Satya (Homeless Advocacy)
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah. And every suite, there are at least several police, you know, depending on the size of the suite, they can be even more. And so there is a very real threat of police violence, like underlying every single encampment suite. Yeah.
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And so the sweep that Oakland, the sweep practices that Oakland has set up are, like, very kind of odd, and they are associated with different, like, lawsuits that have occurred in the past couple of, actually since the 70s. But so there are certain requirements that the city of Oakland is obligated to follow, and, like, certain provisions and offers that, like,
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homeless people are technically supposed to be receiving and for a bunch of complicated reasons like rarely ever are so for instance like the back and tag policy that uh satya was just discussing like dave recently somebody did a pra request to see whether or not to sit he was actually following faithfully following that policy and i think in like over a year
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There were, I believe, eight bag-in tags that were registered in the city system. And that was, in that same period, there were, like, well over 100 sweeps, you know? Jesus. I don't have the exact number on me, but... Or, yeah, actually 537 closures. Jesus Christ. Two instances of storing property. So...
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You know, that's people's, their whole lives, all their possessions, like precious items that they're able to hang on to are just, yeah, destroyed and they never see them again.
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Yeah, there's so many things that I want to pick up on, but I guess just on that point specifically, there was an audit into California's spending on homelessness. I believe it was over a period of seven years, and it showed that there was $24 billion spent on homelessness.
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grants to nonprofits or cities to provide people with different services that are kind of designed around homelessness and providing housing or legal services. Like there's a whole range of things that's out there. But a lot of the time, like these are the only options that are available to people and they tend to produce less than stellar results.
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so out of the 24 billion dollars that was allocated to help homeless people in that same period of time homelessness in california just like skyrocketed right so rates of homelessness increased while this money was getting pumped into the pockets of the bank accounts of like landlords and developers it is an issue that people on every like side of the
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political compass, like they like to, to use this point to their own like ends. Right. So Elon Musk talks about it and like people on the left will talk about it. But I think like the experience that people on the street have is, is very different than any of these narratives that you tend to hear in the media.
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All of this money is being dedicated to these programs and... Homelessness is only rising.
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I think like one thing that I've heard before that's a kind of useful way to think about this kind of government spending is if homeless people would be better off if you just gave them the money directly, you know, then that kind of way, it's really hard to justify these programs when that can't be said of them, you know?
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Yeah, I think also it's super important for people to understand that these programs, housing programs, shelter programs, they are out there, but they are decoupled from the sweep operations that are occurring, right? So the city of Oakland, they are contracted with a nonprofit, Saskia mentioned earlier, called Operation Dignity.
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And they are required to check in with different encampments that are scheduled to be closed at least a week before the sweep. And the purpose of that is to notify people that it's happening. They're The city of Oakland is required for the terms of this lawsuit back in, I believe, 2019, the Morales lawsuit.
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And there was a settlement that resulted in the city being required to provide clear notices whenever they're going to close a site. So yeah, this nonprofit provider is supposed to notify people and try to get them connected with services.
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However, the services, for the most part, like housing for people who are unhoused, is largely funded through the federal government and through this very complex and inaccessible system called coordinated entry. The coordinated entry system is not something that the city of Oakland or Operation Dignity, that is not something that they're providing people with during a sweep.
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When the city of Oakland, for instance, in one of the commission on homelessness meetings, the city administrator, Harold Duffy. He presented actually in response to a question about somebody's wheelchair being destroyed by public works. Yeah. He gave this really roundabout deflecting answer where he said basically that everyone who is at an encampment at the time of a sweep
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has expressly refused services, like shelter or housing or whatever. And that kind of presumes that the city actually has opportunities that they can provide people with, which is just not the case. The coordinated entry system It is a program that is, first of all, only people who are disabled can get what's called permanent supportive housing through the program.
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But also, it is in such high demand and is so inadequate to the needs that Alameda County is currently the situation that we're in, that the wait list is thousands of people, long, And it can take well over a year before someone can get housing through that system. So it's just like, it's not true. They do offer people what are called community cabins, which are tough sheds.
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Yeah, I think it's super important to just emphasize that point. The city is telling the media, they're telling businesses, anyone that comes to them with problems related to homelessness or concerns, they're telling them that everyone is being offered shelter and housing. And it's just not true. And that is reflective in the city's own publicly available data.
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So they actually publish a list of all of the encampment suites that they do throughout the year. And the Commission on Homelessness meetings will report back to the commission about service enrollments that they've done through a certain period of time. Like from May to September, they had enrolled, I believe it was 60 people into services, like non-specified services.
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And during that period, there was approximately 80 suites. And if you assume there's at least 5 to 10 people at every encampment when they do a sweep, and usually it's more, that is like 9%, 4.5% of people getting enrolled into services. And of those, maybe a smaller fraction getting into shelter. And when they get into shelter, they just languish there, right?
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They aren't connected with caseworkers who help them get through this really convoluted coordinated entry process and like lengthy coordinated entry process. And so within a few months, they're just right back on the street, you know? It's just ridiculous.
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And unfortunately, because homeless people have very little, like, I guess you could call it social capital, you know, the city can get away with a lot of this stuff. They do like blatantly illegal things that are against even their own policies and nothing happens. And I guess like maybe we should back up a little bit and discuss the city's policy.
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Yeah, so this is like, it's kind of a complicated situation, but the city has what's what they call their encampment management policy. And it was initially passed, I believe 2020, but it's gone through several evolutions over the past 10 years or so. And it is related to different Supreme Court cases and the settlement that I mentioned earlier.
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This policy, it provides certain very limited protections for people who are homeless in the city limits. The city is required by this policy to offer shelter. I believe it's a week for any person who's subject to one of their encampment closures. And also we mentioned the bag and tag policy.
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So if somebody, you know, they are evicted and they move somewhere outside with a tent, they bring all of their possessions with them. They are provided with a, I believe, three foot by three foot like storage space. And this facility that is super inaccessible and kind of like,
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I don't even know if it's actually real, to be honest, because I've never heard of anybody actually getting their stuff stored and getting it back. But technically, that is a possibility. However, the city will only hold on to it for so long before they throw it away.
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and then the last protection or provision is the city was until recently supposed to provide people with shelter so a few different supreme court cases are behind that provision specifically and i think a lot of cities kind of had a similar policy framework that they
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we're following until the grants pass ruling and i guess like maybe we don't need to get into that too much but basically the the whole idea of that policy was like if somebody is outside living outside and the city uh sweeps them they have to provide them with uh some kind of alternative accommodation because according to like the ninth district court
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it was considered like cruel and unusual punishment to penalize somebody for being homeless without offering them some kind of temporary accommodations. And so that was more or less the city's nominal framework for several years, basically. And
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The degree to which they actually followed these policies, they really didn't, except for in certain situations where there are, for instance, legal advocates who will file injunctions to stop the city from doing a sweep on the basis of failure to provide an alternative accommodation.
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And typically those arise when there is a very large encampment clearing operation that is scheduled and a contentious issue. You know, a lot of the time, for instance, there'll be people staying on city or like California state land and the city will like force them to move because of some development problems.
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project that they're planning to do and so in those situations when the media has kind of narrowed their their focus and begun like discussing some of this stuff in the local press then like something like that became possible but after the grants passed ruling this past year the city was no longer obligated under federal law to follow those policies.
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And in September of last year, the late mayor, Sheng Tao, she issued an executive order that more or less just totally rendered that policy framework irrelevant. So she put forth a a new framework that allows the city to to sweep encampments under a tiered system of what are called emergency suites so if for instance a encampment is blocking a roadway or a sidewalk
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then it is a hazard to the public, quote unquote. Or if it's somebody has a tent that is up against a building of some sort, it's a fire hazard. And so in this tiered system, there's like different levels of safety hazards. that they're doing now.
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And basically what that looks like is like a fire marshal and the city administrator will convene after somebody calls in a complaint about somebody that's staying outside by their business. And with the fire hazard one, I believe that they can just sweep without any prior notice. Whereas the other two, there is some like,
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level of notice that they're technically required to provide but yeah so the shelter provisions and the notice and storage like it they're technically still supposed to follow that by their own city resolution but there is this provision that like if for instance they issue
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somebody uh like a no or a one hour notice to leave because of like a fire hazard and like advocates can't make it there because they don't really know they nobody knows it's happening then the city can just do that and not offer people anything right so these policies have the effect of disempowering our
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ability to respond to a scheduled operation, then the city can really just do whatever they want because nobody's watching what they're doing.
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Yeah, I really appreciate those sentiments, Satya. And I think the Oakland advocates doing eviction defense for people who are living outside, it's grown in size and capacity quite a bit in the past year. And the city has noticed that. So they've actually They've passed various resolutions.
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And honestly, a lot of their practices and their policies, like their encampment management team, they seem to be responding to the increasing effectiveness of this response, this network of community defense. And so I think that all of those things are so important, especially as... the Trump regime starts to eliminate the very modest social safety net that there was.
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And before we end this conversation, I just want to emphasize that in Oakland, a majority of the people who are homeless and are subject to state violence. They are non-white, mostly Black, and are homeless in neighborhoods where they used to be housed. And so the gentrification that has happened, particularly in West Oakland, and the influx of high-income tech workers that displaced them and
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moved into their family homes, they are the same people who are calling 311 to push the city to displace them again, but from a tent or a car this time. And I think it's just so, so important that particularly housed people try to tap into the networks of community defense that exist in their areas. I'm sure that most cities probably have something comparable to Oakland, but with
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the measures that we're seeing cities begin to take, such as in Fremont, which is about 30 minutes south of Oakland, where they basically banned or criminalized mutual aid with unhoused people. So you can get $1,000 fine or up to six months in jail for aiding and abetting a homeless person. And that's an extremely vague law.
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So it's very important that people try to be aware of their city government, how they're maybe passing anti-homeless measures in their cities and trying to mobilize against that from happening.
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Yeah, and there is a lawsuit currently against that, and it sounds like... The city of Fremont is probably going to be removing that aiding and abetting clause from the resolution, but because that specific provision is actually in the city's municipal code as a general provision. So even if they do remove it, charges could still be brought against somebody.
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So really, the entire ordinance needs to be eliminated altogether.
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I don't think so. Nothing that comes to mind. But yeah, again, super appreciate you having us on to talk about this. Yeah, you know, shit is rough right now. I think for me personally, it's been really helpful to direct my energy towards... things in my social network in a way that's constructive and helpful to others.
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So I would definitely suggest if you're feeling any despair or worried about becoming Blackpilled or whatever, yeah, just try to tap in and focus on things that are happening in your community. It's good for you and it's good for the people in your community.