From the annals of appalling news comes this headline. It should send shivers down everyone’s spine. Assuming the data are true, we have to ask, Why is Oakland’s homeless population rising so steeply, while that of other Bay Area cities is declining?
As usual, there are conflicting theories. The fake one is from the progressive-woke crowd: The massive increase in Oakland’s encampments is due to “a legacy of historic redlining, predatory lending practices, and systemic disinvestment in Black communities…”. More progressive word salad that means nothing. This is also the woke rationale for the inconvenient fact that “Black residents make up approximately 22% of Oakland’s general population, but account for 52.5% of the total unhoused population, 47.9% of the unsheltered population, and 59% of all new entries into homelessness.” These statistics are from Oakland's anti-displacement strategic plan, which “outlines the City of Oakland's commitment to addressing housing displacement and homelessness,” according to its website.
The second explanation is the true one: homelessness continues to rise because there are forces in Oakland that literally want it to. They desire to economically wreck our city so that poor people can afford to live here. These forces are (a) most of the individuals who have served as Mayor and on the City Council for the past fifteen years, (b) the employee unions, particularly SEIU, whose members staff the bureaucracies that run Oakland’s grift and corruption, and (c) the homelessness-nonprofit complex that includes most of the city’s “equity” groups, Christian clergy, and so-called “Black leaders” who have outsized voices in governance. From Jean Quan and Libby Schaaf to Sheng Thao and Barbara Lee, our mayors have told homeless people that we love than, they’re welcome here, and we’ll treat them better than Berkeley, San Francisco or San Jose.
And, of course, the homeless people came here in droves.
The important thing to understand is the paradoxical nature of these “social equity” politicians. On the one hand, they tend to be from lower class or middle class backgrounds. This helps to explain their resentment of successful people, whom they consider bourgeois graspers and racists. On the other hand, they crave the very wealth they criticize. Just take a look at Rebecca Kaplan, who for most of the last fifteen years has been one of the wokest leaders of Oakland. While she claimed to represent poor, working people, she carved herself out a nice, lucrative niche, getting herself on the city payroll even after she left office. What exactly she does to earn her $149,000 a year (plus benefits) city job, we don’t know, because Kaplan hides the details. We see the same phenomenon in all woke politicians: publicly they’re working class heroes, eschewing wealth and power for compassion and caring. Privately, though, they’re doing all they can to clamber up the greasy pole and hustle as much money as they can, so they can leave the poor behind, with their distasteful lifestyles, and become upper middle class.
There can really be no other explanation for the rise in homelessness. Everything stems from the city’s choice to keep Oakland poor. While the rest of the Bay Area encourages wealth, Oakland discourages it. And from the woke point of view, it’s working: rents continue to decline, ditto for home prices, and property values are falling off the cliff. This does enable the lower classes to live in Oakland or remain here, but it comes at a steep price: the city is dirtier and more dangerous, more run down and undesirable than any other place in the Bay Area. High-tech companies by all rights should be flocking to Oakland, since we’re in the middle of the Bay Area, with fantastic connections to freeways, rail yards, shipping, and airports, not to mention our perfect climate. Normally, Oakland would be the northern outpost of Silicon Valley. But the wokes don’t want that. They want a city of artists, poets, musicians, meditators, nail parlors, astrologers, baristas, bartenders, food-truck proprietors, skateboard kids and street hustlers. They want Oakland to be cool, hip, edgy. Well, they got what they wanted: a bankrupt city where no reputable business wants to relocate, and where normal people don’t want to live. (No disrespect to hip people!)
So, bring us “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,” as the anarchist, Emma Lazarus (to whom I referred the other day) wrote in 1883, words enshrined on the Statue of Liberty. One hundred forty six years ago, that invitation brought bright, ambitious, hard-working immigrants to America. Today, the same sentiment brings us druggies, alcoholics, psychotics, ne’er-do-wells, bums, bippers and tent dwellers. These are the new “wretched refuse” Oakland has decided to sponsor.
Steve Heimoff