But
that also means that, like, if they can't enforce a law,
like it also effectively ceases to exist. That's just the
sort of balance of forces here.
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And there is a lawsuit currently against that,
and that sounds like, you know, the City of Fremont
is probably going to be removing that aiding in a
vetting clause from the resolution, but because that specific provision
is actually like in the city's municipal code as a
(41:02):
general provision, so you know, even if they do remove it,
charges could still be brought against somebody. So like, really
the entire ordinance needs to be eliminated all together.
Speaker 2 (41:16):
Yeah, I guess do you have anything else that you
want to make sure that you get in before we
close out?
Speaker 1 (41:23):
I don't think so, not nothing that comes to mind.
But yeah, again, I super appreciate you having a song
to talk about this. Yeah, you know, shit is rough
right now. I think for me personally, it's been really
helpful to direct my energy towards things in my social
(41:45):
network in a way that's like constructive and helpful to others.
So I would definitely suggest if you're feeling like any
despair or like worried about becoming like black till or whatever, like, yeah,
just try to tappen and focus on things that are
happening in your community. It's good for you and it's
(42:10):
good for the people in your community.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Yeah, just seconding that, I think like being able to
tapp in specifically with like the types of unhoused organizing
and underground economies that exist wherever unhoused people exist, and
like being able to like tap into that and like
you know, again like speaking from the perspective of a
house person, like really humble yourself and learn from that.
Like you're going to learn a whole lot more relevant
(42:36):
life skills just hanging out in social settings with people
in the street than you are in any other area
of your life. So just go balls to the wall,
just start hanging out, just like spend all your time loitering,
Like just that's that's where we need to be right now,
is loitering in the street.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
That's where the organizing is happening. So yeah, street claim Space.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Oh yeah, this has been It could happen here. Go
loiter on street Quarters and make the state's life miserable
till it cannot do the things that is doing right now.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
It could happened here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
You can now find sources for it could Happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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