Photo/Garbriel Suder-Randal.
Creating Community Helps Solve Homelessness, not Carceral Housing Conditions
OAKLAND, CA — Oakland City officials intend to evict the remaining unhoused residents living at 1707 Wood Street in the upcoming weeks. The Residents of Wood Street Commons are calling on all allies, neighbors, partner organizations, and concerned citizens to join them in their campaign to stop the destruction of this community by signing the solidarity letter, calling on Oakland’s Mayor Sheng Thao to halt this eviction until a permanent housing solution that retains the integrity of the community can be found.
The unhoused residents of the Wood Street Commons, seek to amplify the truth; how grossly mismanaged homelessness services are in the City of Oakland — all while facing imminent eviction themselves. The Wood Street community is threatened by “eviction,” but the residents want to reclaim the words that are used about their lives and relatives. As Wood Street residents face a forced relocation, a displacement, and further trauma, this humble group continues to provide mutual aid services extending beyond their own encampment to the surrounding neighborhoods as well.
The Wood Street Commons has provided what the City of Oakland and its contractor-run sites have not been able to: no deaths, a higher level of safety, communal hot meals and food to go, regular clothing and hygiene donations, a feeling of community and self-empowerment, the freedom to organize, a focal point for harm reduction and reversing patterns of trauma with radical acceptance, and support of life. This all is accomplished without funding or resources from the city.
By taking action to improve their lives, the residents have shown that a better way of life is possible. Wood Street residents want to expose that the non-profit industrial complex only offers detention-based programs with lack of oversight on their funding and no promises of any broad success, or true understanding that homelessness is caused by an issue with the system, not individuals. Wood Street residents have continuously presented alternative solutions to the City of Oakland in order to improve program agreements with temporary shelter contractors, so they feel less like carceral housing.
Wood Street residents want to reaffirm that creating community is a key factor in solving homelessness, and community is exactly what the Wood Street Commons has created. The Wood Street Community should be funded, not broken up.
