Oakland is a town where many stupid things are done by our electeds. But this is just about the most pathetic and shameful stunt they’ve pulled in a long time. The City Council just approved paying a $250,000 settlement to a group of homeless people who sued the city for “failing to offer [them] shelter options that met residents’ needs” after a federal judge allowed the city to remove them from an illegal encampment.
The plaintiffs had a bunch of complaints. Not only were their “needs” not met when some of the shelters the city offered wouldn’t accept pets. But, their lawyer alleged, their removal from the East Oakland camp apparently occurred during “dangerous weather [including] rain or smoky air from wildfires or extreme heat or extreme cold.”
So traumatized were the homeless people, they claimed in their lawsuit, that two women “relapsed” from the stress—although it’s unclear what they relapsed from—while another was “raped.”
This might be a Saturday Night Live skit, were it not for the fact that it actually happened, and the taxpayers are out a quarter of a million dollars. Allow me to raise few points.
As for the campers’ “needs,” since when does the city have the obligation to make sure that homeless people who are offered free shelter have the right to bring their dogs with them? The old saying “beggars can’t be choosers” is apt here.
And what is this nonsense about moving people in “dangerous weather”? If it was hot, or cold, or raining, those homeless people would still have experienced the weather had they remained in their encampment. It’s patently ridiculous and absurd to sue the city because the weather was not to the homeless peoples’ liking on the date they were moved. For that matter, it’s absurd to sue the city on the dubious claim that some people “relapsed” due to the stress of moving. My hunch is that the “relapse” meant the people started doing drugs again—if in fact they ever stopped. As for the lady who was raped, well, that is horrible, and she has our deepest sympathies, and the police should prosecute the crime. But does that justify her suing Oakland? She should sue the rapist, not us.
The plaintiffs demand that these protections—against “dangerous weather” and for pets—be written into Oakland’s Encampment Management Policy. I suppose that the EMP now will allow evictions only when the temperature is between 56 degrees and 78 degrees and the sun is shining. And what if an evicted person has five dogs? Shelters will have to accept them all.
This example of a stupid lawsuit is only the latest idiocy from our City Council. The vote was six to nothing in favor, with Loren Taylor and Trevor Reid not present. I can guess why those two ducked out: they knew this egregious payout would be approved and they didn’t want their names attached to it. Our citizens really ought to be outraged by this. The city should have fought those homeless people, made their lawyer issue appeal after appeal after appeal, until he finally gave up trying to extort money from us. But this City Council, which is so profligate in spending our hard-earned money, doesn’t care about protecting us, the taxpayers. As long as they get their paychecks, they’re just fine, thank you. This is exactly why Rebecca Kaplan, Carroll Fife, Nikki Bas, Sheng Thao, Dan Kalb and Noel Gallo need to be fired, and why Thao and Kaplan should be defeated in their campaigns for higher office. They’re cowards who give in to blackmail and extortion and don’t have the intellectual courage or vitality to fight for the public’s interests.
Steve Heimoff