OAKLAND — Residents of the expansive Wood Street homeless encampment won’t be displaced by Caltrans for at least another month after a federal judge said the state agency hasn’t done its part to figure out relocation plans for the tenants.
Judge William Orrick of the U.S. District Court of Northern California said he would extend a temporary restraining order against Caltrans and other government agencies to Aug. 26, directing the agency to work with officials from Oakland, Alameda County and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office to come up with a plan for where the tenants could go once they are forced to leave.
The judge’s order buys more time for an estimated 200 homeless residents who have settled at the sprawling encampment, which stretches over a couple West Oakland city blocks on vacant land owned by Caltrans and BNSF Railway.
The residents say they’ve built a strong community of mutual support there and organized to resist past displacement efforts. But Caltrans officials ramped up efforts to clear the camps following a large two-alarm fire on July 11 that sent flames high into the air and required over 70 firefighters to put it out.
It was the latest of nearly 200 fires to break out at the site in just a two-year span, according to a Caltrans attorney, who insisted at a hearing Friday that the fires are dangerously close to utility gas tanks, creating the potential for catastrophe.
But Orrick said it was “disturbing” how Caltrans officials are only in the “beginning stages of thinking about what happens” to the tenants should they be made to leave.
“It will not be enough, I suspect, for Caltrans to wash its hands from the eviction proceedings to say, ‘Well, we’re not a housing agency,’ ” Orrick said. “Wood Street is on your property and you have to work in a collaborative and helpful way with the city and county to make sure that proper services are provided and there is some location for these folks.”
Newsom, who has strongly advocated for clearing encampments and redirecting homeless residents to shelters, said in a statement that Orrick’s decision would “delay Caltrans’ critical work and endanger the public.”
“Our roadways and highways are no place for individuals to live, and this encampment is risking public health and safety,” Newsom said, noting that the state had previously sent a $4.7 million grant to Oakland specifically for rehousing the Wood Street camp tenants.
The money was part of the Encampment Resolution Grant program initiated by the governor. Daniel Cooper, Oakland’s new homelessness administrator, recently said the city hadn’t received the money yet, but he hoped to use the funds within the next few months to build a shelter on the site — potentially a collection of high-end tiny homes — for at least 100 people.
A handful of those residents had filed the temporary restraining order against Caltrans, saying they’ve lived at the site for years and kept each other safe along the way. Being forced to find shelter elsewhere, they said, could displace them from work opportunities and their belongings.
“We provide resources for one another, we take care of one another, we cook meals… we provide bedding, a shelter, tents, clothing and a conversation,” John Janosko, an encampment resident who’s currently hospitalized for a bacterial colon infection, said in the Zoom hearing.
Orrick told attorneys for Caltrans and the other government agencies present that their plan must include a specific date for when the residents will actually need to leave. Without those concrete details, he said, the residents would find themselves in a “state-created danger” to their health and well-being.
Orrick also denied a request by Caltrans attorney Stephen Silver to block new tenants from moving into the encampment, saying it was an unreasonable: “I don’t know how you could stop people from coming in or going out without doing something that might make matters worse.”
While city officials weren’t involved in Caltrans’ efforts to clear the Wood Street site, they have tried to incentivize tenants to leave in the past, at one point even offering each person who left $2,500 in cash.
But longtime tenant Kelly Thompson, a military veteran, said there are few other places in town for him to go without needing to offload his possessions, including a trailer that he has kept parked at the encampment since 2017.
“It’s very difficult having to pack up and move every two or three months and find a place that’s secure enough,” Thompson said.
After a group of residents at the encampment thanked Orrick through the Zoom hearing for buying them more time, he made clear that they “may not appreciate me for long, because this is not a long-term solution to the problem that you have.”
“I want to make sure that you know the end result, the endgame in this, is that you’re going to have to move,” Orrick told the tenants. “The question is how quickly that will be able to happen.”
Staff writer Marisa Kendall contributed to this story.
Source: www.mercurynews.com