Journalist Heather Knight has identified the contradictions inherent in San Francisco’s encampment policy—contradictions that are even more glaring here in Oakland. On the one hand, Knight argued yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle, “It’s clear these encampments can’t be left to fester and grow.” Fires, overdoses, blocked sidewalks, sexual assault, weapons use, feces, urine, needles, trash and rats are the inevitable side effects of encampments. On the other hand, the city’s work to clean up these messes “fails to do much permanent good.” No sooner is a site cleaned up than, a day or two later, it’s back in business.
Ordinary citizens quite understandably shake their heads and wonder why the city can’t do more. Here in Oakland, all you have to do is read the comments on this blog, or on our Facebook page, to feel this frustration. With all the money we’re throwing at homelessness, with all our cops and firefighters and social workers and “homeless czars,” and with the law on our side, why can’t we clear out encampments?
Here’s why. Both San Francisco and Oakland are “woke” cities, where “progressives” dominate—or should I say “intimidate”--the government, and the most “progressive” of all are homeless advocates. In San Francisco, Knight reports on an outfit called the Coalition on Homelessness (COH), which says it seeks “to forge true solutions to the housing crisis and beat back mean-spirited attacks against them.” Another group, with which the Coalition on Homeless is associated, is CART, Compassionate Alternate Response Team, which asks the question, “What kind of City would be possible if unhoused neighbors were treated as worthy of life and dignity rather than as a nuisance or a threat?” It is groups like COH and CART that have been intensely politically active, applying pressure on Boards of Supervisors, City Councils and other officials, appealing to our guilt at the national shame of encampments, and working ceaselessly to weaken police departments (just as the Anti Police-Terror Project does here in Oakland).
When officials get elected in San Francisco or Oakland, they have to kiss the rear ends of these “woke” groups, who rally dozens of volunteers to comment at public meetings or attend rallies. Politicians like to appear bold and decisive, but the truth is that they cower in constant terror of the next election. All too often, they sacrifice their own common sense of right and wrong, and knuckle under to the loudest, most aggressive voices; and no group has a louder or more aggressive voice than homeless advocates.
This gets to the contradiction I earlier referred to. I believe that, here in Oakland, politicians such as Rebecca Kaplan, Noel Gallo, Dan Kalb and Sheng Thao understand how horrible the encampments are. I have to believe they’re rational. (I’m not so sure that Bas and Fife are rational, and as for Taylor, whom we’re interviewing next week, and Reid, I think they are, but we’ll have to wait and see). Why, then, would a rational politician do irrational things?
Again, because of the pressure the homeless advocates bring to bear on them. It must be very lonely to be such a politician—being forced to do wrong, dangerous things, simply because there’s an election coming up and you’re afraid of being unemployed. This is why the homeless advocates can get away with saying stupid things, such as that efforts to clean up encampments are “mean-spirited attacks” against homeless people (COH), or that letting homeless people live in squalor constitutes a “life of dignity” (CART). Encampments are not dignified places to live, and the public’s desire to clean them up is not “mean-spirited.”And, by the way, my friends at CART, encampments are “a nuisance” as well as “a threat.” They threaten our physical and mental health as well as the commercial vitality of our communities.
It’s easy, for me at least, to reimagine the Oakland City Council made up of sane people instead of wokes. A sane City Council would listen politely to the pro-homeless crowd, thank them, and then proceed to disregard their propaganda and clean up the encampments. That, at any rate, is my vision. “You may say I’m a dreamer,” a great man once sang, “But I’m not the only one.”
Steve Heimoff