Oakland Voices received a copy of this November 5, 2024 letter directed to Mayor Sheng Thao, Oakland City Council, City of Oakland Life Enrichment Committee, City of Oakland Department of Homeless Services, City of Oakland Homelessness Commission, City of Oakland Ethics Committee, City of Oakland Department of Equity.
We hope this letter finds you all in good health.
We are the residents of the curbside community on East 12th from 14th Ave to 23rd Ave.
A handful of us have lived here for 18 years. Some of us have lived here for several months. Many of us were brought to E12th from other locations in East Oakland in 2017, when the City destroyed our curbside communities and brought us to the E12th and 23rd Ave Village. Most of us have lived on E12th between 14th Ave and 23rd Ave for 5 years since we were evicted from the Tiny House Village on E12th & 23rd Ave, that was bulldozed by the City of Oakland in January 2019. We have survived dozens of evictions that the city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on to retraumatize us, set us back, and dehumanize us over the past 5 years.
This letter is following up on the attached letter many of us sent to Oakland City Council and the mayor a year ago in August 2023, which we never received a response to. Since then, our shanty town has grown.
We understand Lao Family Development was given $1 million two consecutive years in a row (2022 & 2023) by the city of Oakland to permanently house the residents of E12th. However, we are still here. Who exactly did Lao family house using that $2 million?
We understand that in April 2024, the city of Oakland and Alameda County received $7.2M in State of California Encampment Resolution Funds – Round 3 funding. According to the City of Oakland’s website, these funds are to be used to resolve encampments in three locations (Mosswood Park, MLK/23rd Street and E.12th Street) specifically for “transitioning residents to a safe indoor private location and then transitioning all individuals to permanent housing.” The website also says “Unhoused residents at these encampments will receive wrap-around supportive services, be offered temporary shelter, and then transition to permanent supportive housing. Utilizing the ERF grant, a hotel site will be converted into an interim shelter. Participants will have a private room with a bed, private restroom, refrigerator, closet/dresser, microwave, and desk space.”
Mosswood Park and MLK have already been evicted, yet wrap-around services were not provided, an overwhelming majority did not receive temporary shelter in the hotel mentioned on the City’s website, and our advocates can not get any answers from the city Administration or Homeless Services Department about why the transitional hotel was not offered to any of the evicted residents or the permanent housing. According to staff in Alameda County, the County was not informed or brought in to plan or offer the services they could have offered.
We here on E12th are all too familiar with the brutality, trauma, and setbacks the city of oakland’s evictions of curbside communities causes. We have survived dozens upon dozens of them since 2019, when most of us were brought to where we are right now by the City of Oakland. Rarely have any of us received any services or offers of shelter. And on the rare occasions shelter was offered, it was inadequate. Or the city and their non-profits didn’t follow thru with the offers. Or we arrived at the tuff shed shelters and we were turned away and told there were no vacancies. A few nights in St. Vincent De Paul in West Oakland is far from adequate for most of us. Those of us who are struggling with serious mental health issues are never offered shelter.
Based on the past 8 years of evictions we have survived thru, the mystery funds the Lao Family Development received, and the recent evictions of the residents of Mosswood and Martin Luther King Jr., we have created a list of all the residents of E12th from 14th Ave to 23rd Ave, listing people’s special needs including medical, disabilities and other accommodations the city needs to take into consideration. Since the city and the non-profits you work with have never done this, we are working with The Village in Oakland to do this ourselves for you to properly support us off the streets and on the path to permanent housing and society.
We are demanding the city follow the grant and contract they signed to receive that $7.2 million dollars. Provide us the services you said you would use those funds for until the transitional housing is located and ready for us to move into. And once we are moved into transitional housing, let us stay there with services provided until the permanent housing mentioned in the grant is ready.
We demand the City and County work together ,as stated in the grant, and make sure we are receiving the full wrap-around services, and also while we wait, bring back the portapotties – the last of which was removed from our community 6 months ago without notice.
Also, ensure Public Works is doing their jobs with weekly thrash clean ups. We know that on your Encampment Clean Up Schedule DPW is supposed to be at our site Tuesdays and Thursdays to pick up the trash that we the residents create and the outrageous amount of illegal dumping our community deals with. Today was the first day in more than a month that DPW has come to clean our community. What has been happening every Tuesday and Thursday for more than a month is one or two DPW vehicles park in the middle of the E12th and 18th Ave intersection for 5-8 hours without picking up any trash, or picking up a few trash bags from one corner on that intersection.
We know that the City spends close to $1,500 per hour on clean ups and evictions. How are you tracking if the job is getting done, and getting done properly? For the past month and a half has DPW been clocking in that they have picked up trash at our community. We can assure you they have not.
We also need weekly visits from mobile health teams; we need case workers assigned to each of us to help us navigate thru Oakland’s homeless industrial complex; and we need access to clean drinking water.
Our shanty town provides us with more stability and community than any nightly shelter bed from 5pm to 7am could ever offer us. And many of us have already been in tuff sheds and palette homes and exited right back out to the streets when our “time was up.”
When the city is ready to move us into the transitional hotel that this $7.2 million grant is supposed to be used for, we expect that the city, its staff and its contracted non-profits will be communicating with us far before any eviction happens to get to know each of our individual needs; to prepare us to move smoothly in to the transitional hotel; and to properly bag, tag, take inventory and store our personal belongings in storage as outlined in the Miralle v. City Of Oakland settlement.
We expect that we will not be offered a few nights in St. Vincent De Paul, or temporary stays in any of the tuff sheds. Many of us do not accept St. Vincent De Paul or similar nightly beds as an adequate shelter option to our shanty town on E12th. In fact, our shanty town provides us with more stability and community than any nightly shelter bed from 5pm to 7am could ever offer us. And many of us have already been in tuff sheds and palette homes and exited right back out to the streets when our “time was up.”
Please reach out to our advocate Needa Bee with the Village so we can move forward with making sure the necessary communication, meetings, and coordination needed to get us services, transition us off E12th and into transitional housing, and eventually permanent housing happen. She and the other advocates of the Village will track our journey to make sure we all receive the support, services and housing we need and have been waiting for for years
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