Community members spoke out this week after city crews destroyed two long-standing tiny homes during an encampment closure in West Oakland.
The homes were built by students from Oakland School for the Arts almost a decade ago, and donated to the East Oakland Collective, who helped two homeless mothers move in with their children at the time.
Those same families have lived in or kept the tiny homes since then, relocating when necessary, but staying around Peralta and 7th streets for the last several years, according to the residents.
“This is not what compassion looks like,” said East Oakland Collective founder Candice Elder, in a Facebook post that’s been shared and commented on dozens of times.
She said her organization has been providing regular maintenance and support at the homes, which “belonged to two unhoused mothers who had been living curbside and trying to create some measure of safety, dignity, stability, and hope for themselves and their families.”
Sean Maher, a spokesperson for the city, said Oakland closed the encampment — which included several tents, RVs, and other structures in addition to the tiny homes — after receiving numerous reports of crime associated with it, including drug deals and sex work, and because it was blocking the sidewalk and a park entrance.
“During the operation, the City’s tow provider determined the trailers housing the tiny home structures could not be safely moved with the structures in place,” he wrote in an email. “Based on that assessment and attempts to contact residents at the site, the team made the operational decision to deconstruct the structures to the extent necessary to allow the trailers to be removed.”
He noted that the city posted notices telling residents to move, and announcing a closure operation between Sept. 21 to Oct. 9, 11 days in advance — more than city policy requires.
The two women who lived in the tiny homes had not been staying there full-time. One, Markaya Spikes, secured an affordable apartment at Brooklyn Basin a few years ago, after a city employee urged her to apply.
But her family’s time there has been tumultuous, she said; there are frequent maintenance concerns, they’ve had four bikes and a moped stolen, and she’s seen blood and other bodily fluids in common areas. So they often sleep at the tiny home instead, which she said feels “way safer” than her apartment. She hasn’t yet brought herself to tell her 15-year-old daughter, who “spent multiple Christmases and birthdays” in the home, about the demolition.
Vanessa Trinidad, the resident of the other house, gave birth two months ago to a baby girl. For her child’s safety, she moved with her and her 7-year-old son — whom she was pregnant with when she first moved into the tiny home — to a family shelter in Richmond. She said she doesn’t know what the future holds and was hanging onto the tiny home as an option to return to.
Both women said they were aware of the city’s move-out notice. They said they’ve been through this push-and-pull with Oakland in a number of other locations over the years, including their first spot on High Street. They said they move when required to, but have always been given until the end of the closure period to figure out the complicated logistics.
“They knew it was our houses — we’re always working with them,” said Spikes about the city’s homelessness team.
“I’m very sad and at the same time scared,” said Trinidad. “Just the way everything was handled — I wasn’t expecting it to go down like that, it’s always been different. My son, he grew up in that tiny house, and he was sad about it too.”
Oakland School for the Arts students building one of the tiny homes eight years ago. Credit: Courtesy Candice Elder
Spikes had been at work early Tuesday morning, the second day of the closure period, and got to Peralta Street a few hours after the city crews arrived. By then, she said, they’d already smashed the home and a number of belongings inside of it, including a microwave, a TV, and photos of her daughter.
The city is adamant that it allowed the women to collect their personal items and store them, in line with its policy. The residents insist it was too late to recover most things.
“I’m sitting here reeling on all the stuff that’s gone, all the money that’s wasted,” said Spikes when we spoke with her on Thursday. “I’m thinking about all the kids that built the house, the parents that paid for the materials.” A number of those parents popped up in the comments of Elder’s Facebook post, expressing outrage.
According to the city, its outreach contractor Operation Dignity made numerous visits to the encampment over the past year and directly ahead of the closure, offering spots in a range of city shelters, including group and private spaces, the “community cabins” sites, RV lots, and family shelters.
In his email to The Oaklandside, Maher said the city closed the camp in response to requests from both the District 3 council office and neighbors.
Councilmember Carroll Fife rejected that framing. She told The Oaklandside that councilmembers are asked to provide the city’s homeless services team with a monthly list of the top five locations they’re hearing concerns about. This one was on Fife’s list, but she said she didn’t expect the city to demolish the tiny homes.
Fife said that a number of unhoused people moved to the Peralta encampment after the city shut down a tiny-home shelter located a couple of blocks away in the spring, citing performance and budget concerns.
“After they shut down the intervention I opened, some of those people ended up on the street, and it just kept growing,” Fife said. The tiny homes had been there for years, peacefully, but it “just exploded and has gotten more and more violent.”
Fife told us she was going to reach out to one of the displaced mothers to try to get her into a housing unit.
Elder of East Oakland Collective told The Oaklandside that Oakland School for the Arts donated the two tiny homes to her organization, which in turn identified Spikes and Trinidad as homeless residents who’d benefit from them. Trinidad was pregnant at the time. Spikes had become homeless a few years prior, when her landlord in Oakland went through foreclosure.
“We fundraised to upgrade the homes, adding insulation, security…we have been monitoring and caring for the homes since,” Elder said. “No matter how much notice you give, it takes a lot of effort to move a tent, a structure, let alone a decent-sized tiny home. We have moved it each and every time it faced removal, but they did not contact us this time.”
Elder’s group has launched a crowdfunding campaign for the women that’s already raised $3,600.
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