Caltrans OK to Clear Oakland's Largest Homeless Encampment, Federal Judge Rules

Caltrans can begin evicting the estimated 200 people who live under an 880 overpass in West Oakland after Labor Day, a federal district judge ruled Friday.

The decision from Judge William Orrick comes after a month-long legal battle between residents and the transit agency, the city, and the county. It dissolves a restraining order that previously halted Caltrans’ plans to clear the camp and allows the city to begin a phased closure of the encampment.

Without a "constitutional right to housing," Orrick said he had no authority to allow the encampment to remain on the property. Thursday evening, representatives from the city of Oakland submitted a plan for a phased closure of the site, beginning at its northernmost edge, where a fire on July 11 sent plumes of black smoke onto the 880 overpass.

"What I have tried to do is create a possibility of relocation in a way that is the least harmful to the people who live on Wood Street," he said at the hearing. "I realize that there are alternatives that public policy could be generating that would work better for homelessness than what has happened in the past. But those are things that are beyond what can be ordered in this case."

The city plans to offer approximately 40 emergency shelter beds to residents in the first phase of the closure, though it’s unclear how many people actually live in the affected area. Resident Ron McGowan, who lives at the site in question, said there are about 80 people there.

“It’s absurd to think that we've gotten this far through this process and we have not had anybody take a survey of who is actually affected by this,” McGowan said at the hearing.

Although the first phase includes offers of temporary shelter, Orrick said subsequent phases could continue whether or not shelter was available.

Lydia Blumberg, who’s lived at Wood Street for at least five years, called the decision “beyond disappointing.”

“Everyone wants to wash their hands of us,” she said after the hearing. “We're not homeless. They're looking to make us homeless. This is our home.”

In July, Caltrans alerted the residents they would have five days to pack their belongings and leave. Tucked away from the street, the encampment, commonly known as “Wood Street,” stretches along property owned by Caltrans, the city of Oakland, BNSF Railway and private owners.

Attorneys for Caltrans said the encampment posed a serious health and safety risk, citing some 200 fires at the Wood Street encampment over the past two years. Since the restraining order was issued, another 12 fires have broken out on the site, Orrick said at the hearing.

Residents sued in July, saying it was more dangerous to force people to move on such short notice with no alternatives for shelter or housing. And Orrick agreed.

“The plaintiffs have raised serious questions that the state will violate their constitutional rights,” Orrick wrote in his July order, “by placing them in increased danger when it removes them at short notice from the encampment without adequate plans to provide shelter.”

He allowed Caltrans to continue removing debris from the area, as long as it didn’t involve residents’ belongings. And, he ordered the state transportation agency to work with staff from the city of Oakland and from Alameda County to come up with a plan to relocate residents.

But those plans were slow in coming. Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office publicly excoriated Oakland officials for failing to cooperate and threatened to withhold state funds.

“The City’s suggestion that it has no responsibility for homeless individuals on state property unless there is a specific earmark is simply unacceptable,” Patterson wrote. “Under state law, working with homeless individuals to identify housing or shelter alternatives is a local, not a state, responsibility.”

And it was clear at the hearing that the city, county and Caltrans still had not worked out a plan for a number of different issues related to the encampment's closure, including who would do the outreach to residents and where residents' belongings would be kept.

Many people at Wood Street live in RVs, cars and other vehicles. An attorney for the city said it doesn't have enough safe parking sites for everyone to bring their vehicles there. And Caltrans officials said the vehicles would be too difficult to move.

But Orrick told the agencies to work it out.

"These are vehicles of human beings," he said at the hearing, "and they are not to be lost."

In the meantime, residents at Wood Street say few officials have come to consult with them on relocation plans. Earlier this week, a coalition of residents wrote a public letter to state, city and county officials urging them to work with them.

They asked for resources to make the encampment safer, including access to dumpsters for trash removal, fire extinguishers, sand buckets, water hoses and assistance creating markers throughout the encampment so that emergency service providers could more easily navigate the area. Brigitte Nicoletti, an attorney assisting residents in their pro se lawsuit, reiterated that request at the hearing on Friday.

“That would allow the city and county to figure out their outreach programs so that there could be actual adequate outreach,” she said, “instead of a rushed approach that will lead to immense danger and harm to the residents.”

But Orrick said requiring Caltrans to provide those resources was beyond the scope of the law.

“Those are things that are beyond what can be ordered in this case,” he said. “I stretched the point up until now in order to try to get to some sort of a place that recognizes the humanity of the people who've been talking to me.”

A separate request earlier this month to halt Oakland workers from clearing parts of the encampment on land it owns was denied. In July the city began clearing an area between West Grand and 26th Street in Oakland in preparation for a shelter at the site, which would house approximately 50 people.

Earlier this month, another federal judge allowed that work to continue.