Christopher Luxon, New Zealand’s prime minister, stepped up to the podium and addressed attendees: “Marine electrification is the new frontier,” he said. “We’re moving the world forward by doing this.” 

Luxon, other officials and executives were in San Francisco that morning to sign plans to transition the Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry company’s fleet of three vessels to electric power. That deal put the ferry service on track to be the first in California to fully electrify, as part of a statewide push to satisfy green-energy mandates. The project, which involves a New Zealand company, will create jobs for Latino San Rafael residents who might otherwise struggle to break into similar work. 

“Latinos don’t have equal access to clean-energy jobs, and any electrification effort we make should be inclusive,” said Graham Balch, chief executive officer of ZeroMar, a San Rafael company that is overseeing the project. 

Maggie McDonogh, the fifth-generation owner of the ferry company, echoed the sentiment: “What’s the point of doing something like this without lifting everybody up?”

The freshly penned work agreement tasks New Zealand-based company EV Maritime with constructing a new plug-in hybrid catamaran that can run entirely on electricity for short trips. 

The company will also replace the hulls of two vessels, formerly powered by diesel engines, to make them lighter so that their new, weaker electric motors can propel them. The redesigns will reduce drag for the boats by raising them 25% out of the water. 

“To go all-electric you need maximum efficiency per pound,” Balch said.

EV Maritime aims to convert the two boats by the end of 2025, a company representative told the San Francisco Public Press, which is California’s zero-emissions deadline for ferries that travel fewer than three nautical miles in a single run. The new hybrid catamaran, which does not fall under the mandate, is scheduled to be built by 2027. The company’s ferries shuttle approximately 100,000 passengers each year, and once they shift to electric power they will spare the North Bay 150 tons of greenhouse gasses annually. 

Compared with other forms of transit, electrified ferries offer the greatest potential to reduce emissions, said Michael Eaglen, co-founder and chief executive officer of EV Maritime. 

“People assume ferries are efficient because they’re public transit, but they’re not. Ferry emissions are many times higher than buses,” Eaglen said. “It’s really important to decarbonize them.” 

Zero-emissions vessels spare the earth’s atmosphere not only greenhouse gasses, but also particulate matter, which pollutes the air people breathe, and nitrogen oxide, which contributes to smog, said Steven Cliff, executive officer of the California Air Resources Board, which is funding the electrification project with a $24 million grant.

In addition to buying new charging and grid infrastructure on shore, the grant will fund a program to train and employ Latino San Rafael residents in marine electrification, work in the clean-energy field that is seeing growing demand. The two-year apprenticeship, which ZeroMar will manage with social services organization Canal Alliance, also based in San Rafael, aims to redress imbalanced hiring practices that have kept people of color out of green jobs. Nationally, 16.5% of the clean-energy workforce is Latino, compared with 18% of the workforce across all sectors, according to an analysis by Third Derivative, a climate technology company incubator. 

ZeroMar will select two apprentices later this month from graduates of another Canal Alliance workforce development course, which trains immigrants from Guatemala and other Latin American countries with limited resources who are new to the job landscape, said Fabiola Wilcox, who is overseeing the program as Canal Alliance’s workforce target supervisor. 

Apprentices will earn $35 per hour to learn on the job from experienced technicians and take supplemental coursework at Santa Rosa Junior College. After completing their training, which will include work on the Angel Island-Tiburon Ferry vessels, they will get marine mechanic positions at ZeroMar with annual salaries of $100,000. 

If they were working in other fields, like construction, it would likely be harder for them to earn at that level so early in their careers, Wilcox noted.

The program’s applicants were excited to learn about this opportunity, she said.

“It empowered them because they felt a part of it. It’s big for the community,” Wilcox said.

The post Bay Area Ferry Electrification Will Also Be Jobs Program for Local Latinos appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

From a single blade of eelgrass, life overflows. Amphipods build tiny hollow tube-homes on it, while marine snails eat it, and nudibranchs travel its length in search of prey. Small eelgrass sea hares graze epiphytes attached to the blades and lay their yellow eggs inside transparent jelly-like blobs on the thick green of the grass. Amid the meadows, pipefish hide and graceful rock crabs scavenge, and in the fall and spring, giant schools of silvery Pacific herring enter the San Francisco Bay, the end point of their weeks-long annual migration. On the eelgrass, they deposit clumpy beads of yellow roe on the order of hundreds of millions, like underwater honey drops. Or the eggs must taste that way to the thousands of birds that join the melee of feasting. Cormorants and loons dive after flashes of fish. Gulls circle above. Rafts of scaups, buffleheads, and more stretch across the water feeding on roe. During a spawn event, which can last for a few hours or several days, herring milt turns Bay waters a lighter hue.

Even when the herring aren’t running, the eelgrass beds teem with food. Paige Fernandez remembers kayaking just off the shore of Sausalito. She was paddling over an eelgrass bed, likely brimming with slugs and tiny crustaceans—which were, from the surface, invisible to her. But she could see the harbor seals. And one in particular kept bobbing its head up over the waves, closer and closer. Now a program manager at Richardson Bay Audubon Center, Fernandez says it was “definitely one of the coolest encounters I’ve had in the Bay.” The surfacing seal’s forwardness surprised her, but in retrospect it made sense: she was above a bed of eelgrass. “That’s where they can find little snacks to munch on.” They go where the eelgrass goes—and so does a host of other marine life. 

To give shelter and food to the species that rely on it, eelgrass needs to thrive. And in Richardson Bay, which lies between Sausalito and Tiburon in Marin County, dozens of acres of eelgrass are tangled in with the anchor chains of dozens of boats that often float just five feet above the meadows. When tides shift, the ground tackle—that is, any equipment used to anchor the boat, usually a long and heavy chain—is yanked by the pull of the vessel. In circular, sweeping motions, the chain slices the eelgrass rhizomes, the lateral tubes from which the shoots and roots grow. The chains and ground tackle erode the sediment, creating a depression in the substrate. After years of scraping, a dead zone forms, cleared of eelgrass, where shoots don’t take root. From above, boats hover over what look like ghostly crop circles, some half an acre in size, called mooring scars. There are almost 80 acres of scarring in Richardson Bay.

In the spring and early summer of 2024, researchers from San Francisco State University’s Estuary and Ocean Science Center, restoration workers with environmental consulting firm Merkel & Associates, and Audubon volunteers and staff—including Fernandez—began replanting eelgrass in the Richardson Bay mooring scars thanks to a $2.8 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s San Francisco Bay Water Quality Improvement Fund; the grant is part of an EPA program funded by the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Over the course of four years, the project aims to restore 15 acres of eelgrass, each acre allowing more life to bloom. But for workers to restore eelgrass in these scars, the anchors causing them must also be removed. “It is well demonstrated that eelgrass and anchoring are incompatible throughout the world,” says Rebecca Schwartz Lesberg, president of Coastal Policy Solutions and a contract project manager for the agency awarded the EPA grant. “Richardson Bay was really behind the times in terms of how to manage this natural resource conflict.”

In Richardson Bay, these long, heavy anchor chains are often attached to boats with people living on them—the so-called “anchor-outs,” people who have spent decades building their lives on the water, on their boats, and on the premise of free anchorage. Born of the ’60s counterculture, the community began with artists and young people who were drawn to the scrap left by World War II’s Marinship shipyard, material they salvaged for boats and homes. It quickly grew into an on-the-shoreline, and on the margins, way of life that has included famous artists, like Shel Silverstein and Allen Ginsberg, but mostly those who are unknown, like Lisa McCracken, once a silk-mache artist, and her friend Peter, who she says snaps daily portraits of the Bay fog and cloudscape. 

The lifestyle has been called many names: anchoring out, being a live-aboard, or, in  McCracken’s younger days, living “on hook.” It comes with a degree of precarity, where a single storm or a faulty anchor might sink a vessel. Many anchor-outs drown, or their boats come loose and crash into shore or other boats. McCracken says about her life on the Bay for 30-plus years, surrounded by water, marine creatures, and in community with artists, “It’s a privilege and a blessing.” And for many who took to the Bay’s waters, then and now, the alternative to life on their boats is homelessness. 

But after six decades, the anchor-out era is coming to an end, in part to protect eelgrass habitat from mooring scars. The number of anchor-out vessels in Richardson Bay has dropped from over 200 in 2018 to about 32 today. The authorities that regulate Richardson Bay and the entirety of the San Francisco Bay began in 2019 to focus on upholding ordinances that have long been on the books but were rarely enforced. As a result, anchor-outs have been evicted and left homeless and unoccupied boats crushed. The last of them have been ordered to leave the zone where eelgrass grows by this October and the water entirely by 2026. Authorities are offering housing to some as an incentive to meet the deadline.  

To McCracken, and other anchor-outs, eelgrass restoration is the latest excuse employed by authorities in their long-standing campaign to rid the water of her community. And her opinion is partly well-founded. There are examples and studies of eelgrass thriving when the mooring scar-causing chains are replaced with “conservation moorings.” These moorings, used around the world, are affixed to the seafloor, eliminating the dragging chain that creates mooring scars. Despite a 2019 feasibility study recommending eelgrass-friendly moorings in Richardson Bay, environmental groups, regulatory agencies, and cities pursued a more stringent option: remove all anchored-out vessels from Richardson Bay eelgrass beds, in perpetuity.

But during public meetings in the years following the feasibility study, local residents voiced concerns—they felt environmental restoration was clashing with the needs of the region’s most vulnerable. “This will have huge effects,” reads a public comment by “Elias” in 2020. “What about the young children who will learn of this and not feel comfortable working with nature organizations because of their relationship with poor people?” He equated it with “forced migration perpetuated by environmentalism.” David Schonbrunn, a Sausalito resident, commented in a 2021 meeting that opting to remove anchoring instead of choosing mooring systems that would let the anchor-out community and eelgrass coexist was “a question of policy, not science.” 

Restoring eelgrass

It’s a bright windy day in March, and Jordan Volker is steering a motorboat into Richardson Bay. He’s a field operations manager for Merkel & Associates, which has published articles and field reports on eelgrass for 30 years and run eelgrass surveys in the area for decades.

The company’s 2014 survey found a massive die-off in Bay eelgrass caused by a marine heat wave. To repair the loss, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) funded a 75-acre eelgrass restoration project that’s ongoing and aligns with the Bay Area’s Subtidal Habitat Goals. The 2010 goals, in an ambitious 208-page document, lay out a vision to study, protect, and restore an array of subtidal habitats, including eelgrass and oyster reefs. The regional effort brought together the California State Coastal Conservancy, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), San Francisco Estuary Partnership, the California Ocean Protection Council, and NOAA, giving them a common framework to achieve a healthier Bay. 

Collectively, the agencies set a goal of restoring up to 8,000 acres of eelgrass by 2060—latest counts say there’s a maximum of 5,000 acres in the Bay. Any added acres would mean more habitat for herring and birds, at a time when waterbird data has grown grim. Scoters, for one, saw a 50 percent decline around the second half of the 20th century, according to a Sea Duck Joint Venture report. And that’s for their populations across the whole Pacific Flyway—local numbers are worse. Both greater and lesser scaup have declined by a similar amount, and horned grebes and buffleheads, two beloved Bay Area visitors, have also suffered. “It’s all part of one big food web,” says Casey Skinner, program director at Richardson Bay Audubon. “And if we lose eelgrass, we lose everything.” 

Eelgrass’s benefits go beyond ecology. The beds act as sentinels of the Bay, trapping sediment, storing greenhouse gases, and protecting against wave action. Threats to eelgrass, too, are multifold. In 2005, for example, sediment that broke loose smothered nearby eelgrass beds, causing a die-off in subsequent years. Built-out marinas, ports, and wharves are potential stressors, too. They can shade out the eelgrass underneath, preventing meadows from growing. And, in addition to mooring scars, anchor-out vessels can damage the water quality if occupants mismanage waste—although 2018 reports show water quality has been improving overall in Richardson Bay. “Submerged habitats truly need ongoing championing because it is so easy to ignore. They’re out of sight out of mind,” says Marilyn Latta, a project manager at the California State Coastal Conservancy, who helped develop the goals for eelgrass restoration.

Keith Merkel, the principal consultant of Merkel & Associates, has been (often literally) knee-deep in eelgrass since restoration efforts began in the Bay Area, conducting Bay-wide surveys of eelgrass on three separate occasions. And the one thing he’s learned? Richardson Bay is vital for eelgrass. It contains the second-largest eelgrass bed in San Francisco Bay and is the single most important spawning area for Pacific herring in the estuary. “Richardson Bay is protected against many of the things that fluctuate quite a bit,” Merkel says. 

In the South Bay and Oakland, that factor is turbidity—too-dark waters, without enough sunlight. In the North Bay, too much fresh water discharges from the Delta. And around the Pacific Coast, the wind blows east, so eelgrass seeds fail to disperse. Yet Richardson Bay has “so much eelgrass that we never lose 100 percent of the eelgrass in [it],” he adds. The “core eelgrass bed”—areas that lie at the ideal depths for the plant to thrive and should support close to 100 percent eelgrass cover—include the mooring scars. If restored, Merkel says, this area will consistently flourish. It’s the kind of priority restoration area that the Subtidal Habitat Goals have highlighted.

It took research to prove restoration in the anchor scars was even possible. NOAA funded the first small-scale project to test the potential in 2021. Even this 2.5-acre effort, Merkel says, got off the ground only after many anchored-out vessels had been removed. NOAA won’t fund more restoration, he says, unless authorities can demonstrate there’s little risk of anchors being dropped again. 

Back inside the motorboat’s cabin, where Jordan Volker works, things are dark, and he has both hands on the wheel to navigate the churning, unruly water. On the monitors above, he shoots glances at two screens that give readings from the Bay underneath. The boat pumps a sonic signal into the waves below—and returns a spiky, pulsing graph. Because eelgrass blades store oxygen in their cells, they are less dense than the surrounding water, so they return a telltale “bump” to Volker’s machine, locating the meadows. 

Volker has been restoring eelgrass in Richardson Bay for Merkel for so long that he can recognize some of the beds he’s planted just from the dots on the graph. “It always brings a big smile on my face when I drive over and go, ‘Ho! Look at all that grass.’” Now he is dropping markers on a digital map, locating anchored-out boats and mooring scars, data that will inform where to plant next. 

Once they choose a spot, Volker and others plant during low tides—restoration crews up to their hips in Bay water, the boats of the anchor-outs looming behind. Volker says folks on the water and those from the land used to meet at some kind of a shore-y middle ground. An anchor-out near a cluster of volunteers might say hello from their deck and play music. “While we’re planting a mooring scar, people that are nearby say, ‘What radio station do you want to listen to?’ and [start] cranking their radio up,” he says. Often, they’d be smiling, waving, and curious about the restoration effort going on in their backyard waters. “Some of the anchor-outs understand, ‘oh yeah, eelgrass is an important thing. I don’t want to harm eelgrass. I just want to live,’” Volker says. 

But things are different now that people know their lifestyle is under threat. There are fewer friendly faces when he cruises the water. “Some of the anchor-outs, I think, see a survey vessel, or see a bunch of college kids coming in with grass in their hands, as a threat.” As if on cue, our tiny survey vehicle weaves in close to an anchored-out boat, with a gray-haired man on his deck. Outside, Scott Borsum, Volker’s assistant for the day, greets the stranger. He returns our “hi” with a “hello,” but, when asked for a picture, tosses his hands to the air, turns away, and shakes his head no.

Borsum’s new to restoration work—this project is his first field job since getting his PhD. Already, though, he feels like he’s watching a “microcosm” of the housing crisis in the San Francisco Bay Area unfold, wherein people are pushed out into alternate lifestyles by the cost of living or decades’ worth of other factors, then become the object of long and drawn-out political debate over who can use public spaces and for what. “It becomes a user-rights issue,” he says. “Who gets the right to the Bay?” 

Volker says he’s glad he’s not the one deciding. Unlike the “policy side of things,” he says, the eelgrass restoration is a peaceful, straightforward task. And the housing and what comes after is for other, more policy-savvy folks to decide. “It’s the side of the issue that I would not want to deal with,” Volker says. Borsum agrees: “Our job doesn’t constitute us solving that problem. It just constitutes us understanding the grass.”

Similar sentiments are echoed by project managers at Audubon, another of the EPA grant beneficiaries, who say their “area of expertise” is the eelgrass, though noting that they favor fair housing. The researchers at SFSU involved in the long-term monitoring of the grass also declined to comment on the anchor-outs. On the water, the restoration crew’s survey boat and the anchor-outs are two ships that, both metaphorically and practically, pass each other by—leaving an uneasy silence rippling in their wake. 

Living on the water

It’s an unusually calm day—no wind, great sun—when we set out in a kayak. We paddle across a boating channel, the thick on-the-water “highway” used by cargo vessels and traveling houseboats alike, to the waters where the last anchor-outs hold on.

We weave in between vessels, passing signs of life everywhere: on one boat, scuba gear hangs out to dry on a clothesline on deck; on another, smoke escapes a moka pot visible through a cabin window. Names like Irish Misty and Levity are hand-painted on the sides of boats big and small. Some are 15-foot sailboats with little to nothing in the way of rain shelter for their occupants. Others, like the mighty Evolution, a 50-foot powerboat, tower above our kayak.

But the captain on its deck is Lisa McCracken, who is anything but forbidding. Her sand-brown hair is turning white against the sun, and she wears mismatched work gloves and a friendly, if squinting, smile. She greets us, but is too busy to chat long—there are always chores to be done on the anchorage, whether it’s changing oil in a generator or fixing a solar panel. When we come back another day, it’s 4 p.m. and McCracken’s still working—her friends are visiting, their presence evident by the skiffs tied to the back of her own. They’re trying to get a motor up and running, when she welcomes us aboard.

A flimsy white ladder is the only way up. And landing zones are scarce in between the piles of decommissioned engines, old anchors, empty diesel cans, dusty life vests, tubes and piping, et  cetera. McCracken, though, steps on and over them with ease—at times nimbly jumping up and sitting on railings to let us pass. “I tend to this place,” she says. Many of the objects aren’t hers—they’re things she’s rescued from the Bay. She points to an anchor, coiled up in its own chain, that sits in a corner. “That tends to disturb the bottom—these are anchors. These we have pulled up.”

McCracken, now 61, says she’d want to learn more about the eelgrass, if she could, and had a mind to send in samples to someone. “If you notice it, it’s getting gray,” she explains. “I want to understand the characteristics of it, the features.” She says she sees, studies, and notices things—like the pigeons and gulls that have made a nest on the boat’s roof. Or, occasionally, a dying bird adrift, which she’ll try to call in to local authorities. She doesn’t believe her boat does harm to eelgrass (and, given that it’s on a six-point mooring and not a block-and-chain anchor, it likely does less damage than others), or that the harm she does is greater than the waste generated by the city or the propellants of high-speed yachts and other boats that dock in Sausalito Yacht Harbor or any of the dozens of other harbors nearby. “To say that we are a problem, then every boat here is a problem.”

As we talk, the boat turns gently with the wind, a planet spinning, the sun hitting the inside from each angle in turn. Maybe, McCracken admits, she’s selfish for not wanting to give it up—a panoramic view of the Bay, who would? But more than the view, it’s the community she can’t bear to part with. It was fellow anchor-outs who taught her how to live on the water. She recalls, laughing, when her first boat lost footing and slammed into a barge, and how the owner taught her the ropes of being a mariner. By now, she’s more than returned the favor: jumping in to help friends pull someone who was having health problems out of a boat. Or standing by the hospital bed of Craig, a longtime friend who, in gratitude and in passing, gifted her and her friend Steve Evolution.

These days, she wakes up and takes off in her skiff—looking for others on the anchorage who might need a hand, or a battery, or something she can offer. “I’ve held fast to anchor. I can’t even imagine being condemned to a room,” she says. “I don’t know what I would make of my day.” Besides, she doesn’t qualify for the housing and cash deal offered by local authorities, since she doesn’t own Evolution. Steve owns it, and according to reporting by the Pacific Sun, the program provides one housing voucher per boat.

“I don’t want the money,” she says, of the cash offer: $150 per foot of the boat. “I want to be left alone—you can build your paradise around me, okay?” Her voice rises as she speaks. “I’ll figure out some way to put a mirror up, so you don’t have to look at me if you don’t want to.”

In five months, however, she’ll have to leave the anchorage. Evolution doesn’t qualify for the Safe and Seaworthy program that would have allowed the boat to stay two years longer. McCracken says a caseworker is advocating for both her and Steve to be housed, but she isn’t sure where she’ll be five months from now, or if she’ll even want to go.

The policy fight

Before 1985, no single agency existed to guide the use and conservation of Richardson Bay’s waters, so cities on its shores created and adopted a “special area plan” that stated, among many things, that “all anchor-outs should be removed from Richardson Bay.” Even then, nearby authorities felt the number of boats anchored offshore was growing.

To execute the plan, the Richardson Bay Regional Agency (RBRA) was formed, via a Joint Powers Agreement among Marin County and the cities of Mill Valley, Tiburon, Belvedere—and, formerly, Sausalito. The agency quickly passed an ordinance allowing transient vessels, such as cruisers from outside the Bay, to drop their anchors in designated areas for less than 72 hours. One section hugged the Sausalito shoreline; the other spanned the anchor-out area. It also states that permanently “living aboard” any vessel in the water is illegal—permits could be granted for 30 days, and potentially longer, if the harbormaster “determined that no permanent residential use is intended.” 

But enforcement proved difficult. The harbormaster at the time, Bill Price, spent 24 years trying to manage the growing number of anchor-out boats, says Tim Henry, a longtime sailor and Sausalito local. “He had no budget. He had to use volunteers. He had to fill out all the grants. They just never wanted to spend the money to deal with it.” 

And then, in the wake of 2008’s Great Recession, things changed. The number of transient boats dropping anchor and largely staying put swelled to about 230 boats by 2015. In an interview with the Sausalito Historical Society, Price said he wondered if Richardson Bay’s free anchorage, which he loved, would have to shut down due to the sheer density of boats. Soon after, the City of Sausalito, fed up with the lack of enforcement, left the RBRA. 

Finally, in 2019, the State of California audited the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), and its  “failure to perform key responsibilities” was laid bare. Mooring scars in Richardson Bay were a central issue, according to the audit, which referenced details from an Audubon report. The state, concerned with how “violators,” like anchor-outs, were damaging the Bay, ordered BCDC to fix the problem. The audit discussed possible amnesty for those violators and ways to better enforce the law to prevent new damages.

BCDC, in turn, put pressure on RBRA, triggering a flurry of actions: the agency commissioned Merkel & Associates to conduct the mooring feasibility study; commissioned Coastal Policy Solutions, Rebecca Schwartz Lesberg’s restoration company, to draft an eelgrass protection plan; and started negotiating an agreement to satisfy the enforcement needs of the BCDC.

But the RBRA had already been pursuing stricter enforcement. Before the audit, it had hired a new harbormaster, Curtis Havel. He reduced the total number of boats to about 71 in just two months. “It was terrorist tactics to start with,” says Drew Warner, an ex-anchor-out of 23 years, about Havel. Authorities would find an unoccupied boat, board it, tug it, and deliver it to the shipyard to be crushed. The harbormaster or the sheriff’s department would wait patiently for anchor-outs to leave their homes, Warner says, so that going ashore on grocery runs or for medicine might mean the destruction of an anchor-out’s property. The anchor-outs fought back, sometimes by filing restraining orders, sometimes throwing eggs at officers who got too close. “I was notorious for doing that,” Warner says.

At the same time, a homeless encampment formed on the waterfront in Sausalito; called Camp Cormorant, it became a rallying point for the anchor-out community and their supporters. McCracken’s friends sought shelter on Evolution after their boats were seized, and the belongings of evicted anchor-outs, like generators and power tools, began to pile up on the vessel. 

Hostilities increased on the water. And while people’s boats were being seized and crushed at a nearby Army Corp yard—frequent spectacles that sometimes came down to clashes between police and anchor-outs—RBRA bimonthly meetings continued. In virtual Zoom rooms, amid a growing pandemic, RBRA board members, concerned citizens, and environmental activists deliberated over what to do next.

Initially, RBRA suggested removing anchor-outs over a span of 10 or 20 years, but Audubon California, Marin Audubon Society, and BCDC pushed back. They wanted the anchor-outs gone by a set deadline—Marin Audubon, in particular, argued for five years.

Merkel & Associates’ 2019 mooring feasibility study greenlit the idea that conservation moorings, in clusters called mooring fields, could coexist with eelgrass. Because they are drilled into the seafloor and have a buoy attached to a floating cord, thus reducing their damage to marine life, conservation moorings (sometimes called eco-moorings) have been deployed worldwide, in waters from Tasmania to Massachusetts, with the aim of protecting marine habitat. In Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, such moorings were installed in areas with scars just like Richardson Bay’s. Though it was in a smaller restoration project, eelgrass was successfully replanted on 0.2 acres. In Moreton Bay, Australia, 16 acres were restored. Merkel & Associates suggested several locations—away from thicker eelgrass beds and with shelter from storms—for conservation moorings, one boat per mooring.  

At public meetings, Marin Audubon Society opposed the idea, rejecting any mooring field, temporary or permanent, and regardless of the type of moorings. It also objected to any boat occupying space for too long. “It is obvious that anchor-outs are covering open water habitat,” reads a letter written by Barbara Salzman, then co-chair of the conservation committee of Marin Audubon. “Such use is considered fill by BCDC”—meaning boats confer an adverse impact on the public and wildlife by occupying space on the Bay, much the way development that extends the shoreline into the Bay is often considered fill. 

For Marin Audubon, the safety of diving birds was paramount. Birds would contend with boats while foraging, risking injury and losing access to food, Audubon said. The Merkel study pointed to anecdotal videos of herring runs, showing birds foraging successfully in between the boats. The study conceded, however, that bird behavior with regard to moorings and boats was complicated: it would all depend on the size of herring spawns, the species at hand, the wave patterns, wind conditions, and more. Still, the survey authors believed the effects on birds would be minimal—after all, the report noted, Audubon’s sanctuary waters, a section of Richardson Bay closed to all boats during migration season, were right next to the proposed moorings.  

It wasn’t enough. Marin Audubon solicited a study by Point Blue Conservation Science, an organization based in Marin, to survey the proposed mooring areas for birds, and wrote in a public letter presented at an April 2021 meeting that “the recommendation of Point Blue is that mooring not occur in any of the survey areas.” While Point Blue researchers documented 23 different species in the waters, the study did not investigate the potential impact of boats on the birds’ ability to forage. “We purposefully didn’t weigh in on the policy,” says Julian Wood, the lead researcher. “Supporting one policy or scenario over another was beyond the scope of that study.” Yet the study does make such a recommendation.

At the same time, Schwartz Lesberg was developing an eelgrass protection and management plan that eventually proposed a “protection zone” that would encompass 90 percent of all eelgrass beds and not allow moorings. This reduced the potential mooring space to just one-third of Richardson Bay’s historic anchorage acreage. 

Finally, in August 2021, the BCDC and RBRA arrived at an agreement: all anchor-outs would be removed from Richardson Bay by 2026, an ambitious, five-year goal. Those with “safe and seaworthy vessel” status—boats that were up to code—could stay until then, but others, like Evolution, would need to leave earlier, by October 2024. BCDC still wanted a mooring field, as long as it was temporary and for moving boats away from the eelgrass sooner. 

But when Sausalito residents concluded the hypothetical mooring field put boats too close to their businesses, they argued to nix the entire idea in the interest of public safety. “The attitude from the start was always just to kick the can down the road,” says Henry. No one wanted to deal with the problem, he says. It would require a lot of planning and willingness to embrace the anchor-out population. “My experience with cities is that they tend to be reactive instead of proactive.”

Henry’s also a longtime staff writer at Latitude 38, a Bay Area publication by and for sailors. The magazine’s founders dreamed of a 100-boat mooring field in Richardson Bay. “They looked at other places in California and they said, ‘Well, they have mooring fields. Why can’t we have one?’” The idea has circulated for the past 40 years, but never went anywhere. It was always difficult to answer the questions: who would fund it, who would oversee it, who would be liable.

After three years of discussion, on July 27, 2022, RBRA formally requested that BCDC drop the mooring field requirement—the cost, about $30,000 per mooring, was cited as a main reason, along with the claim that only a few of the anchor-outs’ boats had the required equipment to moor on such facilities in the first place. BCDC granted the request, and money meant for moorings went to pay anchor-outs to give up their vessels, among other goals. 

A bit before then, harbormaster Curtis Havel retired. In 2022, the City of Sausalito paid a $540,000 settlement to 30 homeless people in the anchor-outs’ waterfront camp—about $18,000 each—to get them to disperse. 

After the mooring plan was dropped, and years of boat seizures, RBRA introduced its housing voucher program for the several dozen remaining anchor-outs in 2023. To date they’ve housed 11 people, with several more in the pipeline.

The housing deal

The housing offer is generous. RBRA received $3 million in state funds, secured by state senator Mike McGuire, whose district includes Marin County. For anchor-outs who own and give up their vessels, RBRA will “buy back” their boats at $150 per foot and help them navigate a housing process that grants them one year of housing on land. Eventually, the goal is to transition them to Section 8, a federal housing voucher program.

But it’s hard to pin down who qualifies. A service agreement between RBRA and Marin County states that only anchor-outs who were counted during a June 2022 survey (and an April 2023 follow-up) will get housing. The Pacific Sun reported that only the owner of the boat gets a voucher, and co-occupants need to be married to receive joint housing, leaving some, like McCracken, to fall through the cracks. 

Brad Gross, the executive director of RBRA, sees the removal of anchor-outs as inevitable: it’s up to either him or BCDC. The anchor-outs who participate in the housing program now, he says, will “get out with some dignity”—but if the RBRA’s offered deal doesn’t clear the Bay, the state will likely step in to finish the job. “And the state’s got much bigger pockets, [a] much bigger group of attorneys,” Gross says. “And they’re up in Sacramento—they’re not going to have the same concerns and the same compassion and consideration.”

Drew Warner took Gross up on the deal, becoming one of the first anchor-outs to be housed. He remembers contacting the RBRA month after month and going through yearlong paperwork, finally deciding—“It’s time to get off the water, man,” Warner says. The anchor-out era, for him, was over. Winter storms were getting worse, and he wanted to be safe.

For Schwartz Lesberg, the combination of housing and restoration is a historic feat, especially for a small agency like RBRA. “This is a really thoughtful approach. And it looks like it’s working—people are getting housed and the environment is improving. And nobody else has done this.” The EPA grant application requests applicants provide matching funds. In RBRA’s application for eelgrass restoration money, the lion’s share of its match came from the state for housing and vessel removal.

Now, Warner lives in the Marin Headlands, in a loft-style one-bedroom apartment, with tons of natural light and in-unit washing and drying. “I sat on the stairwell for three days,” he says. “In just awe, with my cat.” When he tries to show me photos of his new place, though, his callused hands make swiping on the screen of the smartphone difficult. Thick white layers pile over his knuckles and fingertips, scars from the lifestyle he left behind—his hands remind me of McCracken’s. His convictions, though, differ: he believes he made the right choice. He’s even been encouraging his friends on the anchorage to take the deal.

McCracken, who doesn’t qualify, mourns the slow loss of the anchor-outs. “We were a community,” she says. “And now I notice the stress of being forced to go somewhere else, to break those bonds.”

Sitting in front of the visitor center in Sausalito and staring out at the anchorage that used to be his home, even Warner feels bittersweet. Eelgrass is far from his mind. Instead, he’s focused on what’s above the water: a wooden marker poking its head above the waves. “I stayed just beyond that,” he says. “For 23 years.” There are two boats to either side—the unused space in the middle now looks like a picture of an empty lot where an old house used to be. Soon enough, blades of eelgrass and life—the kind we have allowed there—will blossom underneath.

The post In the Name of Eelgrass appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

You walk into the meeting and, at the entrance, use your phone to scan a code displayed on a placard. It warps you to a website where you select your language — suppose that’s Brazilian Portuguese — and presto! A live transcription of the meeting, now in Portuguese, begins flowing on your screen. You can keep reading the translated dialogue or plug in your headphones so a robotic voice can read it to you.

San Jose, Millbrae and other cities are experimenting with this artificial intelligence-powered software to make local government more accessible through real-time translation. Napa County, the most recent to try it out, launched the service this week.

“I don’t think we can afford not to do it, given the needs of our population,” said Millbrae Mayor Anders Fung, the first Asian American immigrant to hold that office. About one in five Millbrae residents is not proficient in English, according to U.S. Census data.

“We need to serve the people in a way they could understand,” Fung said.

The technology has the potential to bridge communication gaps in San Francisco, where nearly 147,000 residents are estimated to be less than proficient in English. Members of the public can struggle to access city-provided human interpreters, who verbally translate what’s said during public meetings. But officials say they have no plan to introduce this service, out of concerns about its accuracy and cultural competency. Local community groups share those concerns, but also say they are interested in the technology’s potential to make public meetings more accessible.

Neither human nor machine is flawless. Staff from those local groups said that city-provided interpreters are not always culturally competent or accurate. And the San Francisco Public Press’ test of AI-translation software revealed numerous shortcomings — like translating “budget” into “butter” when the speaker pronounced it poorly — though overall the product worked.

Tech company Wordly, based in Los Altos, launched its AI-powered translation service in 2019 and initially marketed it to industry conferences and companies doing global business. But the company quickly found one of its fastest-growing uses in local governments, including in the Bay Area, said Dave Deasy, chief marketing manager. The product can translate 58 languages, including Arabic, Italian, Russian and Japanese.

Companies offering similar AI-powered real-time translation products for meetings and events include Interprefy, based in Switzerland, and KUDO, in New York. Both launched their products more recently than Wordly, which appears to lead in adoption by local governments.

Helping officials talk with each other, residents

Before embracing Wordly, Millbrae provided interpreters at public meetings to people who requested them in advance — San Francisco has a similar policy. But officials realized a year ago that they needed the AI-based tool, Mayor Fung said, when an attendee made a public comment in Mandarin. Fung, who was not mayor at the time, said he was the only councilmember who understood the attendee because no one had booked a Chinese-to-English interpreter.

By using Wordly, Millbrae residents can skip that step.

“The beauty of our product is that it’s on demand and you don’t have to plan ahead,” Deasy said.

In the city of Sunnyvale, the newly formed Human Relations Commission uses Wordly, enabling monolingual Spanish- and English-speaking commissioners to deliberate more easily and quickly.

“This creates a much smoother dialogue than using live interpreters,” city spokesperson Jennifer Garnett said.

San Jose began using Wordly for its city council and committee meetings in April. A month after launch, City Clerk Toni J. Taber said public feedback was positive and the city planned to extend its use to other departments, according to news publication Government Technology.

In Modesto, officials made initial plans during the COVID-19 pandemic to offer Spanish subtitle service, but adopted Wordly in 2022 instead in hopes that it would help engage communities that spoke other languages.

Wordly says on its website that it is less expensive than human interpretation, in part because it translates dozens of languages; providing that service by conventional means would require hiring several people. Reports from some cities support this. San Jose budgeted $400,000 per year for eight interpreters. After the city adopted Wordly, the annual cost fell to $82,000, the San José Spotlight reported. In Gilroy, a two-hour meeting used to require two interpreters and cost at least $500, but using Wordly has dropped that cost to $300.

Wordly offers various subscription plans, with the hourly price of translation ranging from roughly $100 to $300.

Accuracy problems common with AI

The Public Press conducted a 15-minute trial of Wordly, using it to listen to a Cantonese version of a Modesto City Council meeting about the city budget. Overall, the product achieved its goal of accurately reflecting the discussion about this complex topic, including when exchanges were dense with numbers.

But initial translation accuracy was low, with words out of context and incorrectly sequenced in a manner more akin to English than Chinese. As a speaker kept talking, Wordly overwrote its prior output with a more accurate translation. For example, in a discussion about the city’s budget, Wordly translated someone’s statement about cars as a reference to “marine” vehicles, like boats, before quickly correcting itself.

Translations were often too literal. When a councilmember said, “So moved” — a procedural declaration about a government’s item of business — Wordly mistranslated it as “所以感动” which means “so (emotionally) touching.” When a speaker presented financial projections and referred to a square visual element in a table of figures, Wordly sometimes called the element a physical box.

Wordly lets users click on translated sentences to read them in the original language. That could help some people piece together a speaker’s meaning during or after a public meeting.

When users have Wordly speak the translated text, the audio stops if the phone’s screen turns off. That could vex less tech-savvy people whose screens automatically time out.

SF government, community skeptical

San Francisco officials said they were open to using AI but did not have plans to adopt Wordly or a similar tool.

“We believe that there’s no better interpreter and translator than the human, who can capture the essence and cultural nuances in language better than any type of machine translation,” said Jorge Rivas, executive director of the Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs, which oversees implementation of the city’s language policy.

Staff at various community groups told the Public Press they were interested in technology that would make public meetings more accessible in more languages, but they expressed general concern about AI products. Some declined to comment on the record about Wordly because they had not tried it.

Sandy Jiang, a community organizer at the Chinatown Community Development Center, said she worried about Wordly’s accuracy and usability, especially for seniors who struggle with smartphones. She often helps residents by interpreting their comments into English during public meetings.

High-quality translation and interpretation require more than word-for-word replacement, and benefit from cultural competence, Jiang said. In Cantonese, for example, the name for Grant Avenue isn’t a direct translation, which would be 格蘭特大道. Instead, the Chinese community knows it as 都板街, which translates to Dupont Street, its name before the 1906 earthquake. And while “Chinatown” is generally translated as 唐人街, San Francisco locals better recognize it as 華埠, which means “Chinese wharf.”

Here, Wordly might actually have an edge over some human interpreters. Its translations can incorporate local terms for people, places or organizations that a client city specifies, Deasy said, as well as block profanity and other unwanted language. Jiang and other sources said they had witnessed city-provided interpreters use local terminology that was not culturally competent.

And while Wordly would not be able to clarify a speaker’s meaning with them in real time, some human interpreters also fail to provide that service. Members of the public have frequently felt misrepresented during public comment, said Vanessa Bohm, director of family wellness and health promotion programs at the Central American Resource Center, a nonprofit serving the Bay Area Latino community.

Bohm also expressed concern that AI tools could reduce demand for good interpreters and leave them with less work.

Bohm and Jiang both said that a service like Wordly could be a backup when human interpretation was unavailable, but that top-shelf interpretation should always be the priority.

“Interpretation means for the person to understand what you are talking about,” Jiang said. “The important part of providing interpretation is not just having a service, [it] is actually having the service that works.”

The post As Bay Area Cities Adopt Real-Time AI Translation for Public Meetings, SF Abstains appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

When enrolling for classes for the upcoming school year, some Bay Area students will find a new, unique course option that promises a deep dive into the history and contributions of African Americans across the globe.

A half dozen high schools will offer Advanced Placement African American Studies in 2024-2025. This is the first year the course will be available to all U.S. schools following a two-year pilot program by the College Board.

In 2022, the College Board, a nonprofit organization that is responsible for the AP course system, initiated a pilot program for AP African American Studies in 60 schools, followed by expansion to 700 schools nationwide in 2023.

Lowell High School in San Francisco is offering the class for the first time in the coming school year.

The Acalanes Union High School District in Contra Costa County will offer the course at Acalanes, Miramonte, Campolindo and Las Lomas high schools.

“I just think African American Studies hasn’t historically had a big place in the curriculum. I hope that it will kind of open up our students’ minds to recognize the kind of contribution of the African American population in this country,” said the district’s Superintendent John Nickerson.

In anticipation of the introduction of AP African American Studies in the Acalanes Union High School District for the 2024-25 school year, administrators, students and community members engaged in discussions regarding the potential impacts of the course within Bay Area school communities. During those discussions, there was only minor disapproval.

“The pushback was not really about the content of the course. There was nobody pushing back saying we don’t need African American Studies,” Nickerson said. But “there are some pushbacks that we don’t need another Advanced Placement course. And then there’s always pushback where teachers fear that because a new popular elective is introduced, other electives will fall off and may be the courses that they’re teaching.”

Another debate was the proposition of introducing African American Studies as a separate course, rather than integrating the course content into mandatory history classes, including U.S. history and world history. While some express concerns that teachers may omit certain information under the assumption it will be taught in AP African American Studies, many believe that a focused space for African American history will benefit students.

“I think one of the biggest problems in American conversations surrounding anti-racism, justice, diversity, equity, inclusion, bias, anti-bias is that we go way too broad and it’s impossible to have the prolonged, specific, useful conversations that we need to have,” said Zachary Reese, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and former African American psychology professor at the University of San Francisco. “And that’s what I really like about the creation of this kind of course. Yes, it does create a separate space and other people might feel less a sense of responsibility, but also it creates a really neatly focused space to work on a specific problem and highlight a specific group of people and celebrate a specific group of triumphs.”

AP African American Studies spans four historical periods from approximately 900 BCE to the 2000s. It is an interdisciplinary course in which students will analyze primary sources, engage in historical discourse, and write about their learnings.

Other Bay Area schools offer course

Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland was part of the College Board’s pilot program and continues to offer the class. “The first pilot year I had 65 students; this year I have 68; three sections each year,” said Bishop O’Dowd AP African American Studies teacher Tony Green. “The class is popular because the class is far different than those based purely on western civilization. We cover African history, African influence on European history, and the influence of African culture on the diaspora since the beginning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1433.”

Diverging from traditional AP courses, AP African American Studies invites students to delve deeper into a topic of their choice through the Individual Student Project. This component allows students to develop an argument regarding a chosen topic or event and present their findings to the class.

“Since it’s a project-based course, it gives students a lot of opportunity to find out what they’re really interested and curious about learning more about,” said Acalanes High School English teacher James Muñoz, who participated in the pre-course preparation discussions. “I actually think that this course is a transformational course because it doesn’t just exist within the College Board framework. It actually invites students to be more proactive in their communities.”

Class discussions play a pivotal role in unpacking course material in AP African American Studies. Some believe it may help foster a deeper understanding and personal connection to the content.

“We all have some experience being racialized people and that makes it so the content is like easy to wrap your mind around, easy to relate to. And the benefit of relating to content is that we pay more attention to it, we are more likely to remember it and we’re more likely to integrate it in our daily life. So, I think discussion and personal reflection is super key in this class,” Reese said.

Educators say AP African American Studies brings students the opportunity to learn about experiences and histories that may differ from their own, broadening their understanding of identity and societal dynamics. Engaging with diverse perspectives in the classroom can better equip students to navigate discussions about race and racial inequality with more confidence, they maintain.

It ‘encourages people to look outward’

“The Bay Area is really unique in that we have a lot of racial, ethnic, cultural diversity, but we’re super spread out. We’re super segregated as peoples. And I think this can lead to this effect where people know about their own racial, ethnic and cultural experiences but surprisingly little about others.” Reese said. “And I think this class is one that encourages people to look outward, even if they are Black or African American, to think a little bit more broadly about what it means to be a racialized person living in the United States and to sort of critique some of our preconceptions and open ourselves up to other people’s experiences.”

Some students say they value having a focused space where they can explore history in unique ways, different from the conventional approach found in other history classes.

“African American injustices are often taught as a small subtopic of the history curriculum, so a whole class dedicated to it could help the Acalanes community learn about new ideas and topics. Acalanes in particular has a very small percentage of African Americans on campus, and this class could allow people a more detailed view and a deeper understanding of [those] students on campus,” Acalanes 11th grader Kate Roberts said. Roberts took an Ethnic Studies class and is considering AP African Americans Studies.

Superintendent Nickerson estimates that each AUHSD campus (excluding the Acalanes Center for Independent Study) will have two sections of AP African American Studies. While the new course may deter students from other elective options, the AP label may help increase the course’s popularity over the next couple of years.

“I think that the course being AP might actually increase student enrollments because when picking classes, students want to show rigor on their applications; so, if they have the option to choose a new, interesting class, that still gives them a grade bump, I believe more students will take it over a non-AP course,” said Acalanes High School 11th grader Sophie Chinn.

AP courses are often more rigorous than regular high school classes, as they are undergraduate-university level. High school students enrolled in AP classes can earn college credit and placement if they pass a culminating AP Exam.

Some at Acalanes also believe that AP African American Studies could positively affect their school community in ways that transcend the classroom.

“I think that if everyone at Acalanes took some sort of cultural studies class it could change our culture. Acalanes is not particularly diverse when it comes to race, so many of us don’t understand how race disparities play into school communities,” Roberts said. “I think that we would be able to recognize many issues that circulate on campus, and everyone would have a greater knowledge on how to solve issues. People may have more open and accepting minds as well, which would be very beneficial for our community.”

Acalanes High School Principal Eric Shawn added, “The skills that [students] develop by learning diverse perspectives and histories and contributions, and the way that they study, will expand their and our knowledge of what is possible.”

Go here to learn more about the AP African American Studies course.

Haley Chelemedos is an 11th grader at Acalanes High School in Lafayette.

The post More Bay Area High Schools to Offer AP African American Studies This Fall appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

It’s becoming commonplace in open-intake shelters and rescue facilities across the Bay Area: The number of unadopted pets is growing; animal caretakers and staff are stretched thin; and efforts by local municipalities to provide care and comfort to every animal surrendered is becoming increasingly difficult.

California animal shelters and rescue organizations – even those across the country – are experiencing an overflow crisis. The number of stray dogs taken into shelters rose 6% from 2022 statistics and 22% from 2021, according to Shelter Animals Count. 

“I just can’t remember so many dogs coming in every single day,” said Sue James, board president of the Tri-Valley Animal Rescue. The Dublin-based volunteer organization provides medical care and fostering services to animals from the East County Animal Shelter. James said many shelters around the country “are overflowing, and it’s a tough time.”

The Solano County shelter – located just north of the Bay Area in Fairfield – currently has a two-year waiting list to surrender an animal due to capacity restrictions. Shelters have to take into account the health of the animals they keep in their facilities. When they create capacity restrictions, they must make sure every animal has its own dedicated space. 

Alexandra Kay, board president of the Bay Area Alliance for Animals in San Carlos, said another cause of shelter overflow is the lack of awareness on how much maintenance and expense is involved in taking care of a small animal. 

“It takes a little bit of time for these things to add up, to know that care is very expensive,” Kay said. “Pet food is very expensive. Flea treatment is very expensive, and that’s also saying that nothing goes wrong with your animal, like needing surgery for chronic conditions.”

James mentioned that people buying from breeders raises a problem, as well. 

“If people would learn more about the joys of adopting shelter animals and saving their lives perhaps more people would adopt versus buy,” James said. 

Euthanasia on the rise

As the number of animals in shelters increases, so do euthanasia rates. About 920,000 shelter dogs and cats are euthanized annually, according to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 

Traditionally, rescue organizations such as the Tri-Valley Animal Rescue take on the overflow from open-intake shelters, which possess a legal obligation to take in any stray animal from their jurisdiction brought or surrendered to their facility by Animal Control or the public. This is creating a challenge for volunteers who foster in their homes animals on the euthanasia list.

Another challenge is the cost of spaying and neutering animals, said Amanda Lee of the Underdog Animal Rescue in Lafayette.

“Pretty much nowhere, in the Bay Area specifically, do we have what we call no-cost, or low-cost spay and neuter clinics,” Lee said. “We used to before COVID, and most shelters had some sort of option, but now because everything’s running just differently in general, there’s very few options.”

According to Lee, spay and neuter services at the average veterinarian clinic start at around $700. 

“The only reason that overpopulation is a problem is because there is not enough spay and neuter happening,” Lee said, adding that there is “not enough education behind it, not enough resources.”

Fostering a positive environment

Currently, the Tri-Valley Animal Rescue offers incentives for fosters until the animal gets adopted, as well as a program where volunteers can pick up animals from the East County Animal Shelter and take them for walks and socializing, and give them love. 

James said the goal is to “keep them as happy as they can be in the shelter environment while they wait to get adopted from the shelter,” James said. 

She added that her group shares with Underdog Animal Rescue the goal of removing animals from negative shelter environments and moving them to positive foster environments. 

Underdog’s Lee said that an animal shelter environment can feel “highly stressful. Just a person going in there, it’s loud, it’s cold, there’s no emotion.”

The Bay Area Alliance neuters animals for free to prevent pet overpopulation and provides care for animals on the euthanasia list. 

“There is no room for those animals to be born into the system,” said Kay of the Bay Area Alliance. “And if they were born into the system, their life would be difficult, they would just end up euthanized at the shelter in the long run.”

The pandemic ripple effect 

The COVID-19 pandemic served as a contributing factor to the overflow, with backyard breeding increasing during quarantine. However, this is not the only factor that shelters and rescue organizations are seeing.  

Dogs require a higher amount of human-animal interaction. When owners worked from home during quarantine, a dog would get used to being with the owner at all times. When the owner returned to in-person work, they weren’t able to give their dog the same amount of attention as before. At times, this resulted in owners not being able to take care of the pet. 

“What we didn’t want was to have the animals get adopted during the pandemic and then once the pandemic was done, to have them come back into the shelter,” James said. “They might have loved the animal – particularly when they’re home and [when] they needed the companionship. They learned that it can be difficult with the dog if you’re gone long, long hours.”

James pointed out that it is slightly different with cats, who are fine being on their own during the day. The problem with cats is the high feral cat population. During kitten season (from spring to summer months), when cat reproduction is at its peak, feral cats are most likely not spayed or neutered. 

One way rescue organizations are fighting to eliminate the overflow crisis is via fostering. Lee pointed out that by fostering, one could save two lives: The life of the animal they foster, as well as the one that takes the foster pet’s spot in the kennel. 

Fostering is “very similar to babysitting your friend’s dog,” Lee said. “You’re providing shelter, love, care and boundaries. If you save multiple per year, that number just keeps multiplying.” 

Additional resources:

• ASPCA – Pet Shelter Statistics
• Tri-Valley Animal Rescue
• Bay Area Alliance for Animals
• Underdog Animal Rescue 
• Shelter Animals Count

Keerthi Eraniyan is a 9th grader at California High School in San Ramon.

The post State Animal Shelters, Rescue Groups Battling Overflow Crisis appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The article was originally reported and published by MindSite News, a national nonprofit news outlet that reports on mental health.

When Mayra Barragan-O’Brien was 14 years old, she and her mother were smuggled across the U.S.-Mexican border in a truck. What she remembers most about the 1,300-mile journey from Guadalajara was the sweltering heat. It was so hot that the bottom of her mother’s black tennis shoe melted from hiding underneath the backseat, and she fainted so often that Mayra lost count.

They were coming to America because the violence in their neighborhood had become life-threatening. Her mother had applied unsuccessfully for a visa several times, and she felt she had no choice but to flee. So she hired a coyote to get them across the border in secret and on to a safer life in San Diego, where they would reunite with the other half of their family.

Their first stop was a Denny’s. As they walked into the diner, Mayra felt an overwhelming sense of relief for more than the air conditioning. She was grateful for her mother, who was still alive, and the menu in front of her since she hadn’t eaten for hours. She ordered a piece of chocolate cake.  

While they waited, she noticed an older white couple at a nearby table were looking at them and talking quietly. One of them pulled out a phone. Mayra didn’t understand English, but the coyotes, who were listening, knew the couple had called ICE, the U.S. agency that enforces immigration laws and detains undocumented immigrants for deportation. “Vámanos, vámanos!” they whispered urgently, hustling the startled Mayra and her mother out to the truck. They drove quickly to another Denny’s, where she finally got her cake. Her mother, shaken, ordered nothing.

From that moment on, Barragan-O’Brien knew she couldn’t talk about how she came to America. A good student, education became her singular focus instead. She went on to graduate high school with honors, but it took her ten years to get an associate’s degree because she had to work — mostly at a warehouse packing frozen meat or driving a forklift. Then came the California Dream Act in 2011, which extended financial aid eligibility to undocumented students. Barragan-O’Brien seized the opportunity. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and then a master’s in counseling psychology from Cal State San Bernardino. 

As she pursued this work, she reached back for inspiration to her encounters with a psychotherapist who’d taught her a mantra of hope at her most difficult moment. It was a year before the Dream Act, when she was going through a deep depression after a failed relationship, on top of feeling like there were no opportunities because of her undocumented status. At one point, her family experienced homelessness, but even some subsequent successes backfired. She discovered a relative had called ICE on her family, jealous that they had saved up enough money to buy a house. 

She’d gone to the therapist bawling, she recalls, saying that she had feelings of not wanting to live anymore. He walked her through a guided meditation that kept repeating “And remember there is hope.” She felt lighter after that session, she said, and wanted to be able to do the same thing for others — to ease people’s pain.

California led the way in 2014, allowing undocumented people to obtain licenses as doctors, therapists and for other professions. Illinois and Nevada followed five years later.

Looking back, she is now able to see her despair as a form of “immigration-related trauma — all of the experiences of being a newcomer in a world you don’t know,” she says. “A lot of people aren’t able to name that. ‘Why am I feeling sad? Why am I feeling anxious? Why am I feeling on edge? Why am I snapping for no reason?’ And it’s because of all the trauma that our bodies and our minds endure.”

Barragan-O’Brien’s insights fueled her desire to help others who’d been through the same traumatic experiences she had. She realized she might even have the skills to become a mental health healer and give back in some of the ways that her therapist had given to her. But there were some huge obstacles: As an undocumented person, it was hard enough for her to work legally. How could she ever hope to become a credentialed therapist, licensed by the state to do this work?

Indeed, for her and other undocumented people who want to address the mental health needs of their community, the route to becoming a licensed professional therapist is a hard one. But in California, it’s at least possible: In 2014, the state passed a law permitting undocumented residents to earn professional licenses, including as doctors and therapists. Nevada and Illinois followed suit in 2019.

In California, the biggest hurdle is obtaining 3,000 hours of client work supervised by a licensed professional, a requirement in the field to be able to practice on your own. Immigrants Rising, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that helps immigrants get into college and start careers, aims to facilitate the process through its Mental Health Career Program.

The goal is to increase the number of undocumented therapists so those in need can work with someone who can relate to their experience.

“We really want to send the message that there are so many contributions folks can bring outside of their immigration status,” says Rocío Preciado, director of mental health and career services at Immigrants Rising. “It’s only when we’re able to connect with others to help process the day-to-day challenges that are oftentimes amplified by the political messages we receive, that we’re able to contribute to the healing of our community.”

The glaring need for Latino therapists

Estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. range from 10.5 million to 12 million.  Some 80% come from Latin America, followed by regions in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Since each country and culture is different, so are the mental health needs of each group. No matter where they come from, undocumented immigrants face a slew of chronic stressors — constant fear of deportation, demanding work schedules, manipulation from unscrupulous employers, experiences of trauma from their journey to the U.S. and in their home country. Together, these experiences create  enormous risk of mental health conditions and challenges.

Access to therapy is also more difficult. Getting a therapist — especially an affordable one — is challenging for everyone these days, but for communities of color, finding a therapist who looks like them or speaks their language makes it even harder. In California, for example, only 9% of clinical counseling psychologists identify as Latino, followed by Asian at 8% and Black at 3%, according to data from the Healthforce Center at UCSF.

Immigrants Rising sees the need firsthand. It offers free Wellness Support Groups led by mental health professionals — including groups for women and LGTBQ+ people — to anyone around the country via Zoom. Its Mental Health Connector program, launched in 2019, links undocumented immigrants in California with therapists who are donating their time. So far, over 1,100 people have applied and 174 have been matched. Those who are uninsured or have limited resources are prioritized to see practitioners who have experience with the undocumented community.  

The organization’s Mental Health Career Program began a year later. It allows therapists-in-training to become part of the Connector program and accumulate the hours they need for licensure. It also pairs them with a private practice for clinical supervision and provides professional and leadership training opportunities. Best of all, it gives participants a stipend: $14,000 for year one and $20,000 if they continue on for a second year. 

Currently in the pilot phase, seven participants have completed the program to date, mostly Latina women.  Some, but not all, are currently allowed to stay in the country through DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — the program created during the Obama administration to protect young adults brought to the U.S. as children from deportation and provide them with temporary work authorization. This year, 12 undocumented applicants vied for just six spots, due to the limited financial support the program has obtained from foundations and private donors. Preciado hopes to bring in new funds to increase the stipend and the number of participants.

We want to send the message that there are many contributions folks can bring outside of their immigration status.”

Rocío Preciado, Immigrants Rising

She says many undocumented people want to pursue a career in mental health but are daunted and unsure about whether it’s even possible for them to become a licensed therapist. Preciado hopes to replicate the California training program in Illinois and Nevada, the two other states that have paths to clinical licensure for undocumented therapists. 

A license provides the ability to start a private practice, which provides more flexibility and pay. And while those without DACA status can’t be legal employees, they can start a business or work as independent contractors.

After Barragan-O’Brien graduated with her masters degree in 2020, she needed to accumulate 3,000 supervised hours in order to get licensed. But since she didn’t have work authorization, she had to volunteer her time as an associate clinician in the San Bernardino County School District.

In addition to her time with clients, she spent hours writing clinical notes and evaluations, while also taking on paid workshop gigs with two other organizations and taking care of a young daughter. Barragan-O’Brien calculated it would take her five years to rack up the hours so she could take the licensing exam and officially become a marriage and family therapist. But there was little margin: Applicants must take the exam within six years of obtaining their associate number, which they can apply for after receiving a graduate degree, or start the process over. After two years, she found herself burnt out. 

So she quit volunteering and started researching how she could make a therapy career sustainable. Eventually she came across a single sentence in a California Board of Behavioral Sciences FAQ that said associate clinicians could get a stipend as long as they’re part of a program that encourages underrepresented groups to enter the profession. 

That was the catalyst for her to co-found the Mental Health Career Program. She worked with Immigrants Rising to get it off the ground and eventually went through the program herself last year. It was the first time she didn’t have to worry about paying bills.

“Creating space for us to share our stories and be able to say that I’m not the only one who feels burnt out — it helps us feel like we’re not alone.”

Julio Zamarripa, therapist in training

These days, when she’s not roller skating, spending time with her daughter, podcasting with her sister or listening to the band Hanson, she runs UndocuMental Health. The nonprofit provides training to organizations and educational institutions on best practices when working with the undocumented community — such as hanging art by undocumented artists to signal that it’s a safe space or not calling the police as a first response in case of a mental health crisis. 

Barragan-O’Brien became a legal permanent resident in September. She’s still 250 hours short of the licensing requirement and continues to work with her supervisor, determined to be of service to her community. 

“There’s so much potential among undocumented folks but often they’re not able to see it,” she says. “That’s when I feel the most motivated — when I get to see their face the moment they realize what their potential is and begin to tap into their own agency. That really keeps me going.”

Stranger in a strange land

Julio Zamarripa grew up in a small rural town in Mexico with a big sense of community. As a kid, he’d wake up early to help his grandfather feed the cows or play “farm” with his toys. One day, when he was 10 years old, his mother told him he wasn’t going to school and instead, going to see his dad in America. They abruptly left. He never had a chance to say goodbye to his hometown. 

Zamarripa was angry when he came to the States because he didn’t know the language or culture, and was bullied a lot. In his family, they didn’t talk about emotions. He was a male and was supposed to hold it all in. The feeling of being lost and disconnected continued as he got older, amplified when he was placed in remedial courses at community college.

A career in anything didn’t seem likely until he became part of the Puente Project and met a counselor who was also a licensed marriage and family therapist. Even though she was a citizen, she shared parts of her own journey and made him see the different possibilities for himself. He told her he wanted to be like her one day. She responded, “Mijo, you will do that and more.” 

In 2013, he got DACA status and seven years later, his masters in counseling at the University of LaVerne in California. He was a part of the inaugural Mental Health Career Program cohort. The first year, he saw ten clients through the Connector program; the second year, where he was allowed to continue, he saw 15 clients. In total, he was able to accumulate 1,500 hours. The stipend also covered additional expenses for Zamarripa, like renewing his associate number and some specialized training. Most importantly, it gave him a network of people who shared similar experiences.

“Even within our undocumented community, we’re all experiencing so many different challenges,” he says. “Creating that space for us to share our stories and be able to say that I’m not the only one who feels burnt out — it helps us feel like we’re not alone.”

Zamarripa now has only about a third of the supervised hours left to complete the requirements. Because participants can only accumulate 300 to 500 hours over the course of 10 months, the program is allowing them to continue into a second year. Another challenge is ensuring that clients in the Connector Program show up for therapy sessions, since it impacts not only their progress but the ability of the therapists-in-training to log needed hours. 

All of my supervisors were white. Nobody was talking about how ICE raids were heightening hypervigilance or there might be an increase in domestic violence.”

Mara Sammartino, founder of First-Gen Therapy

Still, feedback from clients who show up has been overwhelmingly positive. And for the trainees, knowledge about paid opportunities and trauma-informed practices has grown. In an evaluation survey Preciado did for the past two years, there was a 113% increase in knowledge around establishing a private practice. Immigrants Rising will soon also provide pro-bono business coaching for participants who completed the program to help build a caseload of clients.

Zamarripa now works as a counselor and instructor at two community colleges, and is also an associate therapist with First-Gen Therapy. Founder Mara Sammartino started First-Gen Therapy as a Vacaville-based private practice in 2022 to provide culturally responsive therapy and create a safe space for budding therapists to learn under her license — something she wishes she’d had when she entered the field 13 years ago.

“One of the hidden pitfalls of becoming a therapist is that you also don’t have supervisors who are bilingual or bicultural,” says Sammartino, who is Nicaraguan-American. “All of my supervisors were white. There was nobody talking to me about how ICE raids were heightening hypervigilance or how there might be an increase in domestic violence.” 

Sammartino hopes efforts like Immigrants Rising can help boost the number of therapists who can relate to their clients’ experiences. As Zamarripa’s clinical supervisor, she trained him on taking progress notes and assessments and acted as a sounding board for him to work through client issues. When she brought him on as an associate at First-Gen Therapy — “our practice,” she called it — it allowed him to continue working with clients paying a sliding-scale fee through the Mental Health Connector Program while also taking on new ones as an independent therapist. 

As a therapist and a trainer, Sammartino recognizes the emotional challenges of vicarious trauma. She’s unafraid to be vulnerable, and doesn’t hesitate to share parts of herself as a way to connect.

“Do you know how many times I’ve told abuelitas I work with that I have to cancel because my son is sick? And they’ll be like, ‘Put Vicks Vapor Rub on his feet and make sure you put some socks on. And please send me a picture of your son to make sure you did it correctly,’” Sammartino says, adding that she promptly sends them a picture. “That’s the thing about providing culturally-responsive care. I am not bound to the white experience. Nor am I bound to the Latino experience. I am bound to the experience that I’m living in at the moment.” 

She encourages Zamarripa — whom she calls “the platinum golden goose,” since being male and Latino in the field is rare — to do the same. Many of his clients identify with him. He lets them know they don’t have to share their story over and over again if they don’t want to — and that ultimately, they’re the expert in their own lives. His job is to give them tools and to bear witness.  

But when it does happen that a client says something that echoes an experience of his own, and he feels it in his core, he’s learning to draw from his own story. Recently, he had a man who was trying to hold it together in a session. Zamarripa could tell he was in distress and wanted to let his emotions out. 

“I told him, ‘You don’t have to be strong right now. What would happen if you were to let it go?’ As soon as I said that, the client started crying for a good minute,” Zamarripa says. “At the end he said, ‘No one has ever told me I didn’t need to be strong at the moment. And I felt so free letting go of all of that.’”

Reporting for this story was supported by the California Health Care Foundation and the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation. Sign up for the MindSite News Daily newsletter here.

The post California Program Trains Undocumented Residents to Become Therapists and Serve Those in the Shadows 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.”

Prev

1of10

Next

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.

Prev

1of10

Next

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.

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.

Foghorns sounding on the Golden Gate Bridge signal that San Francisco’s “natural air conditioning” is rolling in, keeping San Francisco cool. During summer, the fog prevents triple-digit heat in the East Bay from roasting the city’s homes and businesses.

That pattern is changing. Since the 1970s, San Francisco’s average temperature has increased by 2 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, city leaders are developing new strategies to keep people safe, with infrastructure designed for much cooler weather. The question is whether San Francisco is ready for the next deadly heat wave.

During the summer, chilly waters off the Northern California coast create a cool marine layer that is pulled inland like a blanket by the warmer air in the East Bay. On the other side of that weather pattern, an upper ridge of high pressure usually indicates where temperatures will be hottest.

On Labor Day 2017, the cool marine layer never reached San Francisco, and temperatures predicted to be in the upper 80s, soared to a record-breaking 106.

National Weather Service Meteorologist Brian Garcia said his agency didn’t see it coming — prediction models were off.

“It looked like the peak of that ridge was going to set up over the East Bay,” he said. “We were looking at temperatures upwards of 115 for Livermore.”

The ridge ended up 30 miles to the west — right on top of San Francisco. Any possible ocean breezes were blocked by a wall of high-pressure air.

The extreme heat took the lives of three elderly San Franciscans and three more people on the Peninsula. Most died alone in overheated buildings. None of them had called 911. Dozens of other people in San Francisco were taken to hospitals with serious heat-related illnesses, overwhelming local emergency medical services.

Threat Starts at Lower Temperature in SF

Most San Franciscans live without air conditioning. The 2020 Census found that in the metro area that includes San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, only 47% of households had air conditioning. That percentage is certainly lower in San Francisco, which is typically cooler than the East Bay. 

Adrienne Bechelli, deputy director of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management, said people in the city are at higher risk with even moderate heat.

“Our thresholds in San Francisco are much lower than in other comparable cities nationwide, or even in other neighboring counties, because a lot of homes don’t have air conditioning in our work or commercial spaces,” she said. “So, our spectrum starts with pre-planning — depending on the incident — in the high 70s, but usually low 80s.”

Bechelli said setting heat protocols in motion starts with the forecast.

“A couple of days out, when we get that spot report from the National Weather Service, we will hold various levels of meetings with our key city partners, as well as other community stakeholders,” she said. “That would include policy-level meetings, as well as operational coordination meetings.”

Agencies participating in such meetings include the Department of Public Health, the Human Services Agency, the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Recreation and Parks Department, as well as the police, fire and sheriff’s departments. Elected leaders and representatives from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and the San Francisco Unified School District would also take part.

While the Department of Emergency Management coordinates the effort, no one person in San Francisco makes the decision as to which level of response is appropriate.

On average, San Francisco has three days a year over 90 degrees. By comparison, San Jose sees 16.

San Jose Deputy City Manager Kip Harkness is the person who makes decisions about heat emergencies when San Jose’s Emergency Operations Center is activated during an extended heat wave.

“We believe that it’s important to have the authority to act at the appropriate and lowest level possible,” he said.

In most situations, San Jose agencies independently decide to do things like open cooling centers, Harkness said.

“Now, it’s just standard protocol,” he said. “If it got longer or larger, we’d pull everybody together. And we’d work through what additional resources were needed to support the people in the field.”

San Francisco’s response system can’t be set in motion by one official, Bechelli said.

“We do so much pre-planning, where we have all of these specific thresholds and triggers where all the city departments responsible during extreme heat know what that threshold or trigger is,” she said. “The Department of Emergency Management holds that authority to ask other city departments to activate their extreme heat operations protocols at a lower threshold.”

Keeping Track of Heat

When San Francisco officials found themselves scrambling on Labor Day in 2017 to deal with an unexpected, deadly heatwave, many were asking why the forecast was off by 20 degrees.

Garcia, the National Weather Service meteorologist, said the problem was one of scale.

“When we look at models, typically they are in 3-kilometer, 12-kilometer or larger grid boxes,” he said. “And around here, in 3 kilometers, you can go from sea level to 5,000 feet up Mount Tam, and it’s a completely different climate regime.”

Garcia said the system has improved over the last five years, and now the models are based less on a precise forecast and more on probabilities.

“So, instead of saying, hey, it’s going to be 85 degrees in the city, we’ll be able to say the probability of it being 85 degrees in the city is 90%. The probability of it being 105 in the city is 5%,” he said.

Since 2017, the National Weather Service office in Monterey has been reaching out proactively to local municipalities as soon as it sees the threat of rising heat.

Cooling Near You

In the past, San Francisco would open cooling centers and encourage people to travel to them to get out of the heat. That proved a challenge for some seniors, disabled people and families who had to leave their neighborhoods to find a place to cool down. 

Bechelli said the city now offers three categories of weather relief centers.

“The first are overall public locations, things like shopping malls, museums, local parks, local swimming pools, locations that are accessible year-round to the public,” she said. The second category includes city-operated facilities, such as libraries and community buildings. The third category includes sites that people use in their neighborhoods, such as YMCAs, senior and community centers and homeless shelters. The Department of Emergency Management coordinates with all those groups and tries to get the word out to people who need to use them.

When heat and wildfire smoke came to the city during the COVID-19 pandemic, some people avoided leaving hot houses to go to weather relief centers. Bechelli said that fears about COVID-19 and smoke could put people with underlying health risks in serious danger.

“Extreme heat is much more serious than extreme smoke for most people,” she said.

That’s also true when sheltering at home. Opening a window to bring in cooler, but smoky air is less dangerous than being shut up in a hot room for long periods of time.

Bechelli said she is confident the city is focused on managing increasing numbers of heat waves as the climate warms.

“As emergency managers, we do everything in our power to try to stay out ahead of the hazards that impact our communities,” she said. “We always have areas for improvement, we always are looking for specific corrective actions that we can implement to make our citywide response even better. But I definitely feel confident that we are better established to respond to an extreme heat event now than we were in 2017.”

Heat Safety How to stay safe in the heat: Stay somewhere cool Drink plenty of water Wear light clothing and hats Take a shower Close blinds during the day, open blinds at night Avoid: • Being outside between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. (when it is the hottest) • Strenuous activity • Eating or drinking sugar, alcohol, caffeine and high-protein foods Drink water and cool down right away if you: Feel tired, weak or dizzy Have a headache or muscle cramps Are sweating heavily Faint Look pale You may be experiencing heat exhaustion, which can become heat stroke if not addressed promptly. Get immediate medical attention if someone: Has difficulty breathing, a headache or nausea Has a fever (body temperature of 103 F or higher) Has red, hot, dry skin without sweating Is confused, delirious or hallucinating Is dizzy, unconscious or unresponsive They may be experiencing heat stroke, which can be deadly. Call 911 if someone is having a medical emergency. From SF72.org

The post Cool San Francisco Could Get Walloped by Next Heat Wave, but City Says It’s Ready appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.