Bystanders might wonder how to summon help from the city — and what will happen if they do.

We created a flow chart to answer those questions, though it does not capture all possible outcomes. Scroll down or click here to find it.

Cases traverse a tangle of pathways, through handoffs between dispatchers and myriad public workers. The person in crisis might spend days or weeks tumbling through the criminal justice system or health care facilities. They might get a reprieve from the outdoors in a sobering center or a communal recovery setting, where they can access food and information to help them seek social services. Their path depends on many factors, like the availability of the Street Crisis Response Team, what the bystander tells city personnel and whether responders can calm them.

Often, the person returns to where they started: the streets.

San Francisco emergency dispatchers can receive tens of thousands of calls per year about mental health incidents, including suicide attempts. According to a recent study by a city working group, there were nearly 13,700 recorded involuntary psychiatric detentions in the fiscal year that ended in 2022 — a conservative tally as the analysis did not include some facilities in San Francisco. The study found that African American residents were detained at disproportionately high rates, and unhoused people were frequent users of psychiatric emergency services.

(Click the link below the chart to see a version that allows you to zoom in.)

The San Francisco Public Press spent months investigating how people can be detained involuntarily due to mental health crises and what happens to them afterward. The psychiatric detentions are commonly called “5150” holds, a nod to the section of state code that defines the criteria for this intervention. We examined hundreds of pages of call records, department procedures and training documents, and interviewed staff at numerous city departments directly involved in crisis response to map the city’s system of care.

A single phone call about an incident can trigger responses from multiple departments. Major responders include the Department of Emergency Management, Fire Department, Police Department, Sheriff’s Department, Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, and Department of Public Health.

People witnessing a crisis generally request help by calling either 911, the city’s emergency line, or 311, for general services and assistance. Dispatchers do their best with the information the caller provides to quickly determine whether the distressed person poses an immediate danger to themselves or others.

Calls about mental health crises often ping-pong between 911 and 311 as details emerge, said Burt Wilson, president of the union chapter that represents the city’s emergency dispatchers.

Many unhoused people carry weapons to defend themselves at night, and they might struggle with drug addiction or be mentally unstable, Wilson said.

“I don’t know how you differentiate, on the phone call, who to transfer to 311 and who to transfer to the police,” Wilson said. “Most of the 311 calls end up coming back to our call center because 311 just has to say a certain trigger word like, are they ‘aggressive?’ And then it comes right back to us.”

The Department of Emergency Management dispatches police in cases of calls about people threatening violence or wielding weapons; that doesn’t include people who are merely yelling, said Officer Robert Rueca, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Police Department.

But what qualifies as “violence?” The Department of Emergency Management could not say.

“‘Violent’ is not something we have a concise definition for,” a spokesperson said. “It will vary based on circumstances and the level of information the reporting party is providing.”

And a “weapon” is broadly defined as “anything that can be used as a weapon,” according to department guidelines. For many types of small weapons, such as pocket knives, possession alone is not considered a threat.

If a person is in severe crisis, police and medical personnel can put them on a 5150 hold.

But involuntary hospitalization can be harmful, said Sarah Gregory, a senior attorney at Disability Rights California. The organization advocates for community-based services for people with mental health disabilities, as an alternative to forced stays in hospitals or psychiatric wards.

Gregory called it a “traumatic” experience when someone “who’s already having a mental health crisis calls for help, and then receives a response that takes away the person’s rights.”

“Client after client says, ‘I came out of there worse than I went in,’” Gregory said, referring to places where patients were involuntarily detained.

When a person in mental distress is not an immediate threat, the call goes to medical personnel like the Street Crisis Response Team, Fire Department or paramedics. The crisis team is one of many created in recent years as San Francisco and other cities have shifted away from a law enforcement response following high-profile police killings, including those of Mario Woods, Tony Bui and George Floyd, in which the officer was convicted of murder.

The San Francisco Police Department “would never be dispatched to a medical call” even if the Street Crisis Response Team or an ambulance were unavailable, said the spokesperson for the Department of Emergency Management. The police were the crisis team’s backstop in its early years, but that stopped in June 2022, they said.

The team uses de-escalation strategies to calm a person in distress, like speaking softly, asking questions to get to know them, and offering snacks or water. When the person regains composure, the team might connect them to treatment or follow-up care with the Office of Coordinated Care, Homeless Outreach Team or Post Overdose Engagement Team, the spokesperson said.

The team might also simply leave the scene once the person is no longer in distress.

People who engage with the city’s crisis-response system might benefit most from having long-term case managers who can help them fully resolve problems with their health or living situations, said Mark Salazar, chief executive officer of the Mental Health Association of San Francisco. The organization provides case management and peer support services at courts, jails and Zuckerberg hospital after someone is released from a 5150 hold.

“But the shortage of support and funding is really a challenge,” Salazar said. “Without having continued support after being 5150’d, or [receiving] forced treatment, you’re just setting up someone for more failure.”

Support for people struggling with their mental health

San Franciscans struggling with their mental health can call many local and national hotlines. To learn about the resources that are available, and potentially speak with counselors, reach out to the organizations below. 

Mental Health Association of San Francisco: Talk to a peer about your feelings and get information about available mental health services.

• Warm line is open 24/7
• Call or text 855-845-7415

San Francisco Behavioral Health Services: Find local mental health or substance use services that meet your needs.

• Clinicians are only available Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturday-Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• Behavioral access helpline is open 24/7
• Call 415-255-3737 or 888-246-3333

Harm Reduction Therapy Center: Speak with someone if you are experiencing homelessness and seeking peer counseling or harm reduction services.

• Community helpline is open Monday-Friday, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
• Call 415-863-4282

San Francisco Night Ministry: Speak with counselors trained in trauma-informed care, interfaith spiritual support, suicide prevention and crisis management.

• Care line is open every day from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m.
• Call 844-467-3473

Mobile Crisis Team: Speak with clinicians who can help someone experiencing a crisis. The team may visit the person to assess whether they meet the criteria for involuntary psychiatric detention, and they can request support and transportation by paramedics or police.

• Helpline is open 24/7
• Call 628-217-7000

SF Suicide Prevention Hotline: Speak with a counselor if you or your loved one are considering suicide. Counselors can provide referrals for mental health, HIV and addiction services.

• Hotline is open 24/7
• Call 415-781-0500 or text 415-200-2920

Other resources

California Peer-Run Warm Line

• Warm line is open 24/7
• Call or text 855-600-WARM (9276)

California Suicide Prevention Lifeline

• Hotline is open 24 hours
• Call 988

Crisis Text Line

• Crisis counseling is available 24/7
• Text HOME to 741741
• Visit their website to connect via online chat or WhatsApp

Like many media organizations, the San Francisco Public Press is experimenting with artificial intelligence (A.I.) tools that aid the creation of images for use in some stories. Nearly all our visual content is produced by humans.

The Public Press is part of the Mental Health Parity Collaborative, a group of newsrooms that are covering stories on mental health care access and inequities in the U.S. The partners on this project include The Carter Center, The Center for Public Integrity and newsrooms in select states across the country.

See our related article, The Often Vicious Cycle Through SF’s Strained Mental Health Care and Detention System

The post You Report an Unhoused Person in a Mental Health Crisis. This Is What Happens Next appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Uncertain what to do, we dialed 311, San Francisco’s non-emergency helpline. Seventeen minutes later, a red van arrived, carrying members of the city’s Street Crisis Response Team. Jay told them he was schizophrenic. The paramedic recognized him from previous calls and greeted him. Looking at Jay’s digital records, a member of the group realized his prescription had been refilled about two weeks prior, but Jay didn’t remember picking it up.

As they spoke, it became clear that Jay had previously been placed under involuntary psychiatric detention, also called a “5150 hold.”

That fall day, Jay asked to be detained again.

[ Read also: “You Report an Unhoused Person in a Mental Health Crisis. This Is What Happens Next” ]

That was how he had gotten a dose of Benadryl, one of two medications he used to manage his condition, he said. Benadryl is among the antihistamines that can help control anxiety. Schizophrenia requires lifelong treatment, even when symptoms have subsided.

“They give me my pill with a 5150,” he said.

The paramedic bristled. “That’s a lot of resources just to get one pill.”

Jay was one of thousands of people last year who fell into San Francisco’s complex, reactive, strained system for treating severe mental health and drug-related crises. As with many of the people who enter that system — including those who are unhoused or are detained without their consent following a call from an alarmed observer — Jay had received temporary care, entailing multiple involuntary psychiatric holds, that failed to address his long-term problems. That left him back on the streets to fend for himself or, with the help of passersby, try again to get the help he needed.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, much of the public discussion about homelessness and mental health in San Francisco has focused on the people who desperately need care, but who reject it. Jay’s story diverges from this common narrative.

“When’s the last time you were at Gen?” the paramedic asked, referring to the emergency room at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the facility in the city with the highest number of beds for people on 5150 holds.

“Today,” Jay said. He had gone there seeking medication, then waited in a hallway for four hours before staff gave him a dose of Risperdal, an antipsychotic that he did not usually take. It had not been effective.

Who responds to mental crisis calls

Emergency service providers may not legally turn people away. For many San Franciscans, this is their only option for accessing medical care.

City officials have made recent efforts to improve the crisis care system. A few years ago, police might have been dispatched to Jay’s call and that would divert them from situations they might be better trained to handle. Today, the city routes mental health-related calls to other teams instead when there is not an immediate safety threat, said a spokesperson with the Department of Emergency Management.

One alternative is the Street Crisis Response Team. It was created in late 2020 and aims to offer trauma-informed care to people facing mental health crises or minor medical issues, potentially reducing unnecessary emergency room visits.

When team members arrive on the scene, they address the person’s immediate needs first — for example, food or a warm blanket — and might connect them with other services and take them to a shelter, sobering center or health clinic.

The many units that respond to the city’s increasingly visible street-level crises cost millions of tax dollars each year: The Street Crisis Response Team’s budget will be $12.3 million for the fiscal year ending in 2025; the Homeless Outreach Team’s budget for the same year will be $8.9 million; and the Homeless Engagement Assistance Response Team was authorized last year to receive one-time funding of $3 million.

City dispatchers must decide which team to send — they might send more than one — relying on the caller’s description of the scene. Calls about mental health crises often ping-pong between 911 and 311 as details emerge, said Burt Wilson, president of the union chapter that represents San Francisco’s emergency dispatchers.

“It’s a huge amount of resources,” Wilson said.

Involuntary detention’s disproportionate impacts

Dispatchers received at least 24,000 calls about mental health crises or attempted suicides in 2023, including calls from bystanders as well as police, based on a Public Press analysis of government records. In many cases, responders couldn’t find the people in crisis.

In the most serious instances, crisis responders put people in 5150 holds, named after the section of California’s Welfare and Institutions Code that defines this procedure. The law permits police and trained medical personnel to detain someone for up to 72 hours if their mental health disorder is making them a danger to themselves or others, or it leaves them unable to provide for their basic needs.

The city recorded nearly 13,700 psychiatric holds for the year that ended June 2022 — but that figure, the most recent available, captures a fraction of the total situation. The number was calculated in a report by a city working group, which found that not all hospitals reported detentions and that the available data did not allow for robust analyses of patient characteristics like race, gender or housing status.

Some people were put on 5150 holds multiple times at Zuckerberg hospital. Using data from that facility in its analysis, the working group found that 425 people received at least two psychiatric holds, 86 had at least four holds and 13 had eight or more. African Americans, despite making up only 6% of the city’s population at the time, accounted for over 42% of people detained four or more times.

Most people who received emergency psychiatric services from the hospital, including 5150 holds and voluntary visits, had experienced homelessness in the prior year.

Numerous service providers told the Public Press that people are more likely to cycle repeatedly in and out of crisis-care facilities when they don’t have access to preventive or non-emergency care, because small problems can become larger ones that require hospitalization.

Experts said also that it’s vital for people to receive culturally competent care — for example, when the health worker speaks the patient’s language or knows which medical guidance will conflict least with social norms.

Underfunded care system

San Francisco has seven designated psychiatric facilities with a total of 187 beds for patients on psychiatric holds, according to the California Department of Health Care Services, which approves facilities for this use.

But not everyone on a 5150 hold gets a bed. The crisis care system is notoriously underfunded, with inadequate capacity and staff. When no bed is available, someone is detained in an emergency room for up to 24 hours.

The 2023 passage of state Senate Bill 43 might further strain the system. The law modified the eligibility criteria for 5150 holds for the first time in decades, making it possible to detain people gravely disabled due to substance use. In response, San Francisco has acquired additional beds. Many other counties are waiting to implement the policy, saying they need more guidance and resources from the state to comply.

Meanwhile, Proposition 1, a separate package of state policies that voters approved by a razor-thin margin in March, could add treatment beds to the system, including those for 5150 holds. The proposition forces counties to redirect a large portion of their mental health spending to housing programs, many of which must benefit unhoused people and veterans. A coalition of mental health organizations and disability advocates opposed the ballot measure, fearing it would cause cuts to vital community-based programs. 

Among its many mandates, Proposition 1 authorized the sale of $6.4 billion in government bonds. Of the total bond revenue, $4.4 billion is slated to pay for building behavioral health facilities. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who campaigned for Proposition 1’s passage, has said it will enable adding more than 11,150 behavioral treatment beds.

For people who are able to get beds, their problems are far from solved.

“There’s a perception that if you put someone on a hold, something good will happen for them, like something miraculous,” said Dr. Maria Raven, chief of emergency medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. People might think that an intervention by psychiatric workers would set in motion a process that leads to long-term treatment or, for those experiencing homelessness, permanent housing, she said.

“That doesn’t really happen,” Raven said. Instead, “you just put someone where there’s a bed.”

[ Read also: “Mental Health Advocates Call for Voluntary Treatment as Spears Conservatorship Ends” ]

Back on Market Street, the Street Crisis Response Team was trying to find help for Jay in this overburdened system. As they made phone calls to locate a facility that could fill Jay’s medication, one team member tried to comfort him with snacks and water, which he was hesitant to accept.

“Every time I drink something, bad stuff happens,” Jay said.

“You can drink it,” the paramedic told him calmly. “We’re not going to leave you.”

After about 15 minutes and at least four unfruitful calls to multiple agencies, the paramedic suggested that the outreach workers try the Westside Crisis Clinic. They checked its operating hours but found conflicting information online. A call revealed that it was closed for the day.

“It’s very unfortunate that the city runs on banking hours,” another team member said.

Finally, the team found a bed at the Dore Clinic, which provides psychiatric urgent care. Jay could stay there for up to a day. He would have a bed and access to a shower and a phone. That would enable him to call his sister, who could pick him up and help him obtain his medication.

“You can get all your meds tomorrow, something that we can all look forward to,” the paramedic said.

Like many media organizations, the San Francisco Public Press is experimenting with artificial intelligence (A.I.) tools that aid the creation of images for use in some stories. Nearly all our visual content is produced by humans.

The Public Press is part of the Mental Health Parity Collaborative, a group of newsrooms that are covering stories on mental health care access and inequities in the U.S. The partners on this project include The Carter Center, The Center for Public Integrity and newsrooms in select states across the country.

See our related article You Report an Unhoused Person in a Mental Health Crisis. This Is What Happens Next

The post The Often Vicious Cycle Through SF’s Strained Mental Health Care and Detention System appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Berkeley is accelerating plans to more humanely deal with homelessness in the wake of a San Francisco Public Press report on a chaotic encampment raid in October, and city staffers say they will start collaborating with unhoused people and homeless advocates when planning to clean or clear large encampments.

Several city departments are changing procedures in response to complaints from those living in encampments and their advocates, and from residential and commercial neighbors.

Here are some key changes:

• Berkeley will increase trash pickups to several times a week and do more frequent street cleaning to improve overall sanitation and living conditions.
• The city auditor is reviewing the effectiveness of the city’s homelessness services.
• The police department is reducing its involvement at encampment abatement operations.
• The fire department is providing unhoused people with basic fire safety guidelines.
• The city manager’s Homeless Response Team has taken steps to improve communication with residents at the largest encampments in West Berkeley through community meetings and new “Good Neighbor Guidelines” that explain what conditions would trigger a city intervention.
• The city has also applied to the state for an Encampment Resolution Funding Grant Award to lease a motel that it would use to provide temporary shelter.

In my capacity as a professional journalist, I reported for the Public Press on the aggressive October encampment cleaning that upended the lives of more than 50 people living near Eighth and Harrison streets and brought the city’s response to homelessness under scrutiny.

I was able to document and photograph the 12-hour encounter because it affected me, too. I am part of a community of people living in tents and vehicles who have been displaced from other encampments around the city, including the Berkeley Marina, the Gilman Underpass, Seabreeze, Ashby Shellmound, People’s Park, the Grayson Street Shelter, Here/There Camp, Shattuck Avenue and the Second Street camps. 

In the wake of photographic evidence from the October encampment cleaning, which exposed the city’s poor communication, lack of transparency, and failure to provide adequate shelter and support to unhoused people, city departments are under review.

Berkeley Senior Auditor Caitlin Palmer wrote in an email that, “We plan to work on the audit in the fall and hope to issue it sometime next year.”

The Berkeley city manager in July concluded an investigation of Berkeley police officers involved in the October encampment sweep who sent text messages that the Berkeley Police Accountability Board said showed “anti-homeless and racist remarks.” The city manager’s office, which hired an independent company to conduct the investigation, issued a report that the investigation found no wrongdoing. But the office has indicated that it will not release further details from the investigation, which it deems confidential.

Aiming for Clearer Communication

Peter Radu, assistant to the city manager, said the city acknowledged that it had mishandled encampment cleanings and used “overhanded” measures that included the destruction of personal property and giving vague, sometimes conflicting instructions to encampment residents. He acknowledged his own role in those events and said that he and the city wanted to work with unhoused people and homeless advocates to rectify the situation.

“I am genuinely sorry,” Radu said to community members gathered at Eighth and Harrison streets. “We’re trying to start something new, and work more with you as opposed to against you moving forward.”

On July 10, dozens of people gathered under and around a gray shade structure at Eighth and Harrison streets. Radu addressed the crowd of outreach workers and encampment residents to tell them that the City Council would soon approve a new shelter, referring to the planned motel conversion. He did not say whether the city would close the encampment, noting that Berkeley has more unhoused people than available shelter spaces, but said that residents in the area would be prioritized. The city has not announced a date for when it plans to begin operating the motel as a shelter.

“Call it a ‘closure’ or call it something else,” Radu wrote in an email asking for clarification about future plans for the encampment. “We do have (1) an opportunity to move people inside with a new resource, and (2) we do have infrastructure repair and construction needs in the area. People cannot live in construction zones.”

Radu’s efforts to establish trust have been met with mixed reactions from people living in the camp and their advocates. While some said they appreciated this newfound willingness to cooperate, others remained skeptical.

“You had consequences from your actions and now you are here,” said Chloe Madison, a camp resident on Eighth Street. “I’ve seen this side of you before, and I’ve also seen the guy who steals people’s homes.”

Many unhoused people say they continue to feel harassed no matter how much they do to avoid residential neighborhoods, because Berkeley staffers have shuffled them around the city with repeated encampment cleanups and closures.

“Just in the past few months, like Seabreeze. I’ve had like 10 camps in the last couple of years,” said Ron, a resident from the Second Street encampment. “You have herded us here.”

To address such grievances, Radu began working with two of the largest encampments in Berkeley, located near the intersections of Second and Page streets and Eighth and Harrison streets. He said the city and residents needed to find middle ground and take a collaborative approach to addressing the sanitation issues on the streets.

“There’s a competing need for space,” Radu said at an Eighth and Harrison streets community meeting. “So, we’re just trying to find a solution that keeps everybody safe and that allows the community to kind of have a shared use of this public space.”

In April, Radu held the first of three community meetings and presented a report to people living at the Second Street encampment, and said that if residents addressed safety concerns voluntarily, the city would not enter anyone’s vehicles or tents. He said that because of fire risk, residents would not be allowed to live in other kinds of makeshift structures.

Residents who attended the meeting said they were willing to work with the city, but many also shared their experiences of repeated property loss due to previous sweeps. Ron, who gave only his first name, recounted how he lost his belongings when he arrived late during the last cleaning at Second and Page streets. He said he jumped on the back of the garbage truck to salvage his personal belongings. He was able to save a few items.

“I was five minutes late, five minutes late, and I lost everything,” Ron said at the community meeting. “I had things that I carried from town to town. I had things in there for years.”

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Alice Barbee, who lives in the unhoused community at Eighth and Harrison streets, said the city previously gave instructions, which residents followed, and then discarded their possessions anyway.

“You say to get it all across the street if you want to keep it safe,” Barbee said. “But you come and you take that stuff, too. All of it and then call it trash?”

In May, residents of both communities asked for reassurance that no one would enter their households and throw away their possessions.

“We have not been as transparent and communicative as you guys would have liked and as we could have been,” Radu said to a gathering of Second Street residents. “I just want to acknowledge there were clearly misunderstandings and miscommunications on our account.”

In May, Radu tried collaborative cleaning at both encampments, asking residents to voluntarily address safety concerns highlighted in his reports. He deemed those events a success.

“We schedule a deep cleaning together and, voluntarily, give us what you don’t want,” Radu said to Eighth and Harrison residents, noting that the city staff had hauled away 11 tons of debris the previous week from the community living near Second and Page streets. “It was all voluntary. None of it was forcefully taken from anybody. We didn’t enter any tents.”

But the city does not have a policy for preserving the belongings of someone who is not on site when it conducts a cleaning operation. This means that residents living in tents or makeshift shelters risk losing their possessions when they leave their homes.

The city has also made agreements with surrounding businesses to keep people from camping on their sidewalks. Public notices are issued to residents camping outside of designated zones along Seventh and Eighth streets citing the city’s sidewalk ordinance and prohibition of bulky items in commercial corridors. The notices direct people to a shelter that closed in December and is no longer in operation.

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Sharing Public Space

In an effort to get everyone on the same page, Radu asked a few homeless advocates to give him feedback on a draft of unofficial guidelines to maintain general cleanliness in the neighborhood and improve interactions with the surrounding business community.

Radu said he hopes the “Good Neighbor Guidelines” will help establish a better working relationship between encampment residents and the city staff. He is seeking additional community input on the draft.

But the new procedures are challenging for a few residents who sleep on the open sidewalk and struggle with mental health issues. They are in survival mode and have trouble following rules about storing their belongings and discarding food scraps to avoid attracting vermin. And so, they are constantly at risk of having their possessions thrown away during weekly street cleanings.

“The Guidelines are rules the City wants people to follow. The guidelines say ‘Please,’ but behind that ‘please’ is the threat that if they are not followed, eviction, arrest, or a citation will result,” wrote Osha Neumann, a Berkeley civil rights attorney, in an email seeking his comment on the guidelines. “The City needs to realize that a great number of the people out there have significant disabilities, mental and physical, which make following rules difficult.”

The Public Press asked for reactions to the guidelines from Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín and all of the City Council members, about half of whom replied by email. Councilmembers Sophie Hahn, Ben Barlett, Rigel Robinson, and Mark Humbert declined to comment on the city’s response to homelessness despite multiple requests.

“These are temporary, common sense guidelines specifically for this neighborhood during the transition to the Super 8 motel,” Elgstrand wrote on behalf of the mayor. “These guidelines will help ensure the safety and security of encampment residents and neighbors.”

Councilwoman Susan Wengraf wrote that she agrees with what Berkeley city staff is doing and that “Berkeley is moving in the right direction.”

Councilwoman Kate Harrison wrote that “it is critically important that while the City makes these requests of unhoused and housed people in our community, it simultaneously provides the necessary facilities and services that allow people to follow them.”

Councilman Terry Taplin has already promulgated a version of these unofficial rules on his website as his district also grapples with homelessness. “The Good Neighbor policy both increases transparency around what triggers a city intervention and provides recommendations to better manage the public right of way better and improve traffic and fire safety,” he wrote, adding that the city could take further steps to improve encampment sanitation.

“Conditions can be improved by waste pump-out services,” he wrote, also noting that the city’s Homelessness Services Panel of Experts has also recommended expediting the search for a new parking lot for the safe parking program. But no money was earmarked for it on this budget cycle, according to Radu.

Harrison and Taplin agree that the city needs to implement other changes, such as providing more permanent supportive housing and transitional housing programs citywide, in addition to resolving sanitation issues.

The state grant would allow the city to lease the motel for two years, and the city hopes funds from Berkeley’s Measure P, which passed in 2019, would pay for three additional years.

“We are working with the County and our nonprofit service providers in finding solutions that enable us to provide access to shelter and services beyond the Super 8 motel,” Elgstrand wrote. “Even if this one location reaches full occupancy, we will continue to do everything we can to target resources to the residents of this encampment.”

Looking for Representatives to Show Up

Despite recent developments, some encampment residents said they felt frustrated and abandoned by Berkeley city officials. They wondered why City Council members and the mayor attended a recent Gilman District Business Summit to talk with business owners but had not attended any of the encampment community meetings.

“As long as you ostracize people, and their issues are not as important as others, then anger and resentment starts to come in,” Merced Dominguez said at an Eighth and Harrison community meeting, adding that she wanted to see the Gilman District’s Councilwoman Rashi Kesarwani attend a future meeting. “We just want to have a dialogue with her to work something out. This is what she was voted in to do.”

Kesarwani replied to a request for comment with a general statement but did not directly answer questions about recent policy changes and how Berkeley staff is responding to homelessness in her district despite multiple requests.

Madison, another encampment resident, expressed her frustrations over email, writing that she hadn’t heard about the business summit and questioned the timing of that meeting, which portrayed unhoused people disparagingly, blaming them for criminal behavior and causing others in the neighborhood to feel fearful.

“For you to attempt to approach us in good faith only days later is super skeevy,” she wrote to Radu. “Super cool how we’re all lumped into being scary crime doers when all I do all day is attempt to further my career in a way that works with my mental and physical health.” She added that “excluding us from that meeting allows those narratives to perpetuate.”

Radu responded to Madison that he had recommended including encampment members and community advocates at the meeting with business owners, but that the decision was not up to him.

“You’ll understand that I don’t get to make all those decisions, but since then I HAVE recommended to the business leaders that they reach out to you and try to have conversations,” he wrote, adding that “I agree completely with you that the format of the business meeting was not conducive to such trust.”

Some encampment residents are accepting, cautiously, what appear to be goodwill gestures.

“For a long time, I think it was a big battle. You guys don’t want to talk to us or work with us,” said Sarah Teague, a Second Street encampment resident, at one of the recent meetings.

“But you guys are making the initiative to come down here and talk to us personally. That’s a huge breakthrough,” she said. “I think it’s a big giant leap of faith for everybody.”

Full disclosure: Radu asked for Yesica Prado’s feedback on the Good Neighbor Guidelines and accepted a few suggestions to clarify wording but did not incorporate her other recommendations.

The post Berkeley Says It Was Aggressive in Homeless Encampment Sweeps, Promises Reforms appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

San Francisco took steps to get ahead of the crisis: A spokesperson from the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing said the agency increased street outreach and the number of shelter beds available in anticipation of the storms. But as of a week ago, some people said they were having a hard time accessing shelter beds and other resources to protect them from the rain.

We talked with more than two dozen people about the challenges of finding shelter in eight San Francisco neighborhoods over three days during the storms at a time when several shelters were close to capacity, according to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s dashboard. We talked to many people in vulnerable situations who did not have the ability to search online to figure out where shelters were or how to get to them. Also, the city’s shelter dashboard does not explain clearly which shelters have beds available in real time.

For several weeks, intense rain and wind caused power outages, downed trees, and led to flooding and mudslides. From Dec. 26 to Jan. 18, there were 1,711 reports of flooding to San Francisco’s 311 service center, as well as 1,125 reports of damaged or fallen trees, excluding trees that were vandalized. An additional 1,355 reports were generated about tents or vehicle dwellings, and were coded as “Encampment Cleanups” in a Department of Public Works database. About 60% of these reports were duplicates.

“We have set inclement weather protocols,” Denny Machuca-Grebe, a public information officer at the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, wrote in an email. “Once we see a forecast of less than ideal weather conditions, we put the protocols into action.”

“We are increasing wellness checks, looking throughout our shelter system to flex some capacity where available, discuss with our city partners as to whether a pop-up shelter would be needed, and staff up to support these operations,” Machuca-Grebe wrote in a follow-up email. He also noted that the Homeless Outreach Team deployed extra workers encouraging people exposed to the elements to come inside.

But while we were out reporting, we came across one man in the Tenderloin who had been shivering under the rain for at least an hour before we called the Street Crisis Response Team, which sent representatives to check his vital signs and take him to a shelter. During an early-morning break between storms, we also saw city workers clearing an encampment in the Mission where residents were offered shelter. Those who declined the offer were asked to pack up and move all their possessions — many moved around the corner or across the street — so the Department of Public Works could clean the sidewalk before the next day’s rain.

The department “sheltered an additional 100+ people every night throughout the storm activation,” Machuca-Grebe wrote. He said that extra beds are available during storms on a walk-in, first-come first-served basis for one-night stays Monday through Thursday, and for three-night stays for those who arrive on Fridays.

The Department of Emergency Management also reported that the city’s Healthy Streets Operation Center, a group focused on coordinating efforts among city agencies to address homelessness and street health, had engaged with 160 people living outside in various neighborhoods between Dec. 29 and Jan. 14. Less than half of those people accepted offers of shelter. The department also said that staff from several city agencies transported a total of 410 people to winter shelters.

SEEKING FOOD AND SHELTER 

Friday, Jan. 13 

10:58 a.m. Inside St. Anthony Foundation, a social services hub for low-income San Franciscans, dozens of people are eating hot meals and warming up in the dining room. Outside, a 58-year-old man named Tim says that he doesn’t know where he will sleep tonight. His belongings are gathered in a duffel bag and a suitcase, which later will fall open as he boards the No. 7 Muni bus heading toward the Haight and Outer Sunset neighborhoods.

When asked what the city could be doing to better support people like him, Tim answers quickly: “We’re not getting housing over here. Been waiting a long time.”

11:30 a.m. Down the block at St. Boniface Catholic Church, nonprofit employees help people identify their belongings with numbered tags so they can retrieve them later from the canopy outside. The church welcomes those seeking a place to rest every day until 3 p.m., giving them a break from the elements and a place to wait their turn to take a shower or do their laundry at St. Anthony’s across the street. Two police officers stand inside the doorway, serving as security.

“There are a lot more people because it’s raining. People are trying to get out of the rain,” says a St. Anthony Foundation employee standing outside the church.

11:45 a.m. Back at St. Anthony’s dining room, many older people are coming and going –– some of them appear to be residents of the senior housing on the buildings’ upper floors. People continue to leave their property at the entrance. They leave bikes and shopping carts covered with umbrellas and sleeping bags, attempting to shield belongings from the rain, but most of their property is already wet.

One man who commuted from his home near San Francisco International Airport for a meal says that 20 years ago he volunteered at Glide Memorial Church helping feed people experiencing homelessness, and laments that “now things are so damn expensive.” He says he isn’t homeless, but relishes the spinach and other food he can pick up from the foundation.

12:11 p.m. At Hyde and Turk streets, the “urban oasis” park is mostly empty during a light drizzle. Urban Alchemy employees, who manage the oasis, sit under canopies and play music. Department of Public Works employees sit in another area of the park, gazing at their phones.

12:15 p.m. On the way to our car, we see a man in drenched clothing, shaking uncontrollably under an emergency blanket. We guess that he has been there for at least an hour, as we passed him on our way to St. Anthony’s. It is no longer pouring rain, but when we speak to him, he can only muster a few words, sharing his first name and that he is cold. We go to the car and grab socks, a towel, a sweater and a tent, and return to offer these to the shivering man. But he can’t stop shaking from the cold, and we think he needs a more serious intervention.

12:37 p.m. We have trouble finding the right phone number. When we call a number that we find on the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing website, we reach an answering machine. Next, we call 311 and are transferred to the non-emergency police line, where we finally reach a dispatcher. She asks a series of questions about the man’s physical appearance and his demeanor. Does he seem violent? Does he have a weapon? We answer “no” to both. We tell her that he is cold and wet.

1:04 p.m. The Street Crisis Response Team arrives in a red van with three passengers. Two paramedics prepare to take the man’s vital signs. “I can shake him and have him get up, but he’ll be pissed,” one of them says after asking the man several questions: Does he know what city he’s in? San Francisco. When did he last use drugs? Three hours ago — fentanyl. Does he want to go to shelter, or stay where he is? Shelter. One of the paramedics calls SoMa Rise, a program that connects people with substance use issues to services — such as medical care and housing — to find out if they had room for the night. Now the man is standing, and his breath turns to steam as it leaves his mouth. The paramedics bring him a gray women’s jacket that is slightly too small, two large blankets and a dry pair of pants for him to change into in the van.

Eventually, the paramedics pack up the dry clothes and blankets they brought in a plastic bag, help the man into the back of their van and take off.

3:36 p.m. We drive to the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood to visit the Vehicle Triage Center, a city-run parking lot where people living in recreational vehicles can park and access showers, bathrooms and social workers who offer case management. At the entrance, we meet James, a new RV resident. James says he’s turning 65 in a week. After the Hunters Point Expressway flooded, James and other vehicle residents who had parked near there were welcomed to move into the lot, he says. James moved into his RV after losing his job in 2020 during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. He describes his new living quarters as “better than nothing” and “better than getting towed.” He says he believes the program staff are “doing the best they can,” while also providing breakfast and dinner. Propane tanks and generators for heating and cooking are not allowed at the triage center, and so the city stores them for RV owners at the back of the lot. James hopes the program will connect him to permanent housing. “I am just waiting for them to call if they are going to give me a house,” he says.

4:29 p.m. A van is in two feet of water at Hunters View Expressway next to Candlestick Point State Recreation Area. Vehicle residents lived along this roadway for years before it was flooded during the recent atmospheric river storms. Sewage has leaked into the San Francisco Bay after storm drains overflowed here and around the Bay Area.

4:35 p.m. The Vehicle Triage Center is surrounded by water, with the bay on one side and flooded streets in other directions. It is windy here and feels a lot colder than other parts of the city. On a stretch of gravel, we meet Rafaela, a resident of the Candlestick RV Park, a private park next to the city’s Vehicle Triage Center. Rafaela is 30 years old and works at San Francisco International Airport. On rainy days, she finds it challenging, even scary, to drive to work. “I drive at 25 or 30,” miles per hour, she says. On the worst days, she has not been able to drive to work. During this dry spell, Rafaela is out walking her dog, Coco, and doing her best to avoid the flooded park.

4:57 p.m. At the United Council of Human Services — aka Mother Brown’s — a dining room, shelter and city-sanctioned campsite at Jennings Street and Van Dyke Avenue in the Bayview, people are queuing up for tonight’s 5 p.m. meal: bread, fish and rice.

“We are definitely hitting capacity,” said Quincy Carr, a Mother Brown’s employee who used to stay at the shelter himself. St. Anthony Foundation and sometimes even nearby hospitals will drop people off at this shelter, which has a capacity of about 50, to stay for the night. Though people do sleep there, it does not have beds, only tables and chairs. Sometimes people sleep in a portable toilet outside the building. People can bring in service animals or personal items, but no mattresses or bedding are allowed to avoid a bed bug infestation, Carr says.

5:46 p.m. We meet Javon while he is standing in line for a meal. He came to San Francisco after Hurricane Katrina decimated his home town of New Orleans in 2005. Mother Brown’s Dining Room is a resource hub to him and people in the neighborhood, but Javon thinks “it needs to be fixed up and remodeled.” He says he has had trouble finding a job while living outside and says that it’s hard to keep himself clean and presentable for the workday. He lived at the sanctioned tent encampment next to Mother Brown’s building, where tents are raised on platforms a few inches off the ground, but the street still floods. He says he is grateful for shelter, but the rules are strict. “We gotta follow rules, but they start being abusive,” Javon said. “It’s mental abuse.”

Javon says being a black man experiencing homelessness presents bigger challenges. “We are the only race that has to keep starting over,” he says, adding his feelings about local government and elected officials in San Francisco: “They don’t value life. There’s no equality. Some people can just eat and go to school, but I can’t.”

8:58 p.m. We arrive at St. Mary’s Cathedral just before the shelter there stops its official intake for the evening. The church functions as an emergency shelter at night during San Francisco’s rainy season as part of the Interfaith Winter Shelter program. The church infamously made headlines in 2015 for periodically using automatic sprinklers to spray people who slept on its steps.

But the entrance to the shelter is hard to find. We walk all the way around the church and try two locked gated doors before someone inside spots us. The site supervisor, Regina, estimates that about 60 people will spend the night and leave by 7:30 a.m. Two weeks ago during a storm, there was a blackout at the site, but she says the shelter was able to get its hands on lamps, a generator and other supplies to stay open. Regina says that a family stopped by earlier today and told her they were having a hard time finding a shelter, but they were unable to stay at St. Mary’s as the cathedral shelter does not allow children.

In his email responding to our questions about shelter availability, Machuca-Grebe wrote: “For families with children and young adults, they can visit one of the Access Points in the community to request placement into an emergency shelter. Families may also access shelter at Buena Vista Horace Mann by calling or walking up to the program. Additionally, pregnant persons may access family congregate shelter through calling Hamilton Family Emergency Shelter.”

WEATHERING THE STORM

Saturday, Jan. 14 

9:54 a.m. More than a dozen people wait just outside the doors on all sides of the Main Library near Civic Center before it opens at 10 a.m. Near one entrance, we meet a woman who has lived outside without a tent for over a year. She says she went to a shelter last night for the first time as she had no bedding and felt sick with a cold. “It’s hard for women to get in’’ a shelter, she says. “There are more beds available for men.” She says she prefers to keep to herself, but her personal items were stolen a week ago, including a bag with her social security card and birth certificate. She tells us that she filed a police report at the Tenderloin station but didn’t receive any response.

10:24 a.m. Once the doors open, the woman and others rush in. Inside the library where it is warm, people who spent the previous night outside now surf the internet, sort through their belongings in quiet corners and hunker down at the desks among the bookshelves.

10:46 a.m. A Street Crisis Response Team and Sheriff’s van pull up outside the library. Later, a Homeless Outreach Team van drives by a man covered in a sleeping bag and emergency blanket sitting in the Muni bus stop. We stop to talk with him. He says his name is Michael and that he is hungry. We offer him some food; he smiles and softly murmurs to us to have a good day.

12:34 p.m. At 24th and Mission streets, Isolina is smoking cannabis out of a 7-Up can. Several other people take shelter from the drizzle under the eaves of the McDonald’s building. Though Isolina expresses interest in staying in a shelter, she says she does not have a phone or know where the nearest shelters are. We write down the address of the nearest walk-in shelter for her — the Dolores Shelter Program —and call the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing’s hotline to leave a message telling them where she is standing and that she has expressed interest in going to a shelter. We do this even though the chances are slim that this will lead to her getting help, as the website notes that calls made on behalf of people experiencing homelessness will not be returned.

Damian Pierce, 26, approaches us after seeing us speak with Isolina. Weathering the storms “sucks and it’s f—ing freezing,” he says. “I wake up all wet and it’s miserable.” Though he is 6 feet 7 inches tall, he says he only eats three times a week, and most of his meals consist of fruit that he resorts to stealing. He doesn’t have a phone and for the past week has been sleeping in a tent outside of a building that’s for sale. “I try my best to keep, like, prim and proper and what not,” he says. “I just need a safe, not wet place to sleep.”

Pierce says he has struggled to find long-term aftercare for his alcoholism and has been searching for over a year. He says he was able to get sober during a three-day treatment in Santa Rosa, but he was immediately put back on the street and found it hard to avoid drinking and suicidal thoughts.

2:07 p.m. We stop at an encampment next to a PG&E facility in the Mission District. Some camp residents are tidying up around their tents and makeshift shelters. On a fence nearby, blue city posters in Spanish and English discourage people from pitching tents near doorways, fire hydrants or public restrooms, and from occupying more than a few feet of the sidewalk. PG&E has also posted signs on its fence, more clearly stating, no camping allowed. A paper notice stapled to an electricity pole announces that there will be an “encampment resolution” at 7 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 17.

3:31 p.m. A dry spell that lasted for a few hours breaks when rain and hail start coming down. In Hayes Valley, while pedestrians seek cover, a woman kneels and washes her head with rain water from the street. She splashes her face a few times before getting up, and searches for food in a green compost bin outside a café. She doesn’t find anything she wants and leaves visibly upset.

3:46 p.m. A dog stands in the rain near Larch and Franklin streets in the Fillmore District. After a short smoke break, his owner ducks back under their makeshift shelter of plastic tablecloths, cardboard and a set of metal rails typically used for crowd control.

3:51 p.m. A few blocks away, a man stands under the pouring rain wrapped up in a plastic bag, waiting for the traffic signal to change at Eddy and Franklin streets. His two-person tent and personal belongings are drenched. The slope of Franklin Street carries a stream of water toward the corner where he is camping.

4:16 p.m. It’s after 4 p.m. and staff at St. Anthony’s Foundation are done serving meals for the day. Across the street, people seek shelter from the rain. They appear to be cold and wet as they carry their belongings in plastic bags and small suitcases. The warming center at St. Boniface and laundry services nearby are also closed for the day.

4:34 p.m. The rain stops for a few minutes. Behind the Best Buy store in the Mission District, Kevin secures a rainfly cover over his tent to prevent water from leaking inside his sleeping quarters. He uses garbage bags to cover up any openings. The winds have been so strong that “it feels like everything is going to be blown away,” he says. People at this encampment have been using sandbags from nearby businesses to prevent the wind from flipping their tents over. After his last camping site was flooded, Kevin moved to this area. He had lost almost everything in the previous rainstorm, including his bedding. “I was all soaked inside my tent like a wet puppy,” he says.

5:13 p.m. A man sits outside his tent on a plastic bucket and chats with his partner on Cedar Street in the Lower Nob Hill neighborhood. They share a laugh and the man raises his drink to make a toast. He takes a drink and hands her the bottle. Before it starts raining again, he stretches the top cover on their tent, shaking off the pooled water and throwing another layer of clear plastic over the structure.

5:21 p.m. As rain continues, people stand outside the Next Door Shelter on Polk Street in the Lower Nob Hill neighborhood, waiting for intake to start. Those seeking a place to stay need to line up early as shelter beds are offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

5:28 p.m. Across the street from the Next Door Shelter, four people take cover from the rain at a construction site as they wait for the doors to open. A man huddles in a plastic poncho he received from St. Anthony’s Foundation, trying to keep warm. A woman sits on her electric wheelchair, keeping her service dog close.

5:30 p.m. The rain continues on and off for the rest of the night. A person rests inside a soaked tent on Cedar Street, leaving a grocery cart outside with their finds of the day: a pair of Converse shoes, some clothes and a few plastic bottles to recycle.

STARTING OVER BEFORE THE RAIN 

Tuesday, Jan. 17

A police squad car pulls onto 19th Street from Harrison Street as a group of city employees rounds the corner. One woman wears a black jacket that reads “Homeless Outreach Team,” and three men wear beige vests with “Encampment Resolution Team” emblazoned on the back. At least two police officers and a fire department captain are also part of the group. They are later joined by more police officers, a social worker from the Healthy Streets Operation Center and at least one observer from the City Attorney’s Office. The fire captain is often the first to approach tents.

“Are you interested in going inside today?” is typically his first question as the group reaches each tent, sometimes preceded by “they are gonna clear all this out today. We have to clean the sidewalk.” Some encampment residents are not near their tents or belongings and their neighbors try to explain where they are, such as one man who is at court. The fire department captain shakes the tents from the outside, sometimes moving makeshift tarps to peer inside and see if anyone is there.

The team approaches a two-person tent where the man inside speaks little English. Bobby, a worker from the Encampment Resolution Team, speaks to him in Spanish. He asks, “do you want to go to a shelter or a navigation center? It’s still raining.” The man chooses neither, indicating that he doesn’t trust city employees. Bobby later meets Armando and helps him put a wrap around his hand after Armando says that he thinks he has a broken wrist and might need a cast.

Though it is dry today, members of the city team say they are trying to clean up the area before the last wave of predicted showers arrives tomorrow. The Homeless Outreach Team has been conducting encampment cleanups throughout the storms with advocates stating in court that the city continued to remove people from the street without providing shelter, violating a Dec. 23, 2022, injunction issued by a federal court as part of an ongoing lawsuit between individuals experiencing homelessness and San Francisco, though officials say the city is complying with the order.

One encampment resident, Dwayne, says that the mood among members of the Homeless Outreach Team has been more tense since the injunction was issued. In the past, his belongings have been thrown out by the team, he says. Three months ago, a pregnant woman staying in a tent next to him was at a doctor’s appointment when city workers arrived and prepared to throw away her belongings. “They let me grab what I could, like maybe five bags,” he says, “and they threw the rest away. It’s ridiculous.” Starting over without anything is hard, Dwayne says, which is why he is hesitant to go to a navigation center, where he says his belongings were once thrown out when he missed a check.

Although the city is not allowed to force people to move their dwellings, it “may continue to ensure sidewalks are not obstructed and are usable for everyone. And, the City may still ask unhoused people to move temporarily for cleaning activities,” Jen Kwart, director of communications and media relations at the City Attorney’s Office wrote in an email.

During ensuing hours the morning of Jan. 17, camp residents ask what shelter options are available today, but city employees are vague. The Departments of Emergency Management and Homelessness and Supportive Housing did not respond to our questions sent by email asking how many people were offered shelter and the number of shelter spaces available Jan. 17. A representative from the Department of Emergency Management wrote in an email that 10 people accepted shelter offers that day.

Most camp residents choose to stay in the area. They gather their possessions and move across the street or around the block while seven Department of Public Works employees use rakes and shovels to scoop up items left on the sidewalk. A ski, an old television, a garbage can filled with black tubing and a torn foam mattress cover sit among the articles that have been sifted through by residents and are now being tossed into the Department of Public Works dump trucks.

Once the tents have been moved, the streets nearby get a power wash ahead of the last of the atmospheric rivers expected to roll through the next day.

The post Facing Brutal Storms, Homeless People Encountered Hurdles to Finding Shelter appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The post Public Records Referenced in Oct. 4 Berkeley Encampment Sweep Article appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

While some operable cars and RVs were allowed to remain in the neighborhood, and people without vehicles who chose to stay were offered two-person tents, the overall effect of the sweep was that dozens of unhoused people had their belongings taken and their daily existence turned upside down. 

Two camp residents ended up in the hospital, and one in jail for three days. Many people experienced panic attacks, and fire department paramedics came to check on Alice Barbee, who was suffering from heart palpitations. But she refused to go to the hospital because she was worried about losing her tent and belongings. Barbee stayed to fight but still lost most of her things — and ended up in the hospital the next day because anxiety exacerbated her high blood pressure and asthma.

I know what happened that day, because I was there. Since 2017, I have lived in my RV. I have parked in a few locations around the city, searching for safe parking. I do my best to be a good neighbor by keeping garbage in trash cans, and keeping the sidewalk clear for pedestrians. 

I am part of a community of people who, for various reasons, have been evicted from their prior camping areas around the city and along the I-80 freeway exits in Berkeley. City staff call our make-shift encampment the “Harrison Corridor.” Some newer residents are physically and mentally disabled, and others struggle with substance use and mental illness. 

Jump to Yesica Prado’s photo essay and detailed narrative of the Oct. 4 encampment sweep at Harrison and Eighth streets in Berkeley.

HOW WE GOT HERE

I have lived at Eighth and Harrison, since 2018 when the vehicle community I was living with was displaced from the Berkeley Marina. We parked together for safety, and we supported each other with mutual aid and chores, which was especially critical during the pandemic. We were welcoming to people who pitched tents; they needed a safe place to sleep and keep their belongings, too.

We talked regularly with some of our commercial neighbors so we wouldn’t disrupt their activities. Urban Amadah, a nonprofit community farm, has been generous, sharing free food through a dry pantry and a community fridge where we can store perishables. Other businesses in the Gilman District have provided us with plastic bags and trash bins.

In October 2021, our numbers dwindled to about 13 vehicle homes from 54, after the city opened its first safe parking lot program and offered a place to park off-street. The program wouldn’t lead to housing, but it would provide minimal amenities like a water tank, portable toilets, a strip cord for a charging station and a dumpster. Various nonprofits were already providing these basic amenities and food to us at Eighth and Harrison, where we also had plenty of choices for affordable meals. 

Many RV residents agreed to move to Berkeley’s sanctioned parking lot. Some motorhomes were inoperable, and they were likely to get ticketed if they remained in the area once the city launched a four-hour parking pilot program to reduce the number of vehicles parked in the Gilman District. I had lived at this intersection for years — some of my neighbors had lived there for as long as a decade. We shuffled our parking spaces to comply with the long standing 72-hour parking ordinance.

There were not enough parking spaces for every vehicle resident in the city’s sanctioned parking lot, and it was not feasible to some people due to vehicle size and family restrictions. So, some of my neighbors and I stayed together for safety where we were as the city began issuing more citations.

When alternatives are not available, the city uses parking enforcement to keep people moving and satisfy complaints.  

“This annoyance can be enough to send a message that people are watching and not appreciating what’s going on,” Beth Garstein, legal aide to Councilwoman Rashi Kaserwani, wrote to a constituent in an email. “Please feel free to share the phone number and have people call as many times as it takes to get parking enforcement involved, and involved frequently.” 

I can drive my RV, but not very far due to mechanical issues, and there are not many places in Berkeley where I can park for more than a few hours at a time. West Berkeley has been an easier place to park because it’s a light industrial area with few residences. But there is a lot of construction on this side of the city these days, so there are fewer parking spots available. Many people had been displaced already from encampments on Second Street, at Aquatic Park and in the Grayson Street area to make way for a new road, a temporary shelter and a research and development center.

In February, the city made another attempt to move everyone away from Eighth and Harrison streets. People living in tents were offered 28-day hotel vouchers to stay at the Berkeley Inn. When the program ended, they found themselves back on the streets. 

After those people returned, the city decided that it “would de-prioritize the encampment for closure IF the residents could meet basic standards for neighborliness,” city spokesperson Matthai Chakko wrote in a recent email to me explaining how the city had responded to the encampment over time.  

HOW TRASH BECOMES A PROBLEM

We had managed the trash in our neighborhood effectively until everyone started sheltering in place during the pandemic. Parking enforcement ceased, so most of us stopped moving our vehicles, and things started piling up on the sidewalk. Some camp residents took this time to repair their vehicles and build house structures.

In late 2020, Shallon Allen, former supervisor of the Homeless Response Team, approached us about trash accumulation and asked camp residents to pile trash at the corner of Eighth and Harrison streets, next to the Berkeley Repertory warehouse. The pile attracted rodents and illegal dumping by people not associated with our camp. 

We asked for help with a dumpster and individual trash cans assigned to each of our households. But it took the city nearly two years to place the dumpster. By then, the rodent problem was out of control.

Now, garbage pickups are scheduled nearly once a week, but the dumpster often overflows. Illegal dumpers fill it with furniture, and businesses also use it to discard tree clippings and bulky trash. The overflow is left on the ground as the city does not pay for this extra service. Without consistent sanitation services, the conditions at the encampment have persistently deteriorated, “warranting this summary nuisance abatement,” Chakko wrote in his email to me.

ORCHESTRATING A SWEEP

The Oct. 4 sweep operation was organized by Assistant to the City Manager Peter Radu, lead supervisor of the Homeless Response Team. On Sept. 26, Radu submitted an internal report to his boss, Dee-Williams Ridley. The 40-page memo outlined reasons for authorizing a deep cleaning at a long-standing encampment at Eighth and Harrison streets. The report focused on violations of four municipal codes, all dealing with one issue: what the city calls rodent harborage conditions.

Four days later, Radu posted copies of a public notice around the neighborhood. In bold letters, it read: “Notice of Imminent Health Hazard and Emergency Abatement Beginning October 3.” 

That day he came to post notices. Through my windshield, I could see and hear Radu speaking with my next door neighbor, Dante, who had been sick all night vomiting. He looked ill and exhausted. Radu handed him a copy and told him to clean up his area or his motorhome would be at risk of towing. With low energy, Dante reassured him.

Next, it was my turn. Radu approached my motorhome and stood outside. He didn’t knock or call my name — he knows who I am — but I could hear the sound of masking tape. I opened the screen door.

Radu raised his stack of paper, and said, “We are doing a deep cleaning.” He pointed at the paper notice he had taped to my kitchen window and raised his phone to his chest height, taking a photo of me and the notice. I smiled for the camera.

The notice was posted on a Friday afternoon. People cleaned up through the weekend and made piles of items on the road for the upcoming deep cleaning. I shared plastic bags with my neighbors. 

Monday came and went — and no one from the city showed up. We were not surprised. We had no idea when the trucks would appear.

We had seen notices like this one before — a similar one had been issued to residents in the camp on June 30 and July 28. Although personal property was discarded and items on the roadway were removed, shelters were not destroyed. 

But I noticed two new lines on this public notice: “Vehicles may be subject to tow and impound if authorized by the Vehicle Code and caretaking needs.” There was no vehicle code section listed nor any explanation of “caretaking needs,” which was not a phrase I had ever seen the city use. Nothing in the notice indicated that we were being asked to leave.

The notice stated that people in our area had created a public nuisance and violated Berkeley municipal codes concerning rodent harborage. It also said we were in violation of various ordinances against blocking sidewalks.

“This was the most intensive intervention option the Berkeley Municipal Code affords us,” Radu wrote to a Gilman District business in an email a week after the Oct. 4 sweep. “But you can see that our codes were not designed to contemplate this kind of situation.” Another abatement is not possible without building up another case, “which ironically requires that the conditions deteriorate sufficiently.”

City staff encourages business owners to call the police, which helps them build a case for the abatement of encampments.

“If you or your staff are ever threatened, please do call BPD right away and they will prioritize accordingly,” Radu wrote to a business owner in an email. “It helps them to receive these calls for service and helps us build a record/case for moving towards enforcement.”

Radu also shared his reasons with homeless advocates and wrote in an email: “As I look at it, unsheltered homelessness is the new normal (as unacceptable as that is, it is true), which means it is incumbent upon all of us (government and the community together) to devise a new social contract that recognizes and creates rules around this new normal.”

THE ABUSE IN SWEEPS

I understand that some Berkeley residents might think sweeping encampments is necessary. But what happened in October when the city cleaned the streets where we lived — offering vague warnings, unclear instructions for compliance and meager assistance — was unnecessarily disruptive, cruel and inhumane, my neighbors said. 

“When you consistently lose your stuff in this manner, you begin to lose your mind,” said Eren, a camp resident. “All the stuff that reminds you of yourself and all your memories are lost. Everything is gone, and you become more lost.”

The uncertainty about when and how this might happen is unsettling and leaves residents feeling that they don’t have control over their daily circumstances. Fear and anxiety crawl up on you — even in your sleep.  

People who lack housing have a hard time adhering to these ordinances. If a person lies down in public to rest, they are breaking the sidewalk ordinance against occupying more than 9 square feet. 

“We’re trying to work within the spirit of our sidewalk policy. There’s not a tent out there that is three by three,” describing the dimensions in feet technically allowed, said Radu, the day of the abatement. “We’re going to allow them because they have nowhere else to go to have a slightly bigger tent, but we got to maintain some respect for sidewalk policies.”

The morning after the encampment sweep, city workers came while residents were still sleeping, and everything outside people’s tents was thrown into the garbage truck again, including working bikes, wagons, scooters and pet supplies.

“If you want to remain unsheltered, you are going to have to play by our rules,” Radu said to a camp resident who was asking for his property back.

Many people wonder why unhoused residents would decline the city’s offers for services and persist living on the street. The truth is, the offers of shelter are often temporary and less attractive than living in an RV or a tent. Privacy is key. And there are not even enough shelter beds or hotel rooms in Berkeley to offer people to prevent encampments from reappearing. 

The city offered some of my neighbors spots in the Old City Hall emergency winter shelter, which is usually open only six months a year, and will close in April. It is a congregate shelter with 19 beds, as COVID-19 restrictions slashed capacity in half. Another alternative was a room for five days at the Berkeley Inn motel, but that option wasn’t offered to everyone, and only one couple stayed there.

“So, obviously more people than beds, which is why we’re not asking everyone to leave,” Radu said during the abatement.

But short-term solutions eventually expire. As Berkeleyside recently reported, the safe parking lot is closing on Dec. 31, and every RV parked there will be returning to the streets. As of this week, there are no shelter spaces available in Berkeley or Alameda County. 

The abatement operation didn’t improve much for people living at the encampment or for nearby businesses. Camp residents lost valuable and irreplaceable belongings like their medication, family heirlooms and personal paperwork. Business owners expressed their frustrations, again. “The campers are returning and spreading out. I have not seen any police presence this week or end of last week to enforce the Public Notice,” wrote Mark Morrisette, facilities director of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, in an email to Radu a week after the Oct. 4 sweep. 

In response, Radu in several emails has directed business owners to Alameda County to request “substance abuse resources and permanent housing resources to address the people living at this encampment.”

Residents who live outside, in tents or in vehicles are at the mercy of city administrators, who might decide at any time that they need to downsize their footprint or be moved. That’s what happened in the Gilman District on Tuesday, Oct. 4.

Here’s how that chaotic day unfolded.

PART ONE: AN AMBUSH

6:20 a.m. I wake up to the sound of heavy machinery. But it isn’t the forklift at the construction company next door or a tow truck unloading Teslas for repair. I open my eyes, and on the ceiling I see blue and red lights. I quickly jump out of bed. 

When I open my door, I see two Berkeley police officers, Kacalek and Pickett, standing by the cabin of my vehicle overseeing the seizure of my neighbor’s possessions. Two more officers, Valle and Johnson, stand behind them. Dante is not allowed inside his vehicle. I ask to help him, but they will not allow me to pass. 

So I go on the other side of my RV, and that’s when I see the size of this operation. There are dozens of people: cops, city staff and workers in orange vests, walking up and down Harrison Street — it is nothing like I have ever seen before. The streets that lead to our intersection are closed. The Tesla mechanics watch from the sidelines, some filming with their phones.

6:40 a.m. Staff from the Department of Public Works are going after Clarence Galtney’s massive recycling bags. Galtney has lived in an RV in the neighborhood since 2019. He earns money collecting bottles and cans around Berkeley, which he redeems for cash. One, two, three, four, five bulging bags, each one nearly five feet across and just as tall, are tossed into the garbage truck parked across from his home. They fill a whole truck with Galtney’s recycling. Weeks and weeks of work go straight into the trash.

Outreach workers Eve Ahmed, Tony Alcutt and Okeya Vance stand on the sidelines, watching from across the street. All of Galtney’s belongings — tool boxes, wagons, grocery carts, barbecues, cookware, shoes, bags of clothes and kitchen appliances — are being thrown into the middle of the street to be scooped up with a backhoe.

6:43 a.m. I return to my RV to see what is happening with Dante, and find Peter Radu standing on the roof of Dante’s RV sweeping everything that he had stored up there to the ground. Below, public works employees pick up the now-broken items, pieces of plastic and shattered glass sprayed across the pavement.

Five public works employees and seven police officers surround Dante’s RV to clear his property around his vehicle. They bring in a crane to scoop it up.

6:47 a.m. Dante packs any essentials he can find outside his home. He starts with tools he uses for his work as a handyman. Dante’s breakfast is still on the stove, grilled onions sizzling in the pan. He was about to put them on his morning burgers when officers surrounded his vehicle home. 

6:49 a.m. Public Works employees take Dante’s recycling bags, which he had just sorted out into cans and plastics, the night before. Next, they take his clothing and supplies for his dog, Cookie. Everything is crushed by the garbage compactor. 

7 a.m. A parking enforcement officer arrives to start issuing tickets. 

7:15 a.m. Eight public works employees finish consolidating all of Galtney’s items in the roadway. The backhoe’s scooper scrapes the pavement as it takes the last pile. 

7:18 a.m. An officer stands blocking Dante’s door. More public works employees pick up plastic containers that he had just packed with his dishes and bicycle parts he was trying to keep.

The garbage truck is parked right in front of Dante’s home. He now notices all his possessions in the truck, and pulls back his shower tent from the scooper. Essential items all thrown out: car batteries, tools, carts, wagons, water containers, clothes and the pressure washer that he uses for work.

7:25 a.m. Time is running out for Dante. Radu tells him that his RV is about to get towed. Radu won’t let Dante back inside, but says he can get a few items out of his vehicle for him. Dante asks Radu for his wallet and phone to begin with, but Radu cannot find either of them, and he won’t let Dante keep his mom’s flat cooktop, which is plugged into a propane tank.

7:35 a.m. A Berry Bros. truck arrives to tow Dante’s vehicle. Dante bargains with the cops to get his ice chest out of his RV. Radu says he “gave him a year” to get his vehicle into the safe parking program. But that’s not entirely true. I tried to help Dante. In late February, I called Tony Alcutt, the only Berkeley outreach worker who officially places people in shelters, multiple times to try to help Dante get into the city sanctioned lot, because Dante had no phone at the time. Alcutt denied Dante a space because the lot was full.

7:41 a.m. Everyone else down Eighth Street is still sleeping. Dante tries to grab some of his belongings, but Radu won’t let him. Radu throws Dante’s shoes back into the RV through the broken windshield and does a final check before towing the vehicle. 

Along Harrison Street between Seventh and Eighth, Public Works staff remove possessions along with garbage. This is where Chris and Jennifer park their easy-up shade structure next to Galtney’s RV. Mike and Angel are also on that curbside. In the background are 11 tarps and two canopies, which are later destroyed by Public Works. 

7:44 a.m. After Dante pleads with Radu and the police, two public works employees pull his pressure washer out of the garbage truck and return it to him. 

7:52 a.m. Police officers talk among themselves about being short staffed and comment about the unnecessary force present here today. “This job could have been done with two police officers,” says one of the officers.

8:04 a.m. Dante’s RV is towed away.

8:11 a.m. Dante sits on his red ice chest to rest. It has been a stressful morning for him. He tends to his knee injury that is bandaged up. City staff have reduced his property to a couple of plastic bags, a few tools and a bike. 

8:24 a.m. Andrew Vanderzyl stands outside his van wearing brown overalls and a red shirt, but only one shoe. Police knocked on his van five minutes earlier and asked him to come out. He puts his hands in his pocket and waits for someone to speak to him. Sgt. Bejarano tells him, “There’s somebody we are gonna hook you up with. They are gonna get you taken care of.” 

8:25 a.m. Radu is talking with Vanderzyl now. “So, we spoke on Friday,” Radu says. 

“Yeah, and I got it all cleaned up. I just have a bike trailer,” Vanderzyl says, and briefly pauses. “But you guys can take that if you want.” Vanderzyl swings his arms in defeat. 

“I advise you to get your valuables,” Radu says. “This vehicle has been declared a health hazard.” 

“No, I … there are no rodents in there, sir,” Vanderzyl says. “I swear. There are no rodents.” 

“I hear what you are saying, but we are past the point of arguing that,” Radu says. “It’s been declared a public health hazard. We are going to take the vehicle.”

Thomas tries to negotiate. “Can I roll it out? Can I roll it down the street?” he asks. 

“No, you can’t roll it down the street,” Radu says. 

“Can I have somebody tow it?” asks Vanderzyl. “Where would your destination be?” asks Radu. “To a friend’s driveway in El Cerrito,” Vanderzyl replies. He waits for an answer. “Please man, this is all I have.” 

8:28 a.m. Vanderzyl begs for a reprieve. “Please don’t, please don’t take my vehicle. I’ll have this thing moved. I’ll have this thing moved today,” Vanderzyl says. “Please, sir. It’s my, it’s my home.”

Radu tells Vanderzyl the city can take him to a shelter, but Vanderzyl says he wants to stay in his van. He explains that he has a minor electrical problem that is stopping him from driving away, but he promises to move his vehicle today if they let him. But Radu isn’t budging.

8:30 a.m. Chloe tells Radu she wants to know the specific citations they’re using to clear the encampment. Radu pulls out a document. This is the first time we see the report curated for the city manager. Radu points to a photo as evidence for why they will tow Vanderzyl’s van. But there is nothing we can see in the report that specifies which vehicles are hazards. 

8:31 a.m. “Would you like to be taken to shelter? We can take you there right now,” Radu says to Vanderzyl.

“But the health hazard has been abated. You have removed all the trash. So like I said, you don’t need to take the van,” Chloe says. 

Radu tells Chloe she can file an appeal. She and Radu argue about whether the report condemning Vanderzyl’s van was legally sufficient. 

PART TWO: DESTROYING SHELTERS

8:54 a.m. Radu and three Berkeley police officers begin announcing to the people on Eighth Street that their tents and other items will be removed. They ask them to take any valuable possessions to the other side of the street. 

8:55 a.m. Radu speaks to Shawna Garcia and gives her a 20-minute warning. She tells him that her service dogs take more room than the two-person tent the city will provide. Garcia turns down shelter out of fear of being sexually assaulted. Radu tells her that everything that doesn’t fit in the new tent will be thrown away. 

8:59 a.m. Ian Morales, an outreach worker from the Homeless Action Center, tells Radu that he is violating the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. Radu says the city will not store “big bulky” items.

9:02 a.m. Radu speaks to Alice Barbee and Mackie. Barbee says she and others were not adequately informed of the extent of the abatement. She says they thought the city was only coming through to do a cleaning. Mackie is distraught that his brand new tent will be taken away. 

9:04 a.m. Radu says the city only allows two-person tents that are 7 feet by 5 feet. He offers them shelter at the Old City Hall, saying that Barbee’s dog would be allowed there. Barbee says she doesn’t want to give up her belongings, because then she would have nothing.

9:06 a.m. Vanderzyl’s van is taken away to Avenue Berkeley Towing. The vehicle is damaged when it’s taken up the ramp. 

9:07 a.m. Radu talks to Sherif, a disabled veteran from the former Ashby Shellmound encampment. Sherif says his tent area is clean and that he will be unable to move things because of his physical disabilities. When he tells a Berkeley police officer that he needs help, no accommodation is offered.

9:20 a.m. Thomas Barnett sweeps around his van. His electric scooter, cans, clothes, food and copper wiring for recycling were confiscated and thrown out. He still has his vehicle, but the majority of his property was trashed.

9:32 a.m. Jennifer tries to pack up her belongings, but the workers throw them away, picking up everything in their path. Workers dismantle her bed and toss it into the garbage truck.

9:33 a.m. All the structures at Eighth and Harrison have been demolished, including the one in which Chris was living. “It was sturdy and strong,” he says. “I will make the next one stronger.”

10:04 a.m. Angel stands on Seventh Street with her bedding, a few clothes and a stuffed tiger. She’s keeping her friend’s bike safe, so the city will not also seize it.

10:10 a.m. RJ is sitting outside his tent. He is not wearing any pants. City staff woke him up to tell him to get out of his tent, but they have not offered him any help.  

10:11 a.m. Shawna Garcia is asking for help. She feels threatened, and fears being pushed back to Second Street, where the city was allowing people to live in tents and makeshift structures — but that was also where her abusive ex-boyfriend was living. (On Nov. 22, the city posted notices that part of the Second Street encampment would be dismantled and vehicles parked in that area would be towed.)

10:16 a.m. Outreach worker Tony Alcutt sends a text to Bay Area Community Services to inquire about an assessment for Garcia, but there is no guarantee she will receive help. 

Ian Morales, an outreach worker from the Homeless Action Center, finds out later that no one informed Bay Area Community Services — the organization responsible for navigating people into shelters — ahead of the encampment sweep.

10:18 a.m. Shawman is clearly in distress. After city employees take her tent, she scrounges in the roadway trying to save whatever food she can gather. 

10:20 a.m. Down the street, Okeya Vance, supervisor of the Homeless Response Team, is cracking jokes with Officer Hartley and other police officers. Boone walks past them with all his recycling on a stroller. He leans on the stroller as his left foot is fractured. He says he is going to cash it in down on Third Street and come back for the rest of his belongings. But minutes later, it’s all thrown away. 

10:33 a.m. Workers throw everything that is left into the middle of the street to be scooped up by the bulldozer.

10:34 a.m. People stand around in shock. They salvage anything they can and drag it across the street.

10:35 a.m. Shawman watches Public Works clear her remaining possessions. She sits shoeless, wearing unmatched socks, guarding her friend’s bikes and skateboard.

10:36 a.m. The canopy structures have been torn down. A chest of drawers is half open after residents rushed to empty it out, leaving behind other essential items like a portable heater, batteries and tarps. 

10:53 a.m. Clarence Galtney rushes to move items across the street, hoping to save them. Alice Barbee is having a hard time breathing. She has asthma and cannot find her inhaler. Radu is closing in on her, raking her belongings on the ground. Eight police officers surround her area, watching her in distress.

10:58 a.m. Barbee tries to reach for one of her tennis shoes and catches it before it is swept away. She asks Radu to give her time to gather the rest of her belongings, but he ignores her. Barbee asks police officers watching if they could keep Radu away from her. The officers look at each other in confusion — they don’t seem to know whether they are allowed to step in and help. 

11 a.m. Sgt. Kleppe steps in from the crowd and tells Barbee she has a few minutes to gather the rest of her belongings, or she could be arrested for “obstruction of an officer’s duty.” Galtney rushes back and forth across the street, helping her carry bags of household items.

11:15 a.m. Public Works reaches Heather, the last person on the sidewalk. Her friend is helping her gather her clothing. They have taken the mattress where she slept. Heather wraps her clothes inside a net that she had used as a wall to protect her space. 

11:17 a.m. I spot Officer White, Berkeley Police’s public information officer, and I want to ask him why Berkeley Police is here en masse. But he says today he is not here in a communications capacity, and instead is providing “security” to city staff because the police department is short staffed.

11:18 a.m. Alice Barbee is no longer allowed to retrieve any items. Everything remaining on her spot will be discarded. 

11:19 a.m. Felix Torres sits on the stairs of the Berkeley Repertory Theatre building and begins to play his guitar, bringing some relief in the chaos. He sings, “How would you survive another day? They are crushing us.”

11:20 a.m. Barbee’s clean clothes get scooped up from the sidewalk and thrown into a garbage truck. All her sweaters and winter jackets disappear.

11:38 a.m. Some residents sleep next to the items they were allowed to save while Public Works finishes clearing the sidewalk.

11:39 a.m. Rob, a veteran, packs all his property into a laundry wagon. He has been promised social services for months, but Vance tells him that he has to follow up on his own because his team doesn’t work with the Veterans Affairs agency. Rob had been living in a tiny home he built with wood pallets for the floor and plywood walls, using the skeleton of an easy-up shade structure for support, and an umbrella and a tarp for the roof. 

11:41 a.m. Six police officers surround Shawna Garcia to get her to move the rest of her things, but she only has a small wagon. Officer Hartley suggests asking other neighbors to help move her stuff out.  

11:48 a.m. I step in to help. I dash inside Garcia’s tent to grab anything I can save. I see plastic bags on her bed that she has already started packing. Through her window, I see the scooper crushing the wood pallets and the umbrella from Rob’s tiny home. 

12:01 p.m. Outreach worker Eve Ahmed does not want me there while she assesses RJ, but he is persistent and says he wants me to stay. Ahmed is looking into a hotel room for RJ at the Berkeley Inn. But he’s not able to acquire a room there without an I.D. Two rooms have ADA accommodations, which he needs. Without identification, RJ cannot get into the motel tonight. He has two options: accept the two-person tent the city offers him or a shelter bed at Old City Hall. He chooses the tent. 

Ahmed says, “let him be in the tent and put him on the list. We’ll accommodate him later if something else comes up.” RJ is left on the sidewalk with no pants on. 

12:14 p.m. Radu proceeds to trash RJ’s tent because he says, “it’s covered in feces,” even though I had just cleaned out the tent after RJ stepped out. The tent was new — the Lifelong Medical Street Team gave it to him last week. RJ leaves to panhandle at the McDonald’s down the street on San Pablo after his possessions are thrown away.

12:46 p.m. After everyone has been forcibly moved across the street, a city worker pressure washes the sidewalk.

12:49 p.m. The city is cleaning at Harrison and Sixth streets in front of Urban Amadah where Jeff and his wife Eren, Garth and his elderly friend Dominique had all been living. Public works employees and cops pile together their belongings and say it’s all trash. Dominique tries to stop them, but he’s pushed out of the way by one of the workers. 

12:50 p.m. Garth is arguing with the police. He says he has tried to keep his area clean to avoid having his belongings taken. He says the warning notice was not specific enough. Police are threatening to arrest Garth, if he doesn’t give up his belongings.

“I want simple instructions on how I can save my property,” he says. “Nobody deserves this.”

12:54 p.m. Garth runs across the street to pick more items from the pile. Eren watches over his shoulder and suggests what to dig out. Dominique stands in front of the scooper to buy his friends more time to search. 

12:57 p.m. Garth is being detained, says one officer, because he has been “delaying and obstructing.” Radu says Garth has to move east of Seventh Street. He has to leave the Harrison Corridor if he wants to save his property, Radu says.

“Can I get two trips to save my stuff?” Garth asks, as he negotiates for a deal. “Take the stuff you want,” Radu says. “I want all my property,” Garth replies.

“If you are going to live in the corridor, you have to live in the tent we provide,” Radu says to Garth.

1:08 p.m. Officer Kleppe makes a deal with Garth: He tells Garth he has to get out of the area and he has one trip to save his property. A member of Berkeley Copwatch helps Garth load up what can fit in her vehicle. She drops him off at the end of the street by the park.

1:11 p.m. Jeff asks for reasonable time to move his stuff out of the area. His wife, Eren, is breaking down in tears inside their tent with her dog. She is unresponsive and shut down from the stress, her mind scattered on what to do next. “My wife is losing it,” Jeff says. “They are just breaking her down more.”

1:18 p.m. Radu talks to Jeff for the first time. He does not know who has been working with them. Housing is based on disability priority, Radu tells Jeff. “We’ll make sure to put some pressure on BACS to meet up with you,” Muhammed says, referring to Bay Area Community Services. 

1:28 p.m. Officer Jessica Perry asks whether they should open the street again. Radu sends the cops to lunch.

PART THREE: EVERYTHING GOES 

2:20 p.m. Dante is still sitting on the sidewalk with the possessions he could save. “They came to just break a person down and turn me back into a criminal,” Dante says. “When you don’t have anything, you are desperate. And you have to do things you don’t want to do.”

2:30 p.m. City staff and Berkeley Police return from lunch. Two outreach workers and two police officers, Perry and Schickore, help set up the city-issued two-person tents.

2:39 p.m. Alice Barbee is trying to pack up all her things to move back to her spot. She is telling Officer Hartley that she is physically ill and she is afraid to leave to use the restroom without them taking all her stuff. 

2:48 p.m. Before people can move their stuff across the street into the new tents, the city starts trashing the property they had saved. Barbee is distraught: “We are human,” she says. “We deserve time to at least move our things.” She deeply exhales and hugs her dog Compass for comfort.

2:50 p.m. City workers begin piling the property residents had saved after being asked to move across the sidewalk for the deep cleaning. Everything is going. 

3 p.m. Merced Dominguez comes screaming my name down Eighth Street. “They are taking all your stuff,” she yells. I rush down the street to find out what’s happening. 

3:03 p.m. I had been careful to move everything from the sidewalk, but they take everything that was outside of my RV: the cat carrier, scratch post and toys all go. Even the barbecue grill tucked neatly under a tarp behind my vehicle and my trash cans are tossed into the garbage truck. My neighbor demands my trash cans back, and a police officer steps in to ask Radu if this is necessary. Radu dismisses him, and tells him he knows his job. Reluctantly, one worker returns the trash cans without the lids.

3:25 p.m. The fire department comes to check on Eighth Street responding to a request from the police department to provide medical attention to someone who has “an accelerated heart rate and numbness of the face.” They check Alice Barbee’s temperature and heart beat. She is having a hard time breathing. Barbee declines to go to the hospital because she does not want to risk the city taking all her stuff.

3:34 p.m. “What do you want?” Vance asks Mackie as workers start taking his things. His property was not in the street or right of way, but on the sidewalk. She says the notice applies to all sidewalks as well.

3:38 p.m. Mackie had gone to get something to eat and returns to find his and his stepfather Bobo’s belongings in the trash.

3:51 p.m. Mackie tries to save his friend’s property. He ties a rope around the bike cart, securing the items to make the move.

3:58 p.m. Eleven public works employees and four cops surround Mackie while he picks up his friend’s property. Lt. McGee says, “We need you to get rid of stuff that you don’t need. Can you get rid of it? If there’s something you don’t need, toss that shit.” McGee has agreed to save his stuff inside the tent, but only his bedding. He does not want Mackie to take anything else, but Mackie takes his friend’s wagon and recycling.

4:08 p.m. Officer Hartley tells Alice Barbee, “They are thinking about taking you into custody. Your footprint is a large structural house.” Barbee gets frustrated. Officer Perry takes Barbee’s briefcase and pulls it from her. Now, she has to sort through the rest.

4:12 p.m. Barbee squeezes inside her tent to put away her property. She hunches over sorting the remaining items that she could save. Her pit bull, Compass, lies outside in the concrete. The tent is too small for both of them.

4:14 p.m. The crane scoops up Street’s belongings. His friend Jimmie Wiggins has been watching them this whole time, but they say he can’t keep them, and if he persists, he will be arrested. A large yellow recycling bag, a solar panel, an ice chest, a water jug, a drum, two bike tires, two bags of clothes are all smashed and scooped up by the crane. 

I can’t bear to stand by watching. The crane is above my head, and I rush to save the wheelchair. Street moves in his walker, but on bad days, the chair is essential to get him through his day. 

4:20 p.m. On the other side of the street, Public Works employees are going from person to person with Radu, discarding any items that will not fit inside each authorized two-person tent. Bins of clothes, food, hygiene products and water jugs are thrown into the trash. 

4:22 p.m. Radu sorts through Alice Barbee’s property without her permission. After tossing almost everything, he tells his workers that it is trash. Next, he sorts through the property Barbee has in a wheelbarrow. She had grabbed the wheelbarrow in a rush, tossing anything she could save from her clothes, blankets, dishes, shoes, a purse and a saw. But Radu spends seconds looking at the contents before deciding everything goes. 

4:27 p.m. Mackie gets arrested for asking for his property back. The quarrel starts when Radu tells Mackie he can’t keep his tent, and Mackie reacts: “I feel like I want to punch you in the face right now,” he says.  

4:28 p.m. Bobo tries to help his son, but is also detained by Berkeley Police. Three officers take hold of him and grasp him tightly. He is not arrested, but not allowed to keep any of his son’s property.

4:37 p.m. Public Works employees start to move in quickly again, taking everything in their path. Even non-bulky items including toilet paper, hand tools and bedding. 

4:39 p.m. Radu empties people’s wagons and bike carts, even though items are off the ground. People do not have the chance to put their items inside the new tents. 

4:39 p.m. From tent to tent, Radu goes down the street sorting through everyone’s items and tossing them to the ground. “All trash,” Radu says. He shuffles through Cat’s notebooks and sketchbooks, and decides to throw it all out.

4:45 p.m. One young woman rushes out of her tent to get her property, but Radu throws away her wagon with all her clothes and hygiene items. Two officers, White and Valle, stop her from getting close.

A garbage compactor crushes the wagon. The little property everyone had left was thrown in the trash, including religious items. 

4:48 p.m. The young woman stands in shock. She was given no warning.

She tries to communicate, but cannot speak. She asks for a pen and paper. Officer White hands them to her. She writes a list of needed essentials that Radu just threw away such as clothes and hygiene products. 

4:52 p.m. Officer White shares her note with Eve Ahmed, the team’s social worker. She reads it and says someone will be here later in the day to hand out supplies. White hands the young woman back her note, and tells her someone will be stopping by to check in later. She lays inside her tent, visibly upset, and doesn’t respond.

4:50 p.m. City workers are forcing Garcia to get her belongings inside her two-person tent. She is telling them to back off because they are triggering her PTSD. 

5 p.m. Workers continue to throw things away. The wheelchair is confiscated, and Radu tells city workers to take it to the yard where Public Works keeps its vehicles.

5:12 p.m. Public works employees and cops roll out of Eighth Street. It has been a 12-hour shift for all of us.

PART FOUR: FINAL TALLY

5:16 p.m. Housing Recovery Navigators arrive bringing hygiene kits. They offer cheap slippers, instant noodles, menstrual pads, socks and wet towels for cleaning. None of the items are equivalent in quality, quantity or value to the items that were seized and thrown away. Ahmed sorts through the items and grabs some slippers and a pair of socks to hand to the young woman who was too traumatized to speak. 

5:23 p.m. Police officers continue to push Shawna Garcia to downsize her footprint. Merced Dominguez helps Garcia consolidate her belongings inside her tent.

5:40 p.m. Before leaving, Eve Ahmed encounters Street, who asks about services. His wheelchair was confiscated, so he is sitting on his walker to rest. But she has no services to offer him, and leaves for the day. 

5:46 p.m. Radu walks down Eighth Street, surveying the work done today and snapping pictures for his next report. 

6 p.m. Cristina from Housing Recovery Navigators hears feedback from residents as she distributes hygiene supplies. Many ask her, “Why was my medicine thrown away?” “Where is the help?” and “Why can’t I get the tools to remain clean?”

CORRECTION 1/3/2023: Eve Ahmed is an outreach worker for the city of Berkeley. Her last name was incorrect in an earlier version of this story.

The post ‘Everything Is Gone, and You Become More Lost’: 12 Hours of Chaos as Berkeley Clears Encampment appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Proposition C is a proposed charter amendment that would create the Homelessness Oversight Commission to oversee the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. The charter is the city’s constitution and can only be changed by a majority of voters in an election approving an amendment. This measure requires more than 50 percent affirmative votes to pass.

In 2016, former Mayor Ed Lee established the department to be in charge of directing all housing and social services for San Franciscans experiencing homelessness, including street outreach, homeless shelters, transitional housing and permanent supportive housing. The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing is the eighth largest city services department with a spending budget of approximately $672 million in FY 2022-23, and $636 million in FY 2023-24. The department is not subject to direct oversight by a city commission.

The idea of an oversight committee has been on the table for years. The ballot measure to establish it was drafted in 2019 in partnership with the Homeless Emergency Service Providers Association, which represents 30 homeless service providers, along with Supervisors Gordon Mar, Aaron Peskin, Hillary Ronen and Shamann Walton.

“The Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing has less oversight, less accountability, and less transparency over its budget, strategy, and policies than nearly every other large city department,” wrote Matt Haney, in an op-ed when he was on the board of supervisors prior to being elected to the state assembly.

On July 19, 2022, the board of supervisors approved placing the measure on the November ballot, with no votes in opposition. It was co-sponsored by supervisors Ahsha Safai, Shamann Walton, Aaron Peskin, Rafael Mandelman, Gordon Mar and Catherine Stefani.

Supervisor Safaí was one of seven board members to oppose the measure in 2019, amid firm opposition from Mayor London Breed and fears that the proposal would add more bureaucracy. But a report by the Public Press in partnership with ProPublica found that the city had more than 800 units of permanent supportive housing vacant every month for a year while twice as many people approved for those homes waited for assignments, with many living in tents on the street. A recent San Francisco Chronicle investigation that shed light into the poor conditions inside much of the supportive housing stock fueled public discourse, calling for more accountability into homeless services.

If Proposition C passes, the duties of the Homeless Oversight Commission are to:

• Formulate, evaluate and set homeless policies.
• Serve as a public forum to raise accountability issues and advocate for fair policies.
• Conduct investigations into any aspect of governmental operations within its jurisdiction.
• Nominate candidates for department head to the Mayor, and remove a department head – currently, only the Mayor has this authority.
• Approve goals, objectives, plans, service programs and departmental budgets before the Board of Supervisors cast a final vote.

Additionally, prior to May 1, 2023, three charter amendments to the administration codes of these committees will allow the Commission to:

• Appoint all members of the Local Homeless Coordinating Board, which serves as the governing body of the Continuum of Care, which coordinates housing and federal funding for homeless services. The board advises the department on homeless policy and budget allocations, but its advice is not binding. The board will advise the commission on the city’s participation in the Continuum of Care program.
• Receive advice and recommendations from the Shelter Monitoring Committee, which tracks the conditions of group shelters in San Francisco, and staff documents and investigates complaints.
• Receive advice and recommendations from the Our City, Our Home Oversight Committee, which advises the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors on administration of the Our City, Our Home Fund.

Proposition C would also specify that homeless services are subject to audit by the city controller.

But the commission would not have the authority to approve, disapprove or modify criteria used to determine eligibility or priority for programs and services administered through the city’s Coordinated Entry System. A Public Press and ProPublica investigation found the system scores trauma, and it could bar some homeless populations from getting indoors.

The Commission will have seven members. Initial appointments will be made by March 1, 2023, with four appointed by the Mayor and three appointed by the Board of Supervisors.

Initial opposition to Proposition C stemmed from a debate over seat appointments.

“A majority Mayoral-appointed commission would not offer real oversight, and would be indistinguishable from the current oversight structure over HSH, which reports directly to the Mayor,” the San Francisco Berniecrats wrote in a letter.

After three drafts of the proposition, changes were made to balance membership and auditing by the city’s controller. The Mayor and Board of Supervisors will each appoint a person who has personally experienced homelessness, and a person with significant experience providing services to or engaging in advocacy on behalf of persons experiencing homelessness.

Additionally, the Board of Supervisors will be required to appoint a person with significant experience working with homeless families and youth. And the Mayor will be required to appoint a person with expertise in mental health service delivery or substance abuse treatment, and a person with experience in budgeting, finance and auditing. One of the Mayor’s appointees would be required to have a record of participation in a merchants’ or small business association, or a neighborhood association.

The post Proposition C — Homelessness Oversight Commission appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

In 1978, the U.S. government created a path to recognizing Indian tribes in the United States. Four years later, the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, a tribe native to Yosemite Valley, submitted its initial request to become a recognized tribe.

The tribe is still waiting.

Obtaining federal recognition is often seen as the “golden ticket,” because it allows tribes to organize collectively and access federal resources. Recognized tribes can get funds for housing or climate resilience, for example. They also can establish sovereign governmental status, giving them authority to collect taxes and administer laws.

“It means that tribes have the ability to take care of their community members through health, through education and through other services that the government promised us when they stole our land hundreds of years ago and continue to steal our land now,” said Cristina Azocar, an Indigenous journalist and professor at San Francisco State University.

California has the highest Native American population in the country and is also home to the majority of non-federally recognized tribes. The Death Valley TimbiSha Shoshone Band is the only California tribe that has been recognized in the 44 years since the federal acknowledgement process was established.

In the last 13 years, the U.S. Department of Interior has actively reviewed applications for acknowledgement of only 18 tribes, even as hundreds remain in line. The Public Press has identified more than 400 tribes seeking federal recognition and is working to confirm that 200 others with publicly listed applications are genuine. Many have been waiting for decades.

A Public Press request for expedited release of records listing all non-federally recognized tribes was denied by the Department of the Interior, as was an appeal of that denial. No timeline has been given for their release.

The application process is long, complex and stringent. While the government gives tribes tight deadlines to submit documentation, it allows itself unlimited time to review materials after its initial assessment. On top of that, the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to a slowdown in processing.

“Especially during COVID, tribes that had federal recognition were much more able to take care of their people than tribes without federal recognition,” Azocar said. “My own tribe, we were sent tests, we were sent masks.”

Federal recognition also gives tribes access to emergency funding from sources like the $2.2 trillion in COVID stimulus funding provided by the Cares Act, federally funded health care and education, the right to operate casinos, and the ability to convert their land into housing. 

A rigorous process

The federal acknowledgement process set up in 1978 is the main path tribes take to become recognized and listed in the National Registry, an annually updated reference list. As of this year, there are 574 recognized tribes, most of which received their designation through treaties, acts of Congress, executive orders, reaffirmation from the Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs or federal court decisions.

The government prefers the administrative process because documentation is required, and it’s perceived as objective. But it’s difficult for tribes to collect all the documentation needed to apply and a lot of tribes cannot complete — or in some cases, even start — the process, given the time and expense involved.

Since 1978, 34 tribes have been denied acknowledgement, and 18 tribes approved. Currently, there are only six tribes under review to become recognized, and that includes two California tribes: the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation — from Yosemite Valley — and the Ahmah Mutsun Band of Ohlone Indians from the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Native American grassroots movement of the late 1960s inspired many tribes to seek recognition, and petitions to the government increased in the 1970s. As a result, the Department of Interior created the administrative process and the Office of Federal Acknowledgement to manage applications that first became effective on Oct. 2, 1978.

The first set of regulations, revised in 1994, required tribes to collect all sorts of historical and anthropological evidence to meet seven criteria that prove their continuous existence, activities and cohesion as a tribe from the 1800s to the present.

“In some cases, there’s thousands and thousands of documents,” Azocar said. “The process has gotten more and more rigorous, even though there is nothing that says that it necessarily has to meet a certain standard, but there is a precedent that has been set.”

In 2015, the regulations were revised again, and the amount of evidence required was reduced. Now, tribes have to show only documentation from the early 1900s to the present day, but this is often still an overwhelming challenge. The goal of the revision was to make the process more transparent and flexible in recognition of the fact that all tribes were not homogenous. Even so, the administration still asked for evidence that in some cases was impossible to produce.

“The Office of Federal Acknowledgement suggested that it gather phone records of tribal members who had conversations with each other,” said Azocar, referencing the Little Shell Tribe in a passage in her book, News Media and the Indigenous Fight for Federal Recognition. “And I thought, that’s crazy. How would you actually be able to go about doing that?”

In addition, since tribes had no way to know they would need the records later, they didn’t always keep documentation.

To date, no tribe has been recognized through the new regulations introduced in 2015. Lee Fleming, director of the Office of Federal Acknowledgement within the Department of the Interior, declined to answer Azocar’s questions about the administrative process, and did not explain why the process took so long or how they hired staff to perform the reviews.

The government made documenting Native American tribal history challenging in multiple ways. The Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, for example, had negotiated a treaty with U.S. in the 1850s, but the U.S. Congress did not ratify it. It was the peak of the Gold Rush, and the interests of white Californians were prioritized. The census also did not start counting Indians until 1850, and many tribes had already been displaced from their homelands.

“There were no records of Indians before 1815, so that is also a problem with getting historical documentation when tribes weren’t even part of the count of our country,” Azocar said.

And some of the evidence tribes are tasked with submitting was erased by racist laws. In Virginia, “You can’t trace your ancestry back past 1924,” Azocar said. A law called the Racial Integrity Act required anyone who was not white, including Native Americans, to be registered as “colored” on birth or marriage certificates.

Evidence collection can be costly, too. The Native American Rights Fund spent 29 years and more than 3,400 attorney hours on the federal recognition of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana, Azocar said. “The cost of that time was already in excess of $1 million.”

Even after all the expenditures, the tribe was not recognized through the federal acknowledgement process, but in an act of Congress as part of the National Defense Authorization Act in 2020.

“It’s really difficult, because often a tribe can’t do it itself,” Azocar said. “It has to hire historians, it has to hire anthropologists. And these often cost money unless somebody’s willing to do it for free.”

A fight for recognition

The application process requires tribes to meet seven criteria: that they have existed continuously over a historical period, that they constitute a unique and distinct community, that they have political authority over their tribal members, that they have an internal governing structure in place, that membership consists of individuals descended from a historical Indian tribe, that those members are not part of any other federally acknowledged tribe, and that the U.S. government has not forbidden or terminated recognition of the tribe.

In 1982, after the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation notified the government that it intended to seek federal recognition, it had to undergo several rounds of documentation production and technical review. Two years after filing its letter of intent, the tribe submitted its initial documented petition prepared by anthropologists Lowell John Bean and Sylvia Brakke, who worked to change the depictions of California Indians. The tribe then spent 14 years gathering additional evidence.

In 1998, the tribe was ready. But the government was not. It was not until 2010 that the tribe was designated “active consideration” — meaning the government is ready to review the tribe’s application. At that point, the administration had one year to complete the review. The Interior Department filed 21 extensions, giving itself more than eight years to complete its initial evaluation.

“We’ve been put on hold now, all this time,” said Sandra Chapman, the tribe’s chairwoman. “We’re trying to get a meeting with Deb Haaland. We need to have her backing.” Haaland is the Secretary of the Interior, the first Indigenous woman to hold a Cabinet-level position.

In 2018, the Interior Department’s Office of Federal Acknowledgement published a preliminary finding denying recognition to the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation. The tribe did not meet the community criterion and more evidence needed to be submitted on the history, geography, culture and social organization of the group, the office said.

To better understand the decision, the tribe filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all correspondence and documents from the Office of Federal Acknowledgement relating to the decision-making process on its request. Four years later, the tribe is still waiting for a response.

The tribe has submitted about 200 years’ worth of evidence, dating back to the 1800s, as required by the 1994 regulations. The documentation would have been cut in half under the new regulations, but that would restart the application process. 

The Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation has a federal acknowledgement committee and a membership committee that have worked to get its documentation compiled. “We have our genealogy, all documented,” Chapman said. “We are going to send that evidence to Washington, we’re going to overload them with all kinds of evidence, we’re going to give them more than they asked for and see what they say now.”

Tribe members have also received support from Yosemite National Park, which has an ongoing consultation relationship with seven tribes, including the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation, also known as the American Indian Council of Mariposa County.

“This relationship has existed for over 40 years,” a letter of support from the park for the tribe’s recognition said, noting that its “ancestral ties to Yosemite National Park have spanned multiple generations … and began prior to the establishment of the Park.” The U.S. Congress passed the first law protecting the Yosemite area in 1864 and created the park itself in 1890.

“We’re a strong community,” said Chapman, pointing to letters of support from local residents and the Board of Supervisors as well as the Park Service, which also welcomed a traditional village on the land. “How can you build a roundhouse on, you know, federal land? If you’re not a tribe?”

Azocar pointed to the tourism industry surrounding Yosemite National Park as a reason the government may be reluctant to grant the tribe recognition.

“If the tribe had further recognition, it would potentially have more power to have not just a lease, but have a stand to reclaim some of the territory,” she said, noting that “reclamation of territory is not necessarily in the interest of the federal government.”

The initial denial of recognition puts the tribe in phase two of the federal recognition process, giving members an opportunity to present additional evidence that they should be recognized. The tribe is working to rebut the denial and requesting public comment letters to aid in the effort. Comments close on Nov. 11, 2022.

If an application has been given a final decision, and federal acknowledgement is denied, the tribe cannot apply again. Tribes can seek alternative routes such as the courts or lobbying state senates to federally acknowledge them through public law, but these methods are just as expensive and difficult.

Some states offer tribes recognition, but it doesn’t come with federal benefits, like health and education assistance. But it can help with the federal recognition process to demonstrate a relationship over time with other governments, Azocar said.

“I am passionate that we become federally recognized,” Chapman said. “Our ancestors had wanted it. I remember my mom and dad saying they wanted to be recognized. It’s the recognition that you get that the government is saying, I know who you are.”

— Additional research and reporting contributed by Jordyn Gleaton

Jordyn Gleaton helped research and produced the graphics for this article. She is working with the San Francisco Public Press as a 2022 Dow Jones News Fund data journalism intern. Gleaton is entering her junior year at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is double majoring in political science and legal studies, and pursuing a human rights interdisciplinary minor.

The post California Indian Tribes Denied Resources for Decades as Federal Acknowledgement Lags appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

As encampment fires spiked in Oakland and San Francisco during the first year of the pandemic, they fell by half in the Rangers community to just six. One reason for the disparity? The Rangers beefed up fire precautions. The community’s last tent fire occurred 18 months ago, and when a vehicle caught fire in December 2021, residents were prepared. They used fire extinguishers to put out the blaze.

A mother of three who was caught under a freeway overpass in San Francisco’s Glen Park neighborhood didn’t have the good fortune to live in a community with the Rangers’ tools and preparation. A February fire killed her and severely injured three others.

Encampment fires are a fact of life due to the exposed conditions unhoused residents live in, and have led to painful consequences for residents of encampments like the pair of sites along a freeway exit in Berkeley known as Seabreeze, who were removed by state officials last summer after a series of fires. But the Rangers’ camp demonstrates that there’s hope for controlling these incidents without official intervention. The key to their success has been fire preparedness, including measures like installing smoke alarms and keeping fire extinguishers on hand, according to Derrick Soo, leader of the Rangers community.

“Fire safety measures are a necessity, including at encampments, because every human life is valuable,” said Paul-Kealoha Blake, a member of Berkeley’s Homeless Commission and a volunteer with the nonprofit Consider the Homeless! “Encampment fires are an issue because they endanger both the resident of the structure that’s on fire and endangers the encampment.”

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About a year ago, former Berkeley councilmember Cheryl Davila pushed to create an official program to address encampment fires. Davila proposed using existing homeless services funding to distribute fire extinguishers and fire prevention tools through social service providers. The City Council tabled the proposal in March 2021.

Fire preparedness is essential “to protect the safety of our people and preemptively stop the spread of preventable fires,” said Davila in a report to the council last year.

As an example of work the city could build on, she pointed to outreach done by residents and homeless advocacy nonprofits that have distributed chemical fire extinguishers to people living in tents and vehicles.

Those tools might have helped residents of a large Wood Street encampment in Oakland, where multiple vehicles caught fire on March 1, including an RV. Within a week, another encampment less than a mile away also went up in flames. Fires increased 14% in Oakland during the first year of the pandemic to 611 from the previous year’s 535, tent encampment fires are projected to decline slightly in the second year.

During the first year of the pandemic, fire incidents associated with homeless encampments in Berkeley rose at a similar rate, climbing 18% to 133 from 113 the previous year. About a third of those fires were at the Seabreeze Camp on the Interstate 80 University Avenue exit, where passersby reported smoke, cooking, trash fires and tent fires.

Residents at the Seabreeze camp used extinguishers to control some of their fires, but each time one was used, it had to be replaced or refilled, which made it difficult for volunteers to abate all fires without support from the city.

In this camp and many other locations, residents approach fires differently than the Rangers.

On the edge of the freeway

On a cold, windy evening at Seabreeze Camp, Mama West looked for spare poles to fix her sleeping quarters and prevent her tent from blowing away. 

For the past six years, Mama West lived on this strip of land along the University Avenue freeway exit in Berkeley. Residents and advocates named the community after a nearby market. Seabreeze is also an apt descriptor: The winds can reach 30 miles per hour here near the Berkeley Marina, and fire is a necessity to maintain warmth.

As the sun set, her partner, Drew, got ready to start a blaze in their fire pit, a metal tub wide and high enough to shield a sizable bonfire. He found fuel from a neighbor, Shawna, who keeps stacks of chopped-up pallets in front of her tent.

In early July 2021, the Seabreeze Camp was scheduled to be dismantled by Caltrans due to the growing issues with trash and fires. Berkeley city staff also cited problems like crime and domestic disputes.

On Aug. 9, Gov. Gavin Newsom joined the transportation agency staff in clearing part of the encampment before holding a briefing on his California Comeback Plan, which dedicates $12 billion to housing, shelter and services for people experiencing homelessness, plus $50 million for local governments to resolve encampments.

After the cleanup at the “downstairs” section of Seabreeze where people camped under the freeway, “11 residents accepted services,” said Will Arnold, a spokesman for Caltrans. Several others were displaced onto city streets without securing housing services.

A week later, when the Seabreeze “upstairs” cleanup took place, another 17 residents who lived on the islands along the University exit and Frontage Road had nowhere to go. They relocated to city sidewalks and a nearby freeway exit. About two dozen, including Mama West, moved into hotel rooms through Project Roomkey, which places unhoused residents in hotels. Two people accepted a four-person tent at the 24-hour Horizon Transitional Village shelter, according to a Berkeleyside report and a reporter’s visit to the indoor tent site.

Those who declined shelter beds pointed to bans on guests, pets, cooking and substance use. In addition, they said, showers are available only twice a week and lights stay on all the time. “Several people have turned down Horizon because their outside tents are bigger than the indoor tent that sits on the concrete floor inside,” wrote activist and civil rights attorney Andrea Henson in an email. “For some with severe disabilities and chronic pain this makes a difference.”

A civil rights lawsuit filed against Caltrans in August on behalf of Seabreeze encampment charged that some “did not receive any offer of housing at all” and others “had disabilities that prevented them from accessing alternative shelter.” The plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction allowing them to remain at the former Shellmound camp, located at the Ashby freeway exit, for six months. Caltrans has appealed. On March 23, the injunction is set to expire, and another hearing is scheduled to determine a four-month extension. Plaintiffs also ask to return to the Seabreeze camp, saying it’s a safer and more accessible location to connect remaining residents to housing services.

Mitigating fire risk

After gathering fuel, Drew loaded the fire pit with wood scraps and a Burger King bag filled with cardboard clamshell containers and paper wrappers. His torch lighter ignited the flames, and he placed a metal rack with an empty skillet on top. But he forgot the water he intended to boil, and stepped into the darkness of the tent, searching for a water jug.

“Do not leave your skillet unattended without water!” yelled Mama West when she spotted the pan. She threw it in the sand and covered the fire pit with the skeleton of a metal chair, protecting other items from coming close to the open flames.

In 2021, Mama West’s tent has caught fire three times as winds spread the flames from fires set by neighbors for cooking and warmth. Once, a small barbecue grill was knocked from the cooking table.

About a month before this dinner, Mama West lost one of her puppies in a tent fire that began while she stepped outside to make a cup of tea in her fire pit. Suddenly, smoke poured from her tent, and she dashed inside to rescue her six puppies and adult dog. She doesn’t know what set the tent ablaze.

The greatest loss for her was not her personal identification documents and other belongings, but her dog Patches and the puppies she considered “grandbabies.” Berkeley’s Animal Control      put her dogs up for adoption and charged Mama West with animal endangerment in the death of her puppy. She fought to get the charge dropped, but her animals were not returned.

Seabreeze Camp residents successfully fought for years against Caltrans efforts to clear the parcel where they lived, but their eventual displacement felt inevitable. The agency’s policy calls for evicting residents immediately when encampments pose an imminent threat to safety or relocating them over a longer timeline when the risk is high but not critical.

“Immediate threats include modifications to structures that increase the risk of collapse, encampments that physically block traffic or pathways and put people in the encampments or the traveling public at risk of imminent danger,” Hector Chichilla, a Caltrans spokesman, wrote in an email, adding that fire risk may also fall under this category. 

The pandemic put a crimp in the encampment removal policy. Cleanups fell to less than a quarter of their pre-pandemic numbers in 2020 before rebounding in 2021.

In Berkeley, the most common fire calls associated with unhoused individuals and encampments are survival-related fires — those used for cooking and warming — the notes in Berkeley Fire Department reports show. Warming fires almost doubled to 35 during the first year of the pandemic, while cooking fires fell by about half to 33. Advocates and homeless communities concerned about fires say the city could do more to help them, especially given its efforts elsewhere.

The Berkeley Fire Department has often made donations of surplus equipment and vehicles to residents in need in countries as far afield as Argentina and South Africa. They have also donated locally, helping the Berkeley School District, Berkeley Boosters Association and the Northern California city of McCloud.

Berkeley does run an emergency weather shelter, but by December 2021, it was at capacity, hosting only 19 residents due to COVID-19 restrictions. In late January, the city also relocated 27 unhoused people to hotel rooms at the Berkeley Inn through a special winter housing program, but less than a month later, almost all were returned to the streets, where temperatures dropped below 40 degrees. Many lacked tents, as their property was seized during sweeps Jan. 26 and Feb. 1.

“We don’t have enough shelter space,” said Blake of the homeless commission. “It’s all full. And the Horizon shelter has no heat.”

Dinner al fresco

As the moon lit up the night sky above their tent, Drew returned with a clear jug and put the skillet back on the fire rack, boiling water for soup with instant noodles. Mama West heated a foil plate of prepared rice, broccoli and teriyaki chicken from a homeless-services nonprofit.

While the food warmed up, Mama West stashed her groceries from weekly donations in the mended tent to keep them safe from rats. Plastic bags and bins filled half the tent, leaving the edge of the mattress open for the two to sit. After she and Drew reorganized the food bins, Mama West put her prized keyboard back inside. She loves making music.

With the food secured, dinner was ready. They sat on the mattress and laid out dishes to share on top of their metal ice chest. Mama West dug into the chicken teriyaki plate with her fingers and Drew slurped his chicken noodles, watching the fire crackle.  

Fire prevention: community solutions

In deep East Oakland, leader Derick Soo set up a fire safety system for the 77th Avenue Rangers and advocated for temporary access to a nearby fire hydrant. Kyle Mitchell, a lawyer and Soo’s friend, helped out. 

Mitchell has purchased fire suppression tools for the Rangers like extinguishers, alarms, Thermoses and power banks. The power banks allow people to charge devices and provide light, so residents can avoid the danger of open flames or wildcat hookups to electricity poles. He also distributed 20-gallon jugs of water to unhoused residents throughout Oakland, and advocated for water access at encampments to become an official city program.

For fire suppression, smoke detectors are effective, and with 10-year batteries, will last a long time. Because fire extinguishers are expensive to buy and refill, Mitchell taught unhoused residents how to cheaply refill them with pressurized water and soap. They can be refilled at gas stations or with a bicycle pump, but they are heavy – and this soap-and-water mixture won’t work on electrical or gas fires, although those incidents rarely occur at encampments due to their lack of amenities.

Soo uses a power solar grid that holds 4,000 watts with eight batteries, and a diesel generator for extra power to charge residents’ devices and two community refrigerators at night. Diesel is much less flammable than gasoline.

For heat, camp residents use gadgets fueled by propane because the power required to generate heat is more than any power bank or individual solar grid can provide. Propane is portable, abundant and long-lasting compared to other alternatives.

Fire prevention tools are distributed to Oakland residents living in homes and apartments, but on the streets, unhoused residents are responsible for devising their own solutions. Nonprofits and volunteers like Mitchell work to bridge that gap and distribute these much-needed essentials.

These tools can make a difference, especially when it’s cold. During the pandemic, fire incidents surged in winter, when temperatures dropped. Oakland averaged about 70 fires per month from November 2020 to March 2021, compared with 58 a year earlier. In 2021, fires continued to climb, spiking to 99 in March –– the highest monthly incident rate in the last three years.

The numbers are likely an underestimate, as Oakland Fire Department reports showed only encampment fires, not trash fires, vehicle fires, or other types of fires connected to unhoused residents.

Camp residents have identified several affordable tools and other alternatives for safe heating, like a portable propane heater that turns off when tipped over, or a diesel air heater. Soo heats his home with a turkey air fryer running on a small propane tank that can last him a month, but it costs him a whopping 60% more than a year ago.

Soo used to pay $15 for a 20-pound refill. Now he pays $24. The coronavirus pandemic increased demand for outdoor activities and recreational camping, and portable propane tanks were also often out of stock. Other options when propane is not available and money is tight are bottles filled with hot water or heated stones, according to Mitchell.

Soo has experimented with fire retardant paint on fabric and plywood surfaces. But even with these modifications, tents are not very resistant to any of the elements. 

“Typically, here on this street, tents last about two months because of the wind,” said Soo. “Wind just tears them up. Tents don’t hold very well even when you put tarps on them.”

Because of tents’ minimal weather protection and lack of security, Soo is designing Conestoga huts for the Rangers. These tiny homes, which look like the back of a covered wagon, will be built on a platform and have electricity, hot water, windows, showers and a mini kitchen. Each home has a water tank and infrared water heater. The rounded roof/wall uses plastic for waterproofing and tar paper for fire resistance under a heavy-duty tarp.

While these homes can be a solution to providing safe shelter, they are still temporary. Since 2016, Soo has been advocating for the sanctioning of his camp, and he also helps camp residents get connected to housing services. By March, the occupancy of the camp had dwindled down to half, and the city canceled their mobile shower service. But this has not defeated him, and Soo built a solar shower.

“Camps are a necessity because some folks have only known violent streets,” said Soo. “People don’t know a village community.”

The post Grassroots Nonprofits and Homeless Communities Create Their Own Fire Prevention Solutions appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Prepared meals and food from nearby social service agencies were key to survival for Davis, who abstained from using open flames inside the tent where he was living — partly because of a scare he got one rainy night.

“Tent fires happen all the time,” he said. “I’m scared of propane because I think I’m going to blow it up. If it cannot be plugged into a USB or USB-C cord, I don’t use it.”

Fires are an ever-present fear for people living on the streets, where an errant spark could send flames ripping through a tent or other temporary shelter, sending its contents quickly up in smoke. Unhoused residents who have suffered through this experience report receiving little of the help available to those assisted after fires in buildings.

“People live in encampments because it’s the best possible option,” for those who are unsheltered, said Coco Auerswald, a professor in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. “Anyone living in a situation like that is in danger of fires, and those fires are basically because of the circumstances of people leading their daily life.”

San Francisco fires have surged over the last two years, Mission Local found. Fires associated with homeless encampments rose by more than two-thirds during the first year of the pandemic, according to a Public Press analysis of the narrative texts from San Francisco Fire Department reports. The number of those kinds of fires reported jumped to 652 in the 12 months ending Feb. 28, 2021, from 383 a year earlier.

Open flames were used more often as homeless shelters shut down or restricted occupancy, leaving more people on the streets without easy access to electricity and the water that could keep fires from spreading. Many had previously tapped into public water fountains and open outlets at cafes, libraries and other indoor spaces that shut down for months during the first surge of the pandemic.

After March 2021, when the city resumed clearing encampments, reports of fires slowed significantly, and are on track to post a decline this year by Feb. 28. Fires among housed residents are following a similar pattern, with a spike in the first year of the pandemic, and a projected decline in the following year.

Fires tracked by the Public Press destroyed 139 dwellings used as temporary shelter, including vehicles, from March 1, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2021.

The surge in fires highlights the harsh conditions of living without daily life essentials, and the increasing loss of property and shelter that unhoused residents have faced during the pandemic — and could keep confronting as the pandemic continues through variants like delta and omicron. 

In 2021, San Francisco proceeded with plans to shut down seven hotels that used to house hundreds of people who previously had been living on the streets. But as coronavirus infections began to rise once more, homeless shelters that were expanding capacity began limiting beds again to avoid the kind of coronavirus outbreaks that affected dozens of residents during 2020.

Even though they’ve begun to decline, fires among the unhoused are unlikely to abate completely. Those living without a fixed residence must still find ways to light their living spaces, prepare food and keep warm. For many, fires are the most affordable and accessible option.

Survival fires in San Francisco

During the first surge of the pandemic, the most common fire calls associated with homeless encampments were outside trash fires. Those incidents jumped more than a third in 2020, to 298 from the previous year’s 216 and continued at a similar pace in 2021. More than half of those fires were used for warmth, according to narratives in fire reports.

A year into the pandemic, cooking-related fires nearly doubled, rising to 163 in the 12 months ending Feb. 28, 2021, from 89 a year earlier.

These narratives are based on “the totality of circumstances at a given incident,” wrote Lt. Jonathan Baxter, the fire department’s public information officer, in an email. “In some cases, you have a person who stated this happened; in other cases, you can see the heating and cooking paraphernalia.”

The rise in fires “is most likely attributed to the rise in nontraditional housed individuals, encampments, and open flame use,” Baxter wrote.

Fires also increased among people living in houses and apartment buildings, according to fire reports from the San Francisco Open Data portal. During the first surge of the pandemic, residents reported 6,239 fires — a 20% increase from a year earlier, while cooking fires jumped more than 40%, to 1,081.

The increase in fires tracks with residents spending more time in their homes while sheltering in place and working remotely, thus using more heat and electricity than in previous years. Tent fires more than tripled to 152 during the first year of the pandemic, up from 45 the previous year. At least one person involved in those fires was transported to a burn center. Another unhoused resident was found dead in a burn pile after firefighters extinguished a fire.

“Living in California, anytime a fire is started, there is cause for concern. It’s unfair to say only fires from unhoused residents are dangerous,” Denny Machuca-Grebe, a spokesperson for the Homelessness and Supportive Housing Department, wrote in an email. “There are times when even lighting a fire in your backyard firepit can be dangerous. Fires are always a public safety concern.”

Jamel Davis said he believes many of these tent fires could be prevented if the city provided places where unhoused residents could access electricity and heat. After receiving a room at Cova Hotel on Dec. 27, 2021, Davis began charging devices from friends who were still living near his old camp site.

Unhoused residents unable to use cafes, libraries, grocery store lounges or other safe locations with power outlets have sometimes resorted to tapping into electric poles and outdoor outlets to charge devices that are their lifelines to friends, relatives and services. While the fire department was called only three times for faulty wiring connections during the pandemic, tapping into outdoor electricity can be risky, especially in wet weather.

Davis recalled the rainy day when he and four friends “had our stuff still plugged in and the cord started popping.” One friend unplugged everything from the light pole. “It was sizzling,” Davis said. “It was like the ‘last warning,’ coming from the pole.” The incident scared him and changed his mindset about tent fire risk.

Tents can also catch fire because people are careless, lighting open flames inside to smoke drugs or dropping lit cigarette butts as they walk by, Davis said. According to fire reports, many tent fires appear to be caused by an open flame source, which accidentally tips over, rekindles, is left unattended or sits too close to materials. Some tent fires were caused by arson.

When unhoused residents lose items due to uncontrolled fire, they generally don’t receive help replacing them. Burned vehicles are towed, accruing debt in tow yards until they are junked.

The American Red Cross can provide unhoused fire victims personal hygiene kits, blankets and tents, as well as referrals to local nonprofit agencies, said Regional Communications Director Cari Dighton. Financial, mental health and social services assistance is also available. But to access these resources, fire victims must request help, provide proof of identity and a residence with an address, and show confirmed disaster damage to their home with, for example, a police or fire department report.

According to narratives in fire reports, the San Francisco Fire Department called the Red Cross to assist unhoused residents once in 2019 and five times in 2021. It made no calls for assistance in 2020, despite the spike in fires.

In 2021, the Red Cross received 111 calls for assistance from people in non-traditional housing in San Francisco, in the nine months ending Sept. 30, 2021, nearly half its calls from residents of traditional housing in the same period. Before January 2021, the agency did not track calls for assistance distinguished by housing situations.

Firefighters do not provide fire prevention tools to unhoused residents, but they do advise people living in tents or other temporary shelter verbally or with flyers to abstain from using open flames. In small print at the bottom of one flyer, the fire department lists several local shelters in San Francisco as alternative resources for food and warmth, but only one of those — Mother Brown’s Dining Room in the Bayview — offers 24/7 services. Unhoused fire victims needing shelter must seek help through the Red Cross, according to Machuca-Grebe of the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.

The Tenderloin experienced 12 tent encampment fires in 2021, and fire reports determined factors leading to nine of those incidents were people “possibly impaired by alcohol or drugs” and “possibly mentally disabled.”

Down Jones Street from where Davis used to pitch his tent, another small encampment with a dozen tents stretched between Golden Gate Avenue and Turk Street for more than a year until they were cleared when the street project ended in October 2021. Previous city initiatives that had installed concrete barriers to expand walkways and give people in the neighborhood more open space were removed. 

At that point, unhoused residents who had pitched tents on this temporary walkway were dispersed to other streets. A few people accepted spots at the Safe Sleep tent site on Turk Street near Jones Street, and a few others were moved into shelter-in-place hotel rooms.

While unhoused residents lived at this encampment, in the evenings, they scavenged for combustibles, building fires to stay warm.

A resident of this camp on Jones Street, who goes by the name Smooth, explained when flames get out of control, “people run from the fire or run on their instincts and put out the fire themselves.” There’s no time to make a 911 phone call, as tents can be quickly consumed in flames.

Calls for help are often left in the hands of a passerby.

“Fire is a survival tool,” said Smooth. “People use it as an everyday essential.”

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