Oakland mayor wants to postpone homeless sweep as others push for crackdown – Mercury News

At first glance, it might look like Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee is following the Bay Area’s — and the nation’s — trends in dealing with homelessness. An icon among progressives has cleared homeless encampments faster than his predecessors since taking office in May 2025, sparking ongoing sweeps in San Jose and San Francisco.

Behind closed doors, Lee plans a new course: The mayor and the chief executive want to remove a few camps and improve sanitation around them, they said in an interview with this news agency – recognizing that people will continue to live under the rivers and on the streets of a city with dwindling resources to provide shelter.

Instead of rushing to tear down tents and disperse RVs, Lee and Oakland’s interim homelessness chief, Sasha Hauswald, want city workers to focus on reducing trash and human waste in the encampments. Lee is exploring paying homeless people to pick up trash, inspired by a program in Portland, Oregon.

That’s because two years of massive sweeps haven’t moved homeless people into homes, Hauswald said. Budget cuts are forcing shelters to close this winter. And Lee, a former member of the Democratic Alliance, said he wants to respect the dignity of homeless people.

The plan he expects to unveil in March looks very different from neighborhood leaders — and the Oakland City Council’s vision for homelessness. Its members pushed for legislation to speed up the camp’s sweep and end the old requirement that the city provide shelter to residents when forced to move.

City leaders, led by Councilman Ken Houston, proposed striking that requirement and allowing city workers to tow the RVs immediately.

A majority of the council could pass its plan without including Lee, who has no veto power. In the interview, Lee did not specifically say whether he supported or opposed the proposal.

“I think we have to look at this in a realistic way, but also one that values ​​the human dignity of people living on the streets or in RVs,” said the mayor, “and that’s what I think a lot of council members, that I know, want to see as part of the policy.”

Oakland’s competing ideologies will come to a head this year, sparking fierce debates about homelessness throughout the Bay Area and California. On the face of it, Lee’s new approach seems to diverge from other big city mayors in the region.

In every city, homeless advocates have asked leaders: If there isn’t enough shelter or housing for people to go to, what good does a sweep accomplish?

Many leaders in the Bay Area besieged the tents after the US Supreme Court ruled in Grants Pass v. Johnson said that cities can prevent homeless people from sleeping outside, even if there is no shelter. Despite the 2024 decision, Oakland leaders have maintained their ordinance granting shelter in most cases. Houston’s plan was to remove it.

In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie sent police, “street ambassadors” and homeless outreach workers to enter homes. Fremont leaders made it illegal to park anywhere in the city and removed the campground last fall. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan’s administration led to nearly 2,000 jobs last year.

Lee, 79, differs from Mahan and Lurie in many ways. The two men in their 40s entered politics after working in the private sector. Oakland’s mayor took office last May after representing the East Bay in Congress for three decades, where he built a reputation as a maverick.

There is not enough shelter

Lee found a great challenge on the streets of Oakland. A week before he took office, Alameda County estimated that 3,600 homeless people were living throughout the city.

Oakland was more than 10,000 short of low-income housing units from last year. Although the city is making progress in building new homes, the pipeline will not meet the full demand. The city also has hundreds of underserved shelters, a city spokeswoman said.

In addition, Oakland is short on cash. The city’s public housing division saw its budget drop to $26 million before the current fiscal year, a 41 percent decrease.

The city is slated to close two temporary housing sites in March due to budget issues: the Peralta Home Village in West Oakland, which offers 40 beds, and the 71st Avenue RV site near the Oakland Coliseum, a free lot with water and electricity for 31 cars that opened in 2019.

Dwindling shelter space, tight city budgets and high housing costs mean that more people become homeless each year in Oakland than find housing. With the system overcrowded, Hauswald said, it makes sense to dial back the pace of sweeping the camps and focus more on dealing with the impacts.

“The city has limited resources, in terms of temporary housing and staff who can go out into the community and connect with our homeless population,” he said in an interview.

Later, he added: “We really need to focus on keeping our environment safe and clean and tidy, and only move people when they have shelter available and have enough time to interact with individuals – so we can really assess what their needs are, what their needs are.”

That would leave Lee’s record so far.

His predecessor, former Mayor Sheng Thao, was responsible for the closure of 17 camps per month on average. Lee has overseen 91 closures each month since taking office in May, according to a Bay Area News Group analysis of city data.

On a cold January morning, a garbage truck drove down East 12th Avenue, where dozens lived in tents and cars. Garbage is spilled on the roads next to idling vehicles. City crews quickly worked to clear the block, loading tents, lumber, chairs and trash into a dump truck.

At the Glad Tidings Community Church, Pastor Jeremiah Captain, 70, was relieved to see the city workers. Camps had sprung up outside the church door. His congregation of 179 people was afraid of being visited, he said; only five had come that Sunday for services.

“My people deserve more than to see this,” said the Captain. “Garbage, dirt, needles and condoms.”

Around the corner, Tai Tran, 55, huddled with others inside a painted Jeep with a bed rolled up on the roof. The Jeep was running, but someone lost the key, Tran said.

He was in and out of homes, Tran said, but was always unprotected in the area, “scattered” a few blocks at a time by the city’s sweeps.

“Stop the Sweeping” has long been an advocacy position for the homeless. They argue – backed by academic research – the forced movement of homeless people does not solve the underlying problems, but breaks up communities and separates people from their belongings, including documents and medicine, electricity generators and tools.

Lee’s administration seems to have reached a similar conclusion.

A divided city

After two years of mass sweeps, “we haven’t seen a significant decrease in the number of campsites in downtown Oakland,” Hauswald said in an interview.

“That’s what we’ve been shouting for the last four, five years,” said John Janosko, a former homeless organizer. “It’s amazing that you say that,” he said of Lee.

While Lee and Hauswald prepare to present their proposal, Houston, a member of the City Council, has not backed down on his push to speed up the cleanup of tents and RVs. He is an unabashed critic of the evil caused especially by illegally parked RVs.

Representing the city’s 7th District, which includes areas of East Oakland, Houston insists his constituents are in favor of a tough crackdown “to restore law and order to our city.”

Activists have framed the program as an attempt to criminalize homelessness, and in the fall, a federal agency expressed concern that it would run counter to federal guidelines for at least trying to find shelter for displaced residents.

In an interview this week, Houston said Lee recently asked to schedule a meeting with him to discuss changes to his policy. Regardless, he is “not willing to back down” from the asylum debate, he said.

“I’m confused as to why this is taking so long,” Houston said.

Still, Houston backed down on his earlier threats to target colleagues who oppose his rule in the polls. He also canceled social media posts aimed at dissing unnamed political opponents.

In West Oakland, Masoud Saberi lives in an RV on a bend in the road not far from the former Wood Street encampment, once the largest homeless camp in Northern California.

He said the Bay Area’s reputation as a hotbed of free speech and civil rights drew his family to the East Bay when they fled the 1979 Iranian revolution. He urged city leaders to find permanent solutions that do not punish the homeless.

“This is Oakland, California,” he said. “We are at the forefront of progressive thinking. We have the responsibility and the opportunity to ensure that things are done in a respectful and humane manner.”