Two of those who remained were Teela Hardy and Tanya Andrade. Hardy had been working as a receptionist for a law firm but became homeless after she was laid off. Andrade said she was let go from her service industry job soon after she became pregnant. While she says she technically has access to her former home, it\u2019s uninhabitable.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t stand my house because it\u2019s full of mold,\u201d said Andrade. \u201cLiving there is unsafe because I\u2019m pregnant, and I have asthma.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Both Hardy and Andrade are about seven months pregnant and had\u00a0lived in RVs that no longer run but still provided them with shelter. In the days leading up to the closure, it was difficult to move their inoperable RVs and they did not expect the city to follow through with the eviction.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThey gave us a warning,\u201d said Hardy. \u201cBut they\u2019ve given us warnings before and not gone through with their word.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
According to Hardy, the City of Oakland had posted signs three separate times this year telling residents they planned to close the encampment on specific dates, but those dates came and passed without any closure enforcement. The Oakland Post emailed Oakland\u2019s director of communications multiple times over three days seeking comments on this story. But the city ultimately did not provide comments before this story\u2019s deadline.\n<\/p>\n
Hardy and Andrade were able to keep their RVs after friends helped tow them to another location, but the women said they lost other possessions during the closure. For Hardy, the most important thing she lost was her car she had been using to do odd jobs and run errands, including getting to doctor\u2019s appointments. According to Hardy, it was impounded because, although she had been trying to get it registered, she hadn\u2019t yet been able to do so.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just hard,\u201d Hardy said. \u201cThey didn\u2019t give me a bus pass or anything, and I know I\u2019m not going to be able to do the things I need to do in the amount of time I need to do them now that I don\u2019t have a car.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
According to Williams of Homies Empowerment, the organization became aware of the closure because they have recently started renting land from the city that sits at 10451 MacArthur Blvd., which is next to where the encampment had been. Hardy said the organization had allowed her to use the land for her dogs to play and that she and Andrade, in turn, had helped to clean up the parcel. Homies Empowerment plans to use the land to set up a small community farm.\n<\/p>\n
A statement on Homies Empowerment\u2019s website says the organization \u201cworks alongside our community towards a world absent of whiteness, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy.\u201d The organization started about 12 years ago to help quell gang violence and also\u00a0address the city\u2019s gang injunctions,\u00a0which Homies Empowerment saw as harmful. They started a program called\u00a0Loaves and Fishes\u00a0during the pandemic, which is still in operation, that feeds East Oakland residents in need of food, including people experiencing homelessness. Williams says the organization offers \u201csolidarity not charity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe shared with the people in the encampment,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThey became family. They were welcomed to eat with us.\u201d The encampment closure \u201cshocked and dismayed\u201d members of Homies Empowerment and left them \u201cdisheartened.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Hardy and Andrade said they suspected the city enforced the closure due to the encampment becoming messy. They also said the city provided no toilets, rarely offered trash pickup services, and that sometimes housed private citizens and businesses would dump trash in their encampment instead of disposing of their trash properly.\n<\/p>\n
Williams feels the city is doing \u201call kinds of things to displace people,\u201d while \u201cpeople just want to live.\u201d While the city slowed down closures of homeless encampments immediately following the initial COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, by 2021 encampment closures returned with\u00a0over four occurring per month between January and August\u00a0of that year. In 2022, several closures have been occurring per week.\n<\/p>\n
Recently, Council Member Noel Gallo\u00a0proposed an ordinance\u00a0to the city\u2019s public works committee that would explicitly ban RVs and trailers from streets that are 40 feet wide or narrower. The committee is scheduled to consider the ordinance on May 24. If the ordinance is put to vote and approved by the City Council as it is currently written, it would ban people from living in RVs on about 79% of Oakland\u2019s streets.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI love Oakland,\u201d said Williams. \u201cBut I think Oakland could do more to show loving care to people who are experiencing these problems. If the leadership of the city could come work with us, we could avoid homelessness.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Homies Empowerment currently sees Oakland\u2019s community as the best avenue to help Hardy and Andrade.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI am hopeful,\u201d said Williams. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of fire in Oakland\u2019s belly from just regular working people who are saying we want to feed and house people. I think enough people just need to come together and change will come.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
![\"Zack](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e.jpeg\")
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