While I agree that Oakland needs to address that there are far too many people living on the street without basic safety and health access, this policy will only make things worse. Instead of arresting people, towing their shelters, destroying their belongings, forcing them to move again and again and again... we need safe parking, sanctuary encampments, deeply affordable housing, and an eviction moratorium. Oakland is rapidly becoming more expensive with many people at risk of displacement and the 1,300 available shelter beds is not enough for the 5,500 unhoused residents. As long as policies like this continue to be the center of the discussion, we will always have a housing crisis.

Encampments across Oakland are an embarrassing blight on our beautiful town. Clearing them, and forcing people living outside into housing or to seek more healthy and legal support is needed. I am ashamed of what our city has turned into. The amount of trash, blight and unsafe behavior that unmanaged encampments encourage must be stopped. Do the right thing, lets get these people help and make our city beautiful again.

I support replacement of the 2020 Encampment Management Policy with this legislation as a more aggressive, more legally defensive, and more detailed encampment closure/management framework that is consistent with The City’s stated target to reduce unsheltered homelessness by 50% in five years.

What is missing from this policy is real accountability for the clutter, dumping, debris, and blight that often build up around unmanaged encampments. In Oakland, property owners are cited and fined for those same conditions. Public space should not be held to a lower standard. Outreach groups should be on a regular schedule at encampment sites pro-actively helping residents declutter, reduce waste, and maintain safer conditions before things get out of control. Compassion should mean support and accountability together, not a double standard.

The current direction isn't working but this new policy is just furthering the same failing punitive approach. Enforcement and displacement without adequate alternatives does not solve the problem and further harms people. There's plenty of data that shows sweeps are not solving homelessness and setting people back. Voting for this policy is a smoke and mirrors gesture. "We have to do something so lets just vote yes on this": is not a reason to push this forward. We should move forward with the mayor's Office of Homelessness plan. You might say we don't have the money, but thats at least a good faith attempt at a humane solution. This policy is a waste of money and will be ineffective.

We need to see stronger language around actual mitigation efforts, they should be required, not "considered"- keep people where they are because you don't have adequate shelter (you've closed 3 places in the last month), promise trash services and porta potties. This repeated language around "will make reasonable efforts" is weak loophole language to allow EMAT and OPD to discern at their own whims how to manage encampments. We need to see better protections for inhabited vehicles, currently there are none in this policy. Stealing peoples RVs and putting them on the sidewalk doesn't resolve anything. Using language that the city "will avoid citation or arrest" is not enough reassurance. No one should be criminalized for their situation. There should be no citations or arrests, period.

District 3 Resident who has watched encampments become more unmanaged by the year. I support the Encampment Abatement Policy (EAP) as a necessary step toward addressing the ongoing mismanagement of encampments throughout the City of Oakland. While it may not be a complete solution, it represents an effort to take action where inaction has allowed conditions to worsen.
As part of an “all hands on deck” affects everyone unhoused individuals, housed residents, businesses, schools and it requires a coordinated, community-wide response. Continuing to push it back further & use meetings to ignore this serious issue need to stop.

We remember when encampments were not as widespread; also acknowledge that certain communities have been left to function without adequate support from either the City or the County. Basic services such as toilets and trash collection are not sufficient. Consistent, accountable management and abated challenges are required. Unmanaged encampments contribute to serious public safety concerns: drug sales, sex trafficking, and other harmful activities that impact surrounding neighborhoods are a daily issue in District 3. We recognize addiction, mental illness are critical factors that requireeffective and coordinated response than what currently exists.

THE CURRENT APPROACH AIN'T WORKING. A different, more comprehensive process that addresses both public safety and human needs with urgency and accountability.

District 3 Resident who has watched encampments become more unmanaged by the year. I support the Encampment Abatement Policy (EAP) as a necessary step toward addressing the ongoing mismanagement of encampments throughout the City of Oakland. While it may not be a complete solution, it represents an effort to take action where inaction has allowed conditions to worsen.
As part of an “all hands on deck” affects everyone unhoused individuals, housed residents, businesses, schools and it requires a coordinated, community-wide response. Continuing to push it back further & use meetings to ignore this serious issue need to stop.

We remember when encampments were not as widespread; also acknowledge that certain communities have been left to function without adequate support from either the City or the County. Basic services such as toilets and trash collection are not sufficient. Consistent, accountable management and abated challenges are required. Unmanaged encampments contribute to serious public safety concerns: drug sales, sex trafficking, and other harmful activities that impact surrounding neighborhoods are a daily issue in District 3. We recognize addiction, mental illness are critical factors that requireeffective and coordinated response than what currently exists.

THE CURRENT APPROACH AIN'T WORKING. A different, more comprehensive process that addresses both public safety and human needs with urgency and accountability.

District 3 Resident who has watched encampments become more unmanaged by the year. I support the Encampment Abatement Policy (EAP) as a necessary step toward addressing the ongoing mismanagement of encampments throughout the City of Oakland. While it may not be a complete solution, it represents an effort to take action where inaction has allowed conditions to worsen.
As part of an “all hands on deck” affects everyone unhoused individuals, housed residents, businesses, schools and it requires a coordinated, community-wide response. Continuing to push it back further & use meetings to ignore this serious issue need to stop.

We remember when encampments were not as widespread; also acknowledge that certain communities have been left to function without adequate support from either the City or the County. Basic services such as toilets and trash collection are not sufficient. Consistent, accountable management and abated challenges are required. Unmanaged encampments contribute to serious public safety concerns: drug sales, sex trafficking, and other harmful activities that impact surrounding neighborhoods are a daily issue in District 3. We recognize addiction, mental illness are critical factors that requireeffective and coordinated response than what currently exists.

THE CURRENT APPROACH AIN'T WORKING. A different, more comprehensive process that addresses both public safety and human needs with urgency and accountability.

I believe that we should tow or ask owners to remove inhabited vehicles, running or not running, in areas where they are not supposed to be parked. These vehicles can be offered safe parking in a lot with services available but NOT ON PUBLIC STREETS. Parking them in occupied neighborhoods creates a health and safety hazard in many (not all) cases.

Please pass the 2025 EAP - it's not right for Oaklanders to be forced to live among abandoned RVs, car, and vans that sit decrepit on sidewalks, outside schools, and in front of homes. This isn't about Oakland's homeless population, it's about doing right by those who want safe and clean streets and allowing everyone to live with dignity. It's also incredibly telling that the neighborhoods that want this change the most are the ones who are impacted the most - with 80%+ of East Oaklanders (87% in D7!) who want stricter encampment enforcement.

We need to clean up around areas to make kids and elderly folks feel safer in their neighborhoods!

I support the proposed Encampment Abatement Policy. I don't see action being taken to alleviate these conditions, and believe this policy puts the burden where it belongs, on the city, to mitigate both the conditions of the homeless and the lack of safety and deterioration of public space caused by treating it as an unlimited campsite.

I appreciate the revisions made to the prior policy, there are still some areas that need more work and consideration, so I am writing in opposition.
Aside from scheduling this as a special meeting at 9:30 am, clearly prohibiting the maximum amount of public participation in such an important topic, I would like to see more coordination with the Mayor's office and more thought to how this policy will be implemented and how much it is going to cost.
Other items I hope will be addressed via discussion during the meeting:
1. CM Wang's amendment to create a SOP and plan for homeless families with children.
2. Waiting for 90 days for City Admin to identify low-sensitivity areas and safe car parks. If you don't have a plan in place now, what is going to happen to to residents of closures in the interim without identified places to go?
4. Re-encamp and get cited/arrested? This provision should be re-assessed.
3. The map appears to show all of Oakland except flat-lands close to the shoreline and industrial areas as high sensitivity. MLK shoreline park has red lines, but what does that mean? No encampment on the trails but it ok in the grass? Are the businesses located in these areas ok with being deemed low-sensitivity? Why is there a block near 105th and E.14 low sensitivity?
4. Is there enough low-sensitivity areas to accommodate the number of homeless? Doesn't seem so.
5. Too much ambiguity in offering shelter language. Either the city will or they won't.
Tonya Love, D7

Criminalizes homelessness. Criminalization is ineffective and significantly more expensive than providing housing.
Increases unsheltered homelessness by giving OPD the power to tow live-in vehicles without notice or shelter offers, causing mass displacement and loss of contact with service providers.
Will threaten Oakland’s access to needed county resources. The county will not let the city encampment abatement team make referrals to hundreds of new shelter and treatment beds if it continues reckless sweeps. 
Diverts funding from essential city services. This legislation allocates no additional funding for enforcement, meaning funding and staff time will have to be redirected that could go toward street repairs, towing abandoned autos, and lowering emergency response times.
This proposed policy is being aggressively pushed by Councilmembers Houston and Jenkins who are funded by wealthy billionaire donors to pave the way for displacement. We know that encampment sweeps do not help people find permanent housing. Sweeps destroy people's homes, property, pets, and their community. This is
What we need is safe parking, sanctuary encampments, deeply affordable housing, and an eviction moratorium. Oakland is rapidly becoming more expensive the 1,300 available shelter beds is not enough for the 5,500 unhoused residents. As long as Council ignores the real problem, we will always have a housing crisis. We need protections for vulnerable people more than ever.

I strongly oppose the proposed EAP. Even with the violation of transparency laws by key city councilmembers aside (!), the policy cements further criminalization of our unhoused neighbors. In particular, the requirement for vehicles to be in a "legal parking space, operable, and registered" is effectively an RV ban for the thousands of Oaklanders forced to live in their cars. Where are the safe, legal places to park? Where are the affordable paths to vehicle registration? To fixing up what are essentially people's homes? If the City truly cared about unhoused people, then it would not institute stricter requirements without providing clear and reliable paths to safe, dignified living. It always comes back to the simple question: Where will people go? Studies and data overwhelmingly show that sweeps kill. Councilmembers Houston and Jenkins clearly don't care. There is blood on their hands, and on any councilperson who supports this policy.

The Encampment Abatement Policy is fiscally irresponsible and ineffective. Encampments are a symptom of a larger issue of unaffordable housing. Policy and public funding to address houselessness should be focused on upstream interventions. By sweeping encampments, Oakland is just wasting money on activities that neither reduce houselessness nor keep the streets cleaner. The encampments will just pop up again somewhere else and the Oakland residents who were displaced in an encampment will be more traumatized and have lost property that may be aiding in their recovery at the hands of the City.

This proposed policy is being aggressively pushed by Councilmembers Houston and Jenkins who are funded by wealthy billionaire donors to pave the way for displacement. We know that encampment sweeps do not help people find permanent housing. Sweeps destroy people's homes, property, pets, and their community. What we need are real solutions such as safe parking, sanctuary encampments, deeply affordable housing, and an eviction moratorium. Oakland is rapidly becoming more expensive with many people at risk of displacement and the 1,300 available shelter beds is not enough for the 5,500 unhoused residents. As long as Council ignores the real problem, we will always have a housing crisis. We need protections for vulnerable people more than ever. This ordinance cuts into municipal services to criminalize unhoused Oaklanders and enable costly tows. It will worsen the budget crisis, funneling money to a corrupt tow yard, while failing to invest in real solutions.

My name is Nikita Shalimov, I'm a long-time D3 resident, and I am speaking in strong opposition to the proposed Encampment Abatement Policy.

This proposed policy is being aggressively pushed by Councilmembers Houston and Jenkins who are funded by wealthy billionaire donors to pave the way for displacement. We know that encampment sweeps do not help people find permanent housing. Sweeps destroy people's homes, property, pets, and their community.

This proposed policy criminalizes homelessness even further by threatening to arrest people for returning to a swept encampment. Criminalization is ineffective and significantly more expensive than providing housing. It also diverts funding from essential city services. This legislation allocates no additional funding for enforcement, meaning funding and staff time will have to be redirected that could go toward street repairs, towing abandoned autos, and lowering emergency response times.

What we need are real solutions such as safe parking, sanctuary encampments, deeply affordable housing, and an eviction moratorium. Oakland is rapidly becoming more expensive with many people at risk of displacement and the 1,300 available shelter beds is not enough for the 5,500 unhoused residents. As long as Council ignores the real problem, we will always have a housing crisis. We need protections for vulnerable people more than ever.

I strongly urge you to vote NO on this proposal.

Hi. My name is Samantha Tran, a housing advocate with the East Bay Community Law Center. I am speaking in strong opposition to the anti-homeless "Encampment Abatement Policy." I urge you to listen to community-led solutions, follow the Mayor's 5-Point Action Plan, and vote NO on this dangerous, harmful, and wasteful policy.

This proposal criminalizes Black and Brown unhoused community members, who are already overpoliced—at a time when ICE raids are more common than access to affordable housing or food in Oakland. CMs Houston and Jenkins have repeatedly attempted to pass this harmful Trump-aligned policy without transparency or proper notice to the public on the vote. Now more than ever Oakland needs to lead by example—we cannot now pass a policy that will lead to the arrest of unhoused Oaklanders already facing life threatening conditions on the streets.

This proposal wastes millions of tax dollars bulldozing tents, impounding vehicles, and banishing thousands of unhoused Black and Brown Oaklanders from their homes without investing in sustainable solutions—with no options for a safe place to go. Unhoused Oaklanders can’t be punished for Oakland’s failure to provide somewhere to go.

Please, please, please vote NO to give them a chance to be part of the solution. We urge you to listen to community-led solutions and vote NO on this dangerous, harmful, and wasteful policy. Oakland needs solutions, not deadly sweeps. Thank you.

Living in District 3 has shown that the city loves to speak of "equity" but only allows encampments in the poorest areas of the city. The closing of tiny homes, RV parking facilities and complete disregard for following the CURRENT homeless encampment policy has created an influx of RVs and the issues that follow them (illegal dumping, drug dealing, trafficking, gun violence, fires, blocked sidewalks, human waste dumped onto our streets, etc) to become uncontrollable. Trying to point to a future plan proposed by the mayor to halve the homeless population by 2030 is laughably inadequate for the matter at hand today and is a slap in the face to the people of West and East Oakland. None of this would be allowed to happen in the more affluent areas of Oakland and our council members have been MIA to these issues. Our children cannot walk the streets safely, play in our tax payer funded parks, swim at DeFremery without RVs and their residents peering into the pool area. Mandela Parkway has been completely overrun with RVs, broken down cars, and piles of litter. There are piles of trash on 16th, 14th, and Poplar that are not addressed for weeks on end. We have spent hundreds of millions on this issue with very little to show for it and the homeless population is ever increasing. Criminals have taken complete advantage on our laissez-faire attitude and come to Oakland to dump on our streets, tag up our buildings and break into/steal cars. Where is the equity?

District 3 resident speaking in support.

Like many who oppose this, I agree the city should provide more services to our homeless neighbors. I think, however, that the status quo of having no standards is clearly not working, and that we should provide clearly sanctioned spaces with services available for those experiencing homelessness, while also enforcing standards that would be expected of housed residents.

In my observation, encampments tend to be allowed primarily in the lowest income parts of our city. While these encampments are viewed as ‘compassionate’ due to a laissez-faire attitude, they most negatively impact the residents of the neighborhoods in which they reside. The encampments attract illegal dumping, encourage chop shops, drug dealing and theft, and facilitate the degradation of our city infrastructure. I don’t often see these same issues in higher income neighborhoods, so it’s confusing to me that those in opposition prioritize the preservation of the current state of affairs, while deprioritizing the rights of residents in what have become containment zones who simply wish to have clean parks and sidewalks, functional infrastructure, and buildings that aren’t burning down.

We currently spend millions, if not billions of dollars, meant to address homelessness, and I don’t think looking at this issue thinks it’s working. So it seems reasonable to have some standard of behavior, sanitation, etc. that all residents, housed and unhoused, can be held to.