For the third straight year, a group of former Wood Street encampment residents bicycled some 80 miles from Oakland to Sacramento in a show of solidarity with unhoused Californians.
In their annual caravan to the state capitol, the Wood Street Commons residents rode for three days in October to lobby their lawmakers.
Residents of the Commons, who were swept by state police last year, collaborated with Sacramento’s unhoused community on staging the event, which concluded with a rally.
Wood Street Commons members have been coming to Sacramento since 2022, one year before the establishment of Camp Resolution, another similar self-governing camp that was recently swept in late August. It was a collaboration of Wood Street Commons with the Sacramento unhoused community, with members of all groups sharing ideas and providing material support in the form of labor and resources that allowed the capital’s once-leased encampment to begin.
Wood Street Commons now aspires to become a resource for unhoused people throughout California. Many members of Wood Street Commons are involved with Poor Magazine, a zine and podcast publication focusing on homeless and poverty issues; they now have a plan which they intend to detail and execute with the help of legal will from powerful institutions.
The riders were scheduled to meet with three assembly members, but not a single one showed in person. Instead, the people of Wood Street Commons met with staff of the representatives.
In her presentation, LeaJay Harper of Wood Street spoke of the urgency behind this year’s ride.
“Why it’s important this year is because of the governor’s executive order,” Harper said, referring to Gavin Newsom’s urging cities to clear encampments. “We have just been seeing encampment and community after community swept violently, very violently, without compassion, crushing peoples wheelchairs. Specifically in Oakland, they’re saying they spent billions of dollars.”
Meanwhile, services that are intended to benefit the homeless do not seem to be as helpful as they might immediately appear on paper. The tiny homes that the City of Oakland erected on Wood Street after it swept residents have limited enter and exit times, and they are not connected to water, electricity or air conditioning.
“They build these tiny tombs or jail-like rooms.” Poor Magazine editor Tiny told legislative staff. “They don’t let you have a friend in the room, cook your food in the room, have any guests in the room, bring any of your animals or your belongings or your storage. Who lives like that? Close the door, lock it, you’re there till next morning. That’s jail!”
Although some of the staff members appeared sympathetic to commons residents, Wood Street Commons must find support with numerous steps along the way. Although given suggestions of who they can turn to, such as State Assembly member Mia Bonta, it is up to them to seek those connections.
The people of Wood Street Commons drafted a plan called “Homefulness” where existing vacant lots that the City of Oakland allots for housing can be used as community resources via a nonprofit program organized by Wood Street. They provided the legislative staff with folders detailing the proposal. However, the program’s founders face a few obstacles.
“When we try to move there, they kick us out,” Harper said.
On the non-profit status of the riders’ organization, a representative who just goes by the name Freeway told the staff, “We received a 501(c)(3) as a result of us saying to the homeless administrator of Oakland when she was about to evict us, ‘Why can’t we run our own site? Why can’t we govern ourselves?’ They said, ‘If you get your 501(c)(3) you can,’ so we took that challenge.”
Another advocate, who gave her name only as Kelly, also said that they have had difficulties with paperwork and need to find allies who understand state bureaucracy. She and other community members also cited zoning laws as a major challenge.
“So we are in the middle of writing the application and we need to get the application filled,” Kelly said. “That’s where our glitch is.”
Wood Street community member Nori added that added enforcement on unhoused communities creates another obstacle to obtaining nonprofit status. “So we can’t actually get the standing to apply unless we have some sort of standing, until we have a track record, but we can’t get the track record until we have the place to do it,” Nori said
Delaying further action would cost unhoused residents their lives, Freeway told the staffers. As Freeway told one representative, “We have buried more of our community members than have been housed,” they said. “That’s a real statistic.”
Since the Supreme Court’s decision on Grants Pass v. Johnson, the risk of death has been heightened: Even before the decision, sweeps were already shown to be deadly. The Wood Street community believes that its program can help provide stability and protection for highly at-risk community members. It would provide a fixed address and a supportive community to residents based on each person’s ability and needs, Freeway said.
“It’s taking the people who are living there and saying ‘OK, what are you good at, what are you passionate about? What drives you to get out of bed every day? What drives you to get to bed every night? What works for you? We’ll put you in the driver’s seat and create this plan for you, and work with you to make sure you’re successful’” Freeway said. “And the people that go through that program cycle up and work through into their positions in the community, and each one to each one we pass it down, whoever comes in goes through the same process.”
By operating like this, Wood Streets Commons residents can continue to help people the way they did before their encampment and others like it were violently swept. Harper noted that city workers throw away residents’ medications and medical equipment, such as wheelchairs, in sweeps. As a result, medical workers face difficulties contacting their displaced patients, she added, and that resources dedicated to housing residents would be more cost-effective to cities and beneficial to the residents.
“All this money is being spent [on sweeps] when you could be spending it on permanent housing solutions” Harper said. “We know because a lot of us were unhoused on Wood Street, like myself for ten years. It is the community aspect, many of us don’t have friends or family, so when they are breaking up our encampments they are breaking up our communities. And so not just putting people in housing and trying to find this temporary band-aid, but trying to help people sustain their housing long-term by redirecting the money into organizations that can really help us like lifelong.”
