Oakland considers new 1,000-person homeless shelter

Acknowledging a desperate need for new interventions to address the area’s homelessness crisis, the Oakland City Council will consider building a new shelter for 1,000 unhoused people on the site of the city’s old Army base.

The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to direct staff to research the idea and report back next month on its feasibility and projected cost. The 22-acre parcel near the city’s waterfront is one of the last large, undeveloped pieces of publicly owned land in the city, presenting a rare opportunity to build a large-scale project, according to Councilmember Carroll Fife, who introduced the resolution.

“I’m tired of being told what can’t happen when it comes to addressing some of my district’s greatest challenges,” she said in a statement. “(District three) constituents, housed and unhoused, deserve better. We spend millions of dollars in maintaining people living on the streets. A creative, proactive effort could redirect those dollars if there was the political will to do so.”

Oakland had more than 3,000 people living on its streets as of its last count in 2019, and another nearly 1,000 people sleeping in shelters. The city conducted another census this year, and the results — which are generally viewed as an undercount because it’s easy for volunteer counters to miss people — are expected this summer.

As encampments spread over Oakland’s streets, sidewalks, open spaces and public parks, the city has stood up multiple tiny home villages for unhoused people, moving them out of encampments and into small cabins designed to serve as temporary shelters while the occupants wait for affordable housing. The city recently opened a tiny home site in Fife’s West Oakland district, and another near Lake Merritt.

With 1,000 beds, the proposed Army base shelter would be Oakland’s largest. But it likely would be temporary, as the city is working to move a California Waste Solutions recycling plant to the location. City staff on Tuesday said they expect permits for the recycling plan to be approved by early next year. But Fife wants to move ahead with a homeless shelter on the site in the meantime.

City Council first directed staff to look into housing people on the Army base site back in 2020, when it approved the controversial encampment management policy that dictates where unhoused people can and can’t camp. But instead, the site has sat vacant since 2012.

Fife urged the city to move quickly to turn the site into shelter for unhoused residents, calling the parcel a “potential life raft” in an “ocean of non-existent solutions.”

“We need accommodations now,” she said.