Back in November, 2018, before the pandemic, Oakland voters compliantly approved Measure W, yet another parcel tax on beleaguered homeowners. The money was to be used for undefined “homeless programs.” The measure had been crafted by Rebecca Kaplan and Dan Kalb, both of them City Council members at the time—two leftwing blabbermouths who never saw a tax they didn’t love.
The measure was fiercely opposed by homeowners, but needless to say it passed overwhelmingly, in our tax-addled town of renters, by a margin of 70% to 30%. Although Kaplan promised, in her ballot statement, that “the Measure includes an independent community oversight committee, to make sure the money is being spent properly, and to make recommendations for how best to solve homelessness and blight,” today, seven years later, it’s apparent there has been no oversight at all, no attempt to explain to voters where the money went and is going, not even any statement of how much money Measure W actually raised, and certainly no ideas to “solve homelessness and blight,” beyond the usual communist bleating for endless new taxes (which the City Council already is planning). If you’re sick and tired of this endless extortion of the public by our electeds, you might get in touch with Janani Ramachandran (District 4), who has emerged as the new Top Taxer on the City Council. Her email is District4@oaklandca.gov
I watched the latest meeting of the Commission on Homelessness on KTOP-TV and while it was painful to see the witlessness and stupidity of these apparatchiks, it was educational, and I share some of my observations with you. The Commission members looked like they were at a Pamela Price rally—leftist losers armed with resentment but with little signs of intelligence. The pathetic city employees they had summoned to be grilled had to kiss the asses of these petty bureaucratic dictators; it was so embarrassing, I actually felt sorry for them. This is what Oakland city government has devolved into: taking incompetent, left-leaning nobodies who couldn’t get a proper job at McDonald’s and giving them power over others.
The head of the Oakland Office of Homeless Solutions (distinct from the similarly-sounding Commission on Homelessness) also testified. Now, if you haven’t heard of OHS, it’s because it’s just a baby bureau, created by our stalwart mayor, Barbara Lee, in late August, to “oversee the city’s work on encampments and shelters, and keep track of data.” You might be forgiven for thinking that these matters had already been taken care of in past years by Oakland, but no. Nobody, it turns out, has been “overseeing the city’s work on encampments and shelters” !!!!!, and no one’s been “keeping track of data.” But that’s normal for a city that’s run by grifters, incompetents and race hustlers.
The Interim Chief Officer of OHS is named Sasha Hauswald, who comes to Oakland after a long career working in government homelessness programs, AKA “social impact organizations”. Welcome to The Town, Sasha! If Barbara Lee recruited you, I’m sure you’re more than qualified to waste our taxpayer dollars. In her remarks, Hauswald insisted Oakland needs to “invest” in “deeply affordable housing” for homeless people, an admission that social activists are no longer demanding merely “affordable” housing but “deeply affordable.” What else could that mean but FREE housing? In other words, housing on demand, because (as Carroll Fife is forever reminding us,) housing is a human right—even if you have to steal someone else’s house to get it, as Fife did.
Thought experiment
Fast forward in your imagination to the Summer of 2026. Oakland now has 47 different commissions, agencies, and bureaus dedicated to homelessness. Each is inspired by a vision of diversity, inclusion, and equity. All are hiring. Their total budget constitutes 40% of all of Oakland’s discretionary funds. All have the power to dictate to landlords, businesses and ordinary people how they, too, can be part of Oakland’s exciting journey to the Nirvana of deeply affordable housing. And each of them has the ability to place a parcel tax measure on the ballot to achieve this bliss. (No proposed parcel tax in the history of Oakland has even been defeated by the voters.) Confronted by complaints from homeless advocates that Oakland’s housing bureaucracy has become too cumbersome, Mayor Lee just announced she’s forming a new one to make the existing 47 bureaucracies run smoother. This new one will be called the Commission to Oversee Homelessness Commissions, or COHC [pronounced COCK]. Its executive director will be Rebecca Kaplan.
Steve Heimoff