It was wonderful news last week when we heard that Caltrans was planning to shut down the infamous Wood Street homeless encampment. The massive encampment, which is basically a mile-long pile of shanties, shopping carts and garbage, has been a national embarrassment to Oakland. Scores of fires have erupted there, and the crime-ridden area is overrun with rats and vermin. So when Caltrans made their announcement, lots of people were glad that at least one public agency finally had the cojones to do something.
Yesterday, however, federal judge William Orrick ordered Caltrans to cease and desist from closing down the encampment. This Judge Orrick, by the way, is the same judge who has kept the Oakland Police Department shackled under the Negotiated Settlement Agreement for so long. Orrick’s method was to pick at small problems in OPD as an excuse not to lift the NSA. He seems to have a grudge against a lawful, orderly Oakland.
Nonetheless, sooner or later, Wood Street has got to go. It’s a threat to everything around it, including the Port of Oakland, adjoining neighborhoods and even the freeways above. The City of Oakland has been far too accommodating to homeless encampments than either the law or common sense requires. Mayor Libby Schaaf should have drawn a line in the sand as long ago as 2016, when encampments first started to metastasize. She did nothing, of course, except to tell the Bay Area’s homeless people they were welcome to come to Oakland. Many of them did just that; they ended up on Wood Street.
I know that some advocates object to closing Wood Street because the evicted campers will simply relocate their tents and RVs someplace else. While this may be true, it’s unconscionable for a normal city to allow something as disruptive as Wood Street. The homeless people, if compelled to leave, will adapt to changing circumstances. Eventually, if Oakland gets tough enough, they’ll come to understand that Oakland is not an ideal place to establish a huge encampment. We’re a long way from that, though, and it may take several election cycles to change the current culture of permissiveness, which has plagued Oakland for years. We’ll have an opportunity to start this change in November.
Steve Heimoff