SF Chronicle: Tensions flare in Oakland over where to house homeless people being evicted from massive encampment
Oakland will look into moving nearly 200 people from the massive Wood Street homeless encampment to part of a nearby former army base — despite warnings from city staff that the proposal would be costly and unsafe for shelter.
The direction came after a tense City Council meeting Tuesday during which one council member lambasted the city administrator over the lack of shelter and housing options for the residents of Wood Street, which Caltrans is beginning to clear out.
Roughly 300 people live at Wood Street — the largest encampment in the Bay Area — on land owned by the city, Caltrans and other agencies. Caltrans estimates that nearly 200 people live on its property.
Council Member Carroll Fife said she was “disgusted” that the city hadn’t pursued looking at a portion of a former Oakland army base a mile or two away as a possible site for unsheltered people to move. Fife first suggested moving 1,000 homeless people there in May, but city staff pushed back at the idea in June, arguing it would be exorbitantly expensive and that the site was unsafe for housing because it’s contaminated with lead, arsenic, kerosene and other toxic substances.
