July 20, 2022 / 8:52 AM / CBS San Francisco OAKLAND -- A federal judge on Tuesday granted a temporary order blocking Caltrans from clearing a homeless encampment under the MacArthur Maze. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani. The city did not say exactly when it planned to begin closing the encampment, but said it would make reasonable efforts to avoid displacing people during excessive rain or very cold weather. Fife said the site which could offer pallet shelters, a community kitchen, bathrooms and wraparound services could house many of Wood Streets residents. Officials have argued that they dont have enough shelter beds to accommodate the number of people living at the encampment, which spans 25 city blocks. The city needs to fund a formal encampment management program to implement the policy passed in October, and to address the findings of the audit, the auditors office wrote. Homeless Encampment at 9418 Edes Ave Oakland, CA, 94603, USA: Im a community member and my street is getting full of RV and abandoned cars for many months now. OAKLAND, CA - MAY 5: A homeless encampment is photographed on a plot of land along East 12th Street and 1st Avenue on Wednesday, May 5, 2021, in Oakland, Calif. On Monday morning, workers removed vehicles, furniture and other items from the encampment on Caltrans property underneath the MacArthur Maze. The departments goal is to respond to 90% of calls within seven minutes. Several non-emergency systems including phone lines within the City of Oakland are currently impacted or offline. To report an issue related to an encampment, please email Homelessness@oaklandca.gov. they paid around $400 a month in public assistance and charged. Wood Street encampment resident Theo Cedar Jones plays guitar. The land was mostly owned by Caltrans, and after a history of fires on the site and concerns about the proximity of a nearby oxygen production plant, on July 15, 2022 the agency gave residents 5-days' notice to clear the site. (Beth LaBerge/KQED) 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. (Beth LaBerge/KQED) Caltrans workers clear a barricade made by Wood Street residents meant to keep Caltrans out of the encampment in Oakland on Sept. 8, 2022. Caltrans says it's closing Oakland's Wood Street homeless encampment because of safety concerns. Oakland shut down a portion of its largest homeless encampment, starting the daunting work of clearing a massive, sprawling camp that has been plagued by fires as the city prepares to. 550 North Flower Street. A hand-painted sign can be seen at a homeless encampment on Wood Street in Oakland. He dissolved the TRO immediately, conditioned on the city's representations that there would be sufficient shelter options for the displaced residents. Oakland firefighters responded to 90% of the 988 encampment calls they received in less than eight minutes. City Administrator Ed Reiskin said city employees have worked hard to compassionately manage the surge in encampments, while acknowledging they havent always had clear policy direction or sufficient resources. Housing | Thank you for your patience while we work to restore services. Housing proposal for unhoused leaves Santa Clara residents sharply divided Cars, RVs and debris burned Monday, sending a giant cloud of smoke into the sky, and freezing highway traffic in the vicinity. Jones and several other residents want the city and state to give them the land to build their own community, equipped with a kitchen and common area to play music. People are seen in a homeless encampment on Thursday, March 19, 2020, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot) SAN FRANCISCO (CN) A temporary restraining order put in place last month to protect the unhoused residents of an encampment the city of Oakland had hoped to clear to make way for new affordable housing has been dissolved. This chart is updated at the end of each month. that was may . Nobody who lived in the homeless camp on Wood Street in Oakland was surprised when police cars and helmeted motorcycle officers started driving up and down the block early on a Tuesday. Oakland is experiencing a network outage that is affecting key services such as Oak311, permitting and business tax. Grappling with homelessness, California weighs extending foster care for 5 years Brigitte Nicoletti, an attorney assisting residents in their pro se lawsuit, reiterated that request at the hearing on Friday. Housing | Caltrans couldnt immediately be reached for further comment. She previously covered startups and venture capital for the Bay Area News Group and prior to that court cases for The Recorder in San Francisco. Because the city had not budgeted for those expenses, staff had to divert resources away from other essential services including responding to illegal dumping, conducting fire inspections and maintaining traffic signals and street lights. But those are things that are beyond what can be ordered in this case.". But the city didnt give the team the resources it needed including a budget, according to the audit. Without a "constitutional right to housing," Orrick said he had no authority to allow the encampment to remain on the property. But Oakland only has 598-city-funded, year-round shelter beds and an estimated homeless population of 4,000 as of 2019 with nearly 80% of those unsheltered. You can report an encampment at the following locations: Bridges Highways Parks or playgrounds Outside of residential and commercial buildings Roadway tunnels Streets and sidewalks Subway stations Report an encampment. Credit: Darwin BondGraham. The decision from Judge William Orrick comes after a month-long legal battle between residents and the transit agency, the city, and the county. Several non-emergency systems including phone lines within the City of Oakland are currently impacted or offline. Reporting an Issue If you or someone you know is hungry, homeless, or housing insecure - Call 2-1-1. Heres where California reservoir levels stand after this weeks rains. Oakland Workers continued Monday to clear the massive homeless encampment along Wood Street in West Oakland. Last year, 19 murders 18% of the citys total for the year occurred in encampments, according to the report. We are hard at work implementing that policy amidst a historic budget shortfall, staffing shortages, and an ongoing pandemic that has limited the shelter options available to the residents of our encampments, the statement continued. Oakland police took an average of four to six hours to respond to emergency calls in encampments during the last two fiscal years, according to the audit. We cant just let people to continue to die on the sidewalks while we try to figure out what permanent solutions can be, Fife said. 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Hayward couple file lawsuit over harrowing honeymoon ocean ordeal in Hawaii. The residents would have a social contract, love thy neighbor and do no harm, Jones 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.. Multiple fires have erupted at the city's largest homeless encampment, which. Earlier this week, a coalition of residents wrote a public letter to state, city and county officials urging them to work with them. Members of the cleanup crew rolled tires and lifted couches overhead as larger equipment moved car after car, some just burned-out shells, off the state-owned lot. (213) 229-1700. The order is the latest in a long-running dispute over a homeless camp, who expressed concern about the short notice and lack of shelter options, Activist Judy Heumann led a reimagining of what it means to be disabled, How this year's Selma Bridge Crossing could mark a community renaissance, Storms across the U.S. cause deaths and power outages, Russia's foreign minister gets laughed at over Ukraine remarks at a global conference. The department is taking this action to address the increasingly serious safety risks to life, property and infrastructure at the encampment, including from the fire this week that prompted the closure of the MacArthur Maze, Caltrans said in a statement. Three days later, a group of encampment residents sued Caltrans, the governor, Oakland and a number of public officials in federal court, alleging that their forced removal from the site would constitute an unconstitutional "state created danger" and place them at a high degree of risk because there were not adequate shelter options for them in Oakland. Related Articles Staff closed and cleaned about 500 encampments during the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years including camps that were closed once, repopulated, and then were closed again. But the money is insufficient to help all the camps residents. A federal judge on Monday ruled the city can resume efforts to remove dozens of people from a large homeless camp in West Oakland, ending a nearly two-month courtroom battle over the camps fate. Now, they live on city property along Wood Streets right-of-way. Although the first phase includes offers of temporary shelter, Orrick said subsequent phases could continue whether or not shelter was available. Police said a person allegedly assaulted a public works employee and when officers tried to detain him, he refused and they used force. Wood Street encampment resident Theo Cedar Jones points to a map of the area hes living near. Their. She started her journalism career reporting on crime and breaking news for The News-Press in Southwest Florida. A spokesperson for the Oakland Police Department said the department is investigating a use-of-force incident on Thursday just after 2:45 p.m. in the area of West Grand Avenue and Wood Street. The homeless population has jumped by 63% since 2017 in Oakland, where the median house sales price is about $750,000. The city did not immediately return a request for comment. Since the restraining order was issued, another 12 fires have broken out on the site, Orrick said at the hearing. That case was assigned to Judge Orrick, who expressed concern about the short notice and lack of shelter options. Multiple fires have erupted at the citys largest homeless encampment, which extends for several city blocks and has been home to hundreds of people.