After Gov. Gavin Newsom advocated for the closure of a homeless encampment on the Berkeley-Emeryville border, a federal judge on Wednesday gave camp occupants three weeks to move out.
Prior court orders for the past nine months had prohibited Caltrans from clearing an encampment of about a dozen people along the Interstate 80 offramp near Shellmound Street and Ashby Avenue. Those protections expired in March, and the residents asked the court for a four-month extension to give them time to find alternate housing.
But the encampment on a busy offramp cannot stay there forever, as it creates hazardous conditions both for occupants and for people driving by, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled.
“Taking into account the above considerations, given the unique nature of the freeway situs and the length of time already afforded to the plaintiffs, the Court finds that the 6 individual plaintiffs have not shown they are entitled to a four-month extension of the preliminary injunction,” he wrote. “To afford the individual plaintiffs a reasonable amount of time to make alternate arrangements and to avoid imminent hardships, the plaintiffs have until April 30, 2022, before the preliminary injunction is terminated.”
The order impacts six named plaintiffs, as well as another roughly six people who live at the camp but aren’t named in the lawsuit.
Newsom, who has undertaken a recent push to rid California of the massive homeless camps sprawling across streets, sidewalks and other public spaces, called for the Berkeley-Emeryville camp’s closure last month.
“This litigation has significantly slowed our progress in Berkeley by preventing Caltrans from delivering on important efforts aimed at revitalizing California’s streets and public spaces through litter abatement and local beautification projects,” he wrote in a statement.
Where Do We Go Berkeley, the activist group that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the homeless plaintiffs, was disappointed by Wednesday’s ruling. They needed the extra four months to find housing, said lead advocate Ian Cordova Morales. Camp residents need to get replacement identification cards, sign up for Social Security benefits and be evaluated by the county before they can qualify for low-income housing. And once those conditions are met, residents likely will be placed on a lengthy waitlist, he said.
“Three weeks is not nearly enough time,” Morales said. “We’re going to have to spend that entire three weeks just getting them ready to be evicted.”
But Caltrans, which owns the land, argues the encampment has posed a financial burden and safety hazard. The agency has spent more than $250,000 to remove more than 500 tons of debris and hazardous material from the site, according to Caltrans’ court filings.
Caltrans did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the decision.
Several people who had been living at the encampment already had found shelter at the Rodeway Inn in Berkeley, which was being used by Alameda County as a respite for unhoused people at risk of contracting COVID-19. But the hotel is no longer an option for residents of the Berkeley-Emeryville camp. As of the end of this month, it will be reserved to house people who had been living at People’s Park in Berkeley.
As an alternative, plaintiffs asked the judge to allow them to return to an encampment at the Sea Breeze Market & Deli in Berkeley — an area where dozens of people camped until Caltrans closed that encampment last year. Many of the people displaced from that encampment set up the new camp on the Berkeley-Emeryville border, activists said.
But Chen denied the request to reopen the Sea Breeze camp.
At the end of the month, when the court-ordered protection ends and Caltrans is allowed to clear the encampment, Morales doesn’t know where the residents will go.
“There’s nowhere for them to go,” he said. “They’re just going to go into the streets of Berkeley, I guess.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com