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Agenda Item
3 25-0922 Subject: Repeal 2020 Encampment Management Policy And Adopt 2025 Encampment Abatement Policy
From: Councilmember Houston
Recommendation: Adopt A Resolution Amending Resolution No. 88341 To Repeal The 2020 Encampment Management Policy And Replace With A 2025 Encampment Abatement Policy That (A) Defines "Encampment" To Exclude Vehicles And Authorizes Citation And Towing Of Inhabited Vehicles By City Departments Pursuant To The California Vehicle Code And Oakland Vehicle Code; (B) Continues To Require 7-Day Notice Prior To Non-Urgent Encampment Closures; And (C) Clarifies Emergency And Urgent Health And Safety Conditions That Authorize Immediate, 24-Hour, Or 72-Hour Notice For Encampment Closures, Including Encampments Blocking Sidewalks
I am writing in strong support of repealing the 2020 Encampment Management Policy and adopting the 2025 Encampment Abatement Policy.
The 2020 policy was created with good intentions, but it has not delivered safety, health, or dignity—for housed or unhoused Oaklanders. It has allowed unsafe and unsanitary conditions to persist in our neighborhoods, near schools, and in public spaces, while providing little real pathway into stable housing for those living in encampments.
The 2025 Encampment Abatement Policy is an urgently needed course correction. It establishes clearer guidelines, timelines, and accountability so that encampments are not allowed to grow unchecked for years at a time. It balances compassion with responsibility: providing outreach, services, and shelter offers, but also taking action when conditions become unsafe for residents, businesses, and the broader community.
Encampments have become a public health and safety crisis in Oakland. Fires, untreated waste, violence, and blocked sidewalks are not sustainable or humane. The new policy acknowledges this reality and gives the City tools to address encampments with more consistency, fairness, and effectiveness.
I urge the Council to adopt the 2025 Encampment Abatement Policy so that Oakland can begin to restore safety in public spaces while still working toward long-term housing solutions.
Thank you for your leadership on this critical issue.
I am a constituent of D3 and I oppose CM Houston’s Encampment Abatement Policy (“EAP”). The EAP will not help reduce encampments and homelessness in our city, and instead will make it worse by displacing more people.
The policy doubles down on the failed policy of sweeps without sufficient or adequate shelter. Data on the city website shows that encampment locations have already been targeted dozens--and sometimes up to 26--times, demonstrating that this cycle of destruction does not solve the problem. Evidence-based research shows the same; a report by the L.A. homelessness agency showed that the city’s camping ban was ineffective with 81% of sweep locations being repopulated within a year and found that sweeps are “ineffective at housing people.”
Moreover, CM Houston’s EAP is not only ineffective, but will make the unsheltered crisis worse by towing vehicles and further funneling people into homelessness.
If Oakland wants to effectively address homelessness, it must do so through evidence-based solutions. In fact, Oakland is on the precipice of doing just that through the Mayor’s new Office of Homelessness Strategy and Measure W funds. We have to give Measure W programs a chance to work before resorting to such a draconian and counterproductive policy.
I vehemently oppose the Encampment Abatement Policy. Forbidding people from camping when there is nowhere else for them to go is cruel and ineffective. Oakland does not have the shelter capacity to house its current homeless and should focus on building more shelters and affordable housing to actually solve the crisis. Instead, this proposes wasting time and money chasing the homeless from street to street.
I 100% support the proposed change to the Homeless Encampment Policy.
As a lifelong Democrat and supporter of progressive policies, I believe in compassion, fairness, and protecting the vulnerable. But compassion must extend to everyone — including residents who have been forced to live surrounded by neglect, squalor, and unsafe conditions for years. The current situation is neither humane nor sustainable. Leaving people to suffer on the streets without sanitation, mental health services, or safety is not progressive — it’s abandonment.
Some argue that “sweeps” are inherently violent, but what’s truly violent is forcing communities to live with fires, assaults, untreated mental illness, and dangerous encampments that help no one. It’s not “Trumpian” to demand clean, safe neighborhoods and accountability — it’s responsible governance. Progressive values should mean solutions that balance compassion with livability.
We cannot wait for a perfect system of permanent housing before acting. That approach has failed for decades. This legislation is a necessary step toward restoring order while continuing to push for real housing, treatment, and support services. To do nothing is to perpetuate cruelty on all sides.
Hello, my name is Emma Dewey and I'm a District 1 resident, where I work as a dance educator. I strongly oppose the proposed Encampment Abatement Policy.
We expect this policy to be a public safety, public health, and economic nightmare. We will not achieve cleaner or safer streets by forcing people living in vehicles to live unsheltered on the streets, especially since Oakland does not currently have enough shelter to meet the current level of need. This policy violates human rights by allowing the city to arrest unhoused people under broad conditions. It will not only increase the rates of unsheltered homelessness, it will worsen existing conditions, leading to higher rates of mental health crisis, substance abuse crisis, and death.
Seeing the escalation in the city's violence towards unhoused people in the past year has been truly distressing. There used to be encampments near my house, and I know I'm not any safer just because these neighbors have been pushed to another street corner under threat of arrest and without any actual services offered. What makes our communities safe is having accessible housing, healthcare, and education for all people, following the leadership of impacted communities.
It is a waste of Oakland's taxpayer dollars to continue spending on violently sweeping people from corner to corner -- we must invest in housing solutions that will benefit ALL its residents.
Leaving people who have so little with even less simply because someone with more can’t bear the site of them is not the outcome of a policy worth enacting. Indiscriminately clearing people’s homes with no reasonable alternatives and now throwing them in jail is the very definition of violence. We have the opportunity at a local level to resist these kinds of Trumpian policies. THERE SHOULD BE NO SWEEPS without permanent humane housing solutions.
If you won't make a decision based on the traumatizing impact it will have on people’s lives, think about it from a financial and legal perspective. This is a giant waste of money, completely counter to the county’s guidelines concerning Measure W money and asking for countless lawsuits.
There are groups of folks with lived experience presenting real compassionate, thoughtful solutions that avoid using city resources to enact violence. Provide services where people are until there are respectable options, create safe parking sites, buy vacant buildings and convert them into no-income to low-income housing.
The majority of homeless people are not service-resistant, there are so few viable options available. Between that and the convoluted bureaucratic nightmare one has to navigate to receive even the poorest of services, it’s not surprising that trust in the city to have their best interests in mind has been completely eroded. This policy will only make it worse; really who is this policy serving?
I support this policy change. We should not have people living on the streets and sidewalks and parks of this city. We need to find homes for them. But we cannot wait until economic equity arrives. Not in this century with what's going on in this country now. Sad as it is, no one is coming to the rescue. We need to fix this problem ourselves. Those of us who live and work and pay taxes in Oakland expect some services for those taxes, including safe and clean streets, sidewalks and parks. If we don't, we will not have any businesses or homeowners living here, only encampments everywhere. People from other cities come to Oakland to live on the street, to commit crimes, to run rampant since there is no law enforcement here. They will tell you that. "This is 'f--ing Oakland," one person speeding through a red light said to me the other day. "We o what we want here. If you don't like it, move to Piedmont." Please implement these changes. For everybody's sake.
In reading these comments, I see people in opposition claiming that this legislation dehumanizes the homeless population. Unfortunately making the purposeful decision to litter anything and everything and urinate/defecate in your own surroundings is dehumanizing. While the unhoused population should have opportunity for housing and drug programs, many refuses due to the minimal rules. What people don’t realize is how many resources are actually available for the unhoused population, but many refuse.
We should be able to walk around our own neighborhoods without having to avoid certain areas due to homeless encampments that are covered with trash and filth. The homeless are very resourceful in gathering items for themselves, but in a lot of encampments, garbage cans don’t seem like one of them! This creates hazards that extend so much further.
Rodents who are attracted to the trash from the encampments can pick up diseases, which the cats, raccoons, possums, and other creatures eat but then bring the diseases around our homes.
Many people are quick to criticize legislation or rules that surround the unhoused population but leaving them to be will only worsen the situation.
You can’t provide housing to people who don’t want it.
I am a D2 resident, and I strongly oppose the proposed (and racist) amendment, which continue to dehumanize, harm, and criminalize our neighbors. The City needs to focus on evidenced based solutions and optimizing the funds coming through Measure W.
I am a D3 resident, and have lived here for 21 years. Recently, a camper and adjoined automobile were parked outside our building's garage for six months, blocking the view from our garage onto West Grand Avenue. It took HAVING A KNIFE PULLED ON ME by one of the camper occupants while I was walking my dog for OPD to address the situation. Once I called OPD upon being threatened with a knife, the camper and adjoining automobile were gone within three hours. Obviously, it is the government's job to solve these complex problems. In the meantime, I am worthy of a threshold of safety and welfare around my home where my life does not need to be threatened while I am walking my dog.
I wholeheartedly oppose this new policy. It does not align with Oakland’s Homelessness Strategic Plan, the County’s Home Together Plan, or the County’s Measure W Framework. It only stigmatizes and punishes those who are unhoused. I want you to do better. There are community based groups that have offered solutions that make meaningful change. Do better.
I'm a D3 resident and I'm Neutral on this legislation until I learn more about it, but I'm certainly opposed to the constant dumping of trash up and down W. Grand Avenue around Arco and Hyphy Burger. We have cars dumped on the street and then these abandoned cars turn into dumpsters as trash is packed inside of them, and then these cars are get covered in graffiti.
We need to put a stop to people dumping trash, we need to clean up this trash, and we need to do this now!
This is not the way any city in America should be. #FixD3
As an Oakland resident, I oppose the proposed Encampment Abatement Policy. I'm concerned about the harm this will do to unhoused Oaklanders (evictions have been shown to increase unhoused deaths, exacerbate chronic health conditions, and make it harder to exit homelessness), and the policy will also worsen the budget crisis. Sweeps don't actually solve homelessness, and they're expensive, harmful, and violent. The money would be better spent on providing housing and services to our unhoused neighbors.
As a 30 year West Oakland resident and NCPC volunteer, I urge the City and County to collaborate on meaningful solutions rather than shooting down ideas that don't appease the demands of everyone. According to CA Governor's office since 2014, over $1B has been spent on housing and homelessness, yet many unhoused residents still lack safe, adequate shelter; conditions any of us would consider livable. Investments must include accountability of service providers and measurable outcomes to ensure support reaches those in most desperate need.
Encampments, tents, RVs, or vehicles have been linked to drug activity, trafficking, fires, and illegal dumping. All affect both unhoused and housed residents. What makes this fundamentally a public safety issue is the unregulated, unmanaged spaces creating hazards, due to criminal exploitation or neglect of unsheltered (not checking & responding to their needs).
OPD doesn't police activities regularly reported. We've reported even for the unhoused; drug dealers and other opportunists exploit encampments as cover because they are aware of OPDs position.
The focus on enforceable, supportive solutions that protect the health, safety & dignity of all Oaklanders. Safe, regulated shelter, including unconventional housing solutions like RVs, combined with supportive services is essential for both the unhoused and the broader community to smartly spend the limited funds we have to house the poorest among us.
District 2, oakland native and first time renter here.
I must support this with Oakland being an epicenter for homeless encampments. It has gone far too long that we are 'OK' with sidewalks, public parks, and areas of accessibility being a challenge for children, elderly and people with disabilities to navigate. Why is it OK that lake merritt has become riddled with tents? Why is is OK for the low income flatlands to suffer from RVs and encampments because the city cannot properly get these people mental health services, drug abuse programs and housing? Encampments a magnet for crime, drug abuse and illegal dumping from people in other cities. Earlier this year, the huge village of east 12th was cleared, but several of those people were displaced and now are making new encampments along east 12th / east 10th corridor again.
While I am in support of this policy, I must challenge Ken Houston and the safety committee to come up with real solutions if this passes. Where will these people go? Will they be provided adequate services to deal with homelessness, poverty, drug abuse and mental health issues? What are the long term effects by considering these zones high sensitivity areas after they are cleared?
Also, San Francisco and Caltrans will be addressing their homeless population soon but that means their homeless population will COME TO OAKLAND. If we do not address our current residents with their crisis, we will have an influx of another population to deal with.
It's disheartening to see so much dehumanizing language in these comments. No matter how you feel about Oakland's encampments you cannot get around the facts:
1. Rent is too high in this city. Most people are vulnerable to being priced out and could end up on the street themselves.
2. There is enough empty space. Give people space. Give people services.
3. People don't just disappear. You can push them around the city or cram them in jails, but those are violent actions. Don't you dare talk about a "balanced" approach if that's what you're about.
I encourage the council to confer with those who have been impacted by the ongoing sweeps. Business owners and housed residents have no right to act like we're the only ones who live here.
I support the proposed legislation. I’ve lived in District 3 for over five years, am a working mom with a young child, and I do not feel safe with encampments allowed to park anywhere, block sidewalks and streets, and trash our neighborhoods. For years, RVs on my block have forced me to push my baby’s stroller into the street just to get by. Squatters in a nearby house left broken windows, glass, and drug paraphernalia spilling into my backyard — hazards I constantly have to keep away from my toddler.
Meanwhile, those vehicles sit in the same spots for years without tickets, blocking street sweeping and parking enforcement, while I’m ticketed for parking far from my home — even while recovering from a broken toe and struggling to walk. The imbalance is glaring.
This isn’t about lacking compassion. It’s about balance — making sure residents can live their lives safely and cleanly, and not allowing everything to descend into a complete mess while the city looks the other way. My neighbors and I welcome a policy that restores accountability and makes our streets safe and livable for everyone.
This process is being rushed through special meetings working Oaklanders have a much more difficult time attending than the regularly scheduled Council Meetings. I oppose this policy as it does noting to help the homelessness crisis, it merely makes it easier to declare emergency evictions and vehicular evictions, which only pushes the unsheltered to a new location. This exacerbates chronic health conditions, causes loss of documents, medications, and other essential needs, and wastes money on harmful practices during a budget crisis.
Having a high degree of homelessness on our streets is a crisis but this plan just moves people from street to street. Housing solutions are just coming to fruition with Measure W funding and this resolution can only worsen the mental and physical health of those we should be ready to house.
My name is Dr. Xiaodi Sun and I live in D1 and previously lived in D3.
I strongly oppose the Encampment Management Policy.
I am among dozens of advocates who provide on the ground support to unhoused folks during active sweeps conducted by DPW. I have seen DPW violate the Encampment Abatement Policy many times, destroying people's possessions, their homes, their pets. I have seen DPW take people's belongings and not tag them so that retrieval is impossible. I have seen Ivan Satterfield, who is paid nearly $200k to conduct sweeps [1], coerce a resident into cooperating with the sweeps while his crew throws away their possessions in the background.
The Encampment Management Policy is an extreme escalation of the existing flawed policy. The proposed policy would allow the city to arrest homeless people without offer of shelter [2]. What unhoused people need is the city's investment and public funds to support, in Ken Houston's own words, "Safe Parking programs, sanctioned encampments, and rapid re-housing ... Homelessness should be addressed as a housing and public health issue, not a criminal one" [3].
Councilmembers,
I am writing in strong support of repealing the 2020 Encampment Management Policy and adopting the 2025 Encampment Abatement Policy.
The 2020 policy was created with good intentions, but it has not delivered safety, health, or dignity—for housed or unhoused Oaklanders. It has allowed unsafe and unsanitary conditions to persist in our neighborhoods, near schools, and in public spaces, while providing little real pathway into stable housing for those living in encampments.
The 2025 Encampment Abatement Policy is an urgently needed course correction. It establishes clearer guidelines, timelines, and accountability so that encampments are not allowed to grow unchecked for years at a time. It balances compassion with responsibility: providing outreach, services, and shelter offers, but also taking action when conditions become unsafe for residents, businesses, and the broader community.
Encampments have become a public health and safety crisis in Oakland. Fires, untreated waste, violence, and blocked sidewalks are not sustainable or humane. The new policy acknowledges this reality and gives the City tools to address encampments with more consistency, fairness, and effectiveness.
I urge the Council to adopt the 2025 Encampment Abatement Policy so that Oakland can begin to restore safety in public spaces while still working toward long-term housing solutions.
Thank you for your leadership on this critical issue.
Respectfully,
Alexander Itsekson
I am a constituent of D3 and I oppose CM Houston’s Encampment Abatement Policy (“EAP”). The EAP will not help reduce encampments and homelessness in our city, and instead will make it worse by displacing more people.
The policy doubles down on the failed policy of sweeps without sufficient or adequate shelter. Data on the city website shows that encampment locations have already been targeted dozens--and sometimes up to 26--times, demonstrating that this cycle of destruction does not solve the problem. Evidence-based research shows the same; a report by the L.A. homelessness agency showed that the city’s camping ban was ineffective with 81% of sweep locations being repopulated within a year and found that sweeps are “ineffective at housing people.”
Moreover, CM Houston’s EAP is not only ineffective, but will make the unsheltered crisis worse by towing vehicles and further funneling people into homelessness.
If Oakland wants to effectively address homelessness, it must do so through evidence-based solutions. In fact, Oakland is on the precipice of doing just that through the Mayor’s new Office of Homelessness Strategy and Measure W funds. We have to give Measure W programs a chance to work before resorting to such a draconian and counterproductive policy.
I vehemently oppose the Encampment Abatement Policy. Forbidding people from camping when there is nowhere else for them to go is cruel and ineffective. Oakland does not have the shelter capacity to house its current homeless and should focus on building more shelters and affordable housing to actually solve the crisis. Instead, this proposes wasting time and money chasing the homeless from street to street.
I 100% support the proposed change to the Homeless Encampment Policy.
As a lifelong Democrat and supporter of progressive policies, I believe in compassion, fairness, and protecting the vulnerable. But compassion must extend to everyone — including residents who have been forced to live surrounded by neglect, squalor, and unsafe conditions for years. The current situation is neither humane nor sustainable. Leaving people to suffer on the streets without sanitation, mental health services, or safety is not progressive — it’s abandonment.
Some argue that “sweeps” are inherently violent, but what’s truly violent is forcing communities to live with fires, assaults, untreated mental illness, and dangerous encampments that help no one. It’s not “Trumpian” to demand clean, safe neighborhoods and accountability — it’s responsible governance. Progressive values should mean solutions that balance compassion with livability.
We cannot wait for a perfect system of permanent housing before acting. That approach has failed for decades. This legislation is a necessary step toward restoring order while continuing to push for real housing, treatment, and support services. To do nothing is to perpetuate cruelty on all sides.
Hello, my name is Emma Dewey and I'm a District 1 resident, where I work as a dance educator. I strongly oppose the proposed Encampment Abatement Policy.
We expect this policy to be a public safety, public health, and economic nightmare. We will not achieve cleaner or safer streets by forcing people living in vehicles to live unsheltered on the streets, especially since Oakland does not currently have enough shelter to meet the current level of need. This policy violates human rights by allowing the city to arrest unhoused people under broad conditions. It will not only increase the rates of unsheltered homelessness, it will worsen existing conditions, leading to higher rates of mental health crisis, substance abuse crisis, and death.
Seeing the escalation in the city's violence towards unhoused people in the past year has been truly distressing. There used to be encampments near my house, and I know I'm not any safer just because these neighbors have been pushed to another street corner under threat of arrest and without any actual services offered. What makes our communities safe is having accessible housing, healthcare, and education for all people, following the leadership of impacted communities.
It is a waste of Oakland's taxpayer dollars to continue spending on violently sweeping people from corner to corner -- we must invest in housing solutions that will benefit ALL its residents.
Leaving people who have so little with even less simply because someone with more can’t bear the site of them is not the outcome of a policy worth enacting. Indiscriminately clearing people’s homes with no reasonable alternatives and now throwing them in jail is the very definition of violence. We have the opportunity at a local level to resist these kinds of Trumpian policies. THERE SHOULD BE NO SWEEPS without permanent humane housing solutions.
If you won't make a decision based on the traumatizing impact it will have on people’s lives, think about it from a financial and legal perspective. This is a giant waste of money, completely counter to the county’s guidelines concerning Measure W money and asking for countless lawsuits.
There are groups of folks with lived experience presenting real compassionate, thoughtful solutions that avoid using city resources to enact violence. Provide services where people are until there are respectable options, create safe parking sites, buy vacant buildings and convert them into no-income to low-income housing.
The majority of homeless people are not service-resistant, there are so few viable options available. Between that and the convoluted bureaucratic nightmare one has to navigate to receive even the poorest of services, it’s not surprising that trust in the city to have their best interests in mind has been completely eroded. This policy will only make it worse; really who is this policy serving?
I support this policy change. We should not have people living on the streets and sidewalks and parks of this city. We need to find homes for them. But we cannot wait until economic equity arrives. Not in this century with what's going on in this country now. Sad as it is, no one is coming to the rescue. We need to fix this problem ourselves. Those of us who live and work and pay taxes in Oakland expect some services for those taxes, including safe and clean streets, sidewalks and parks. If we don't, we will not have any businesses or homeowners living here, only encampments everywhere. People from other cities come to Oakland to live on the street, to commit crimes, to run rampant since there is no law enforcement here. They will tell you that. "This is 'f--ing Oakland," one person speeding through a red light said to me the other day. "We o what we want here. If you don't like it, move to Piedmont." Please implement these changes. For everybody's sake.
In reading these comments, I see people in opposition claiming that this legislation dehumanizes the homeless population. Unfortunately making the purposeful decision to litter anything and everything and urinate/defecate in your own surroundings is dehumanizing. While the unhoused population should have opportunity for housing and drug programs, many refuses due to the minimal rules. What people don’t realize is how many resources are actually available for the unhoused population, but many refuse.
We should be able to walk around our own neighborhoods without having to avoid certain areas due to homeless encampments that are covered with trash and filth. The homeless are very resourceful in gathering items for themselves, but in a lot of encampments, garbage cans don’t seem like one of them! This creates hazards that extend so much further.
Rodents who are attracted to the trash from the encampments can pick up diseases, which the cats, raccoons, possums, and other creatures eat but then bring the diseases around our homes.
Many people are quick to criticize legislation or rules that surround the unhoused population but leaving them to be will only worsen the situation.
You can’t provide housing to people who don’t want it.
I am a D2 resident, and I strongly oppose the proposed (and racist) amendment, which continue to dehumanize, harm, and criminalize our neighbors. The City needs to focus on evidenced based solutions and optimizing the funds coming through Measure W.
i support this
I am a D3 resident, and have lived here for 21 years. Recently, a camper and adjoined automobile were parked outside our building's garage for six months, blocking the view from our garage onto West Grand Avenue. It took HAVING A KNIFE PULLED ON ME by one of the camper occupants while I was walking my dog for OPD to address the situation. Once I called OPD upon being threatened with a knife, the camper and adjoining automobile were gone within three hours. Obviously, it is the government's job to solve these complex problems. In the meantime, I am worthy of a threshold of safety and welfare around my home where my life does not need to be threatened while I am walking my dog.
I wholeheartedly oppose this new policy. It does not align with Oakland’s Homelessness Strategic Plan, the County’s Home Together Plan, or the County’s Measure W Framework. It only stigmatizes and punishes those who are unhoused. I want you to do better. There are community based groups that have offered solutions that make meaningful change. Do better.
I'm a D3 resident and I'm Neutral on this legislation until I learn more about it, but I'm certainly opposed to the constant dumping of trash up and down W. Grand Avenue around Arco and Hyphy Burger. We have cars dumped on the street and then these abandoned cars turn into dumpsters as trash is packed inside of them, and then these cars are get covered in graffiti.
We need to put a stop to people dumping trash, we need to clean up this trash, and we need to do this now!
This is not the way any city in America should be. #FixD3
As an Oakland resident, I oppose the proposed Encampment Abatement Policy. I'm concerned about the harm this will do to unhoused Oaklanders (evictions have been shown to increase unhoused deaths, exacerbate chronic health conditions, and make it harder to exit homelessness), and the policy will also worsen the budget crisis. Sweeps don't actually solve homelessness, and they're expensive, harmful, and violent. The money would be better spent on providing housing and services to our unhoused neighbors.
I support this legislation.
As a 30 year West Oakland resident and NCPC volunteer, I urge the City and County to collaborate on meaningful solutions rather than shooting down ideas that don't appease the demands of everyone. According to CA Governor's office since 2014, over $1B has been spent on housing and homelessness, yet many unhoused residents still lack safe, adequate shelter; conditions any of us would consider livable. Investments must include accountability of service providers and measurable outcomes to ensure support reaches those in most desperate need.
Encampments, tents, RVs, or vehicles have been linked to drug activity, trafficking, fires, and illegal dumping. All affect both unhoused and housed residents. What makes this fundamentally a public safety issue is the unregulated, unmanaged spaces creating hazards, due to criminal exploitation or neglect of unsheltered (not checking & responding to their needs).
OPD doesn't police activities regularly reported. We've reported even for the unhoused; drug dealers and other opportunists exploit encampments as cover because they are aware of OPDs position.
The focus on enforceable, supportive solutions that protect the health, safety & dignity of all Oaklanders. Safe, regulated shelter, including unconventional housing solutions like RVs, combined with supportive services is essential for both the unhoused and the broader community to smartly spend the limited funds we have to house the poorest among us.
District 2, oakland native and first time renter here.
I must support this with Oakland being an epicenter for homeless encampments. It has gone far too long that we are 'OK' with sidewalks, public parks, and areas of accessibility being a challenge for children, elderly and people with disabilities to navigate. Why is it OK that lake merritt has become riddled with tents? Why is is OK for the low income flatlands to suffer from RVs and encampments because the city cannot properly get these people mental health services, drug abuse programs and housing? Encampments a magnet for crime, drug abuse and illegal dumping from people in other cities. Earlier this year, the huge village of east 12th was cleared, but several of those people were displaced and now are making new encampments along east 12th / east 10th corridor again.
While I am in support of this policy, I must challenge Ken Houston and the safety committee to come up with real solutions if this passes. Where will these people go? Will they be provided adequate services to deal with homelessness, poverty, drug abuse and mental health issues? What are the long term effects by considering these zones high sensitivity areas after they are cleared?
Also, San Francisco and Caltrans will be addressing their homeless population soon but that means their homeless population will COME TO OAKLAND. If we do not address our current residents with their crisis, we will have an influx of another population to deal with.
It's disheartening to see so much dehumanizing language in these comments. No matter how you feel about Oakland's encampments you cannot get around the facts:
1. Rent is too high in this city. Most people are vulnerable to being priced out and could end up on the street themselves.
2. There is enough empty space. Give people space. Give people services.
3. People don't just disappear. You can push them around the city or cram them in jails, but those are violent actions. Don't you dare talk about a "balanced" approach if that's what you're about.
I encourage the council to confer with those who have been impacted by the ongoing sweeps. Business owners and housed residents have no right to act like we're the only ones who live here.
I support the proposed legislation. I’ve lived in District 3 for over five years, am a working mom with a young child, and I do not feel safe with encampments allowed to park anywhere, block sidewalks and streets, and trash our neighborhoods. For years, RVs on my block have forced me to push my baby’s stroller into the street just to get by. Squatters in a nearby house left broken windows, glass, and drug paraphernalia spilling into my backyard — hazards I constantly have to keep away from my toddler.
Meanwhile, those vehicles sit in the same spots for years without tickets, blocking street sweeping and parking enforcement, while I’m ticketed for parking far from my home — even while recovering from a broken toe and struggling to walk. The imbalance is glaring.
This isn’t about lacking compassion. It’s about balance — making sure residents can live their lives safely and cleanly, and not allowing everything to descend into a complete mess while the city looks the other way. My neighbors and I welcome a policy that restores accountability and makes our streets safe and livable for everyone.
This process is being rushed through special meetings working Oaklanders have a much more difficult time attending than the regularly scheduled Council Meetings. I oppose this policy as it does noting to help the homelessness crisis, it merely makes it easier to declare emergency evictions and vehicular evictions, which only pushes the unsheltered to a new location. This exacerbates chronic health conditions, causes loss of documents, medications, and other essential needs, and wastes money on harmful practices during a budget crisis.
Having a high degree of homelessness on our streets is a crisis but this plan just moves people from street to street. Housing solutions are just coming to fruition with Measure W funding and this resolution can only worsen the mental and physical health of those we should be ready to house.
My name is Dr. Xiaodi Sun and I live in D1 and previously lived in D3.
I strongly oppose the Encampment Management Policy.
I am among dozens of advocates who provide on the ground support to unhoused folks during active sweeps conducted by DPW. I have seen DPW violate the Encampment Abatement Policy many times, destroying people's possessions, their homes, their pets. I have seen DPW take people's belongings and not tag them so that retrieval is impossible. I have seen Ivan Satterfield, who is paid nearly $200k to conduct sweeps [1], coerce a resident into cooperating with the sweeps while his crew throws away their possessions in the background.
The Encampment Management Policy is an extreme escalation of the existing flawed policy. The proposed policy would allow the city to arrest homeless people without offer of shelter [2]. What unhoused people need is the city's investment and public funds to support, in Ken Houston's own words, "Safe Parking programs, sanctioned encampments, and rapid re-housing ... Homelessness should be addressed as a housing and public health issue, not a criminal one" [3].
[1] https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2024/oakland/ivan-wallace-satterfield/
[2] https://oaklandside.org/2025/09/05/encampment-policy-oakland-houston-homeless-shelter-arrests/
[3] https://ebho.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Ken-Houston-Oakland-City-Council-Candidate-Questionnaire.pdf