The city of Berkeley is making major changes to its approach to homeless encampments. The city is giving the city manager’s office the authority to clear two large areas of homeless residents that the mayor has said have been a problem for years.
One of the encampments is located at 8th Street and Harrison Street, while the other is located on 2nd Street.
The change comes after the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson That is, cities have the authority to conduct searches even if there are not enough beds to house all the displaced residents.
“You basically have to walk in the middle of the street now because the sidewalks are blocked. I have a son in a wheelchair. If I had to bring him here, where would he go?” said Howard Levine, owner of Alliance Graphics.
Levine’s business is a specialty embroidery and screen printing business, and their front door looks out onto the encampment on 8th Street.
“A lot of the people that live here seem to have issues. They have substance abuse issues or mental health issues,” Levine told CBS News Bay Area.
He says he understands why the city needs to take action. He’s seen the fires, the trash, the rats, the human waste.
“I don’t think the solution is to just sweep them up, move them and dump them somewhere,” Levine said.
“I have been parking my camper on this particular street for seven years,” says Yesica Prado, who calls the camp her home.
Prado has been here since 2016, when she was still a student at UC Berkeley.
“I had to make a tough choice between rent and tuition, right? I clearly chose to go to school over paying rent. And then I ended up buying an RV,” she said.
Prado recently founded the Berkeley Homeless Union, a group that has announced it will file a federal lawsuit against the city to block any enforcement.
“This is a place where everyone has been coming for years, so if you want to clear this camp, there is no other solution for many people here,” she said.
“It’s not safe for people to be living on the streets, it’s not safe for people to be living in dangerous conditions,” Mayor Jesse Arreguin told CBS News Bay Area.
Arreguin said the city has been conducting weekly outreach services at the camp for years to provide alternative housing, but it has now reached the point where more enforcement action is needed.
He said the city of Berkeley spends more per capita on homelessness solutions than any other city in Alameda County, but one city cannot solve the problem alone.
“We really need to work together as a region to figure out how we’re going to address the issues of homelessness, and specifically how we’re going to address the encampments on the streets. We need to make sure that one city doesn’t do one thing and another city does another thing. That would just drive people from city to city,” Arreguin said.
Compassionate enforcement is what the mayor is asking for, but what does that realistically look like? The answer depends on who you ask.
“Homelessness is not a problem that the city can solve. It is a state problem, a county problem, a national problem,” Levine said.
As for when this area will be cleaned up or swept, the mayor says that is up to the city manager’s office.
The vote Tuesday night gives city staff full authority to take action at any time.
A separate group of Berkeley businesses came together and filed a lawsuit against the city of Berkeley on Tuesday, claiming the city is violating its own nuisance laws by allowing the encampments along Harrison Street to remain. The lawsuit demands that the streets be cleared.
Katie Nielsen
