Oakland Approves Funding For 100 Bed Homeless Shelter

Oakland Approves Funding For 100 Bed Homeless Shelter
By Lynda Carson 2/19/02

Oakland Ca-On Tuesday evening Febuary 19, 2002, the Oakland City Council approved funding for a 24 hour a day, year round 100 bed homeless shelter, and GAP financing for 1,500 rental units of very low-income housing to be built in Oakland.

Agenda Item 7-B; A report regarding the recommendations from the Task Force on homelessness and very low-income housing, quickly passed with little debate over the ever growing housing crisis in Oakland. Councilmember Jane Brunner
seconded the motion made by Councilmember Nadel to adopt this into an Ordinance as soon as possible, with the support of other Councilmembers quickly following suit.

With a sigh of relief, Bay Area Housing Activists applauded the efforts of Councilmember Nadel and Reids Task Force on Homelessness, for it's humane gesture to address the ever growing problems of homelessness in Oakland.

Oakland and Alameda County is known to have nearly 5,000 homeless wandering the streets on any given night, with the rents skyrocketing to levels that a worker needs to earn at least $19.00 per hour on the job to maintain a one bedroom apartment.

One by one, Oakland activists stepped up to the podium to announce their support for this much needed legislation to address the needs of low-income renters and the homeless who wander the streets of Oakland and Alameda County. Residents from the Henry Robbinson Center run by Dignity Housing, spoke out about the need for more shelters that would allow families to be served. Other notables such as Joseph
Villareal of the Oakland Housing Authority, Maria Benjamin, Michael Diehl, and Ryan Hurley of B.O.S.S. all made some elegant arguments in favor of supporting this bill.

Local politicians also offered their support by way of letters urging the Oakland Councilmembers to pass the recommendations being offered by the Task Force.

In a conversation with Ryan Hurley of B.O.S.S. just before the vote, Mr. Hurley spoke of the urgency needed to get as many people as possible down to City Hall to lobby Council Members to support the recomendations. Mr. Hurley was a part of the working group that came up with the Task Force proposals, and is very active with B.O.S.S. to find housing for the homeless in the East Bay. Many of the activists in the working groups who came up with the recommendations held their breath hoping for the best to come out of tonights Council Meeting, and all the hard work payed off.

This Task Force on Homelessness was the result of a report from the Life Enrichment Committee regarding welfare reforms impact on homelessness, and low-income renters. Their intent was to increase public awareness of homelessness, and to create an agenda that would allow Oakland to be an activist city on homeless and Section 8 issues, and to create new innovative ways to fund programs to assist those in need of shelter and very low-income housing.

Part of the recommendations were to have a strategy to preserve the existing stock of SRO Housing (single room occupancy), which is generaly used for the very low-income renters of Oakland. Oaklands Central District has 24 buildings in the downtown area containing over 1,800 SRO rental units. Mayor Jerry Browns 10 K Plan to bring in 10,000 wealthy renters to the downtown area has made the SRO Hotels a prime target for developers who want to replace them with luxury condos, and the Task Force wants the SRO Hotels to be replaced by buildings with comparable rents in the event that any of them are sold or demolished.