{"id":291784,"date":"2026-04-29T18:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T18:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/291784\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T18:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T18:44:09","slug":"oakland-to-try-using-street-barriers-to-curb-sex-work-in-the-blade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/291784\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland to Try Using Street Barriers to Curb Sex Work In ‘The Blade’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The city of Oakland is going to take a page out of San Francisco’s playbook to try to discourage sex-work activity on a notorious section of International Boulevard.<\/p>\n

Oakland is launching a pilot program that will bring water-filled street barriers to several side streets that lead off of International Boulevard, in order to divert the frequent car traffic from customers of sex workers. San Francisco has had some limited success with a similar effort on several notorious blocks of Capp Street<\/a> and Shotwell Street<\/a> in the Mission District \u2014 though area residents filed a lawsuit<\/a> last fall claiming the city’s efforts were not doing enough.<\/p>\n

The area in question in Oakland is called The Blade, and for many years it has been a hotbed of street-level sex work, often using the side streets of 9th, 10th, and 11th Avenue in order to conduct business with International Boulevard being the main drag.<\/p>\n

As Oakland City Councilmember Charlene Wang tells KTVU<\/a>, “This is an area where there’s an elementary school as well as a health clinic. And really the intention is, since much of the trafficking activity takes place on the side streets off of International. International is like the main corridor. But you know, the purchasing activity happens on the side streets, is to block off those areas so that can’t happen there.”<\/p>\n

The pilot program will bring new bollards or barriers to the area, “to force [the activity] onto International Boulevard” where it’s more visible and subject to enforcement, Wang says.<\/p>\n

Oakland previously did something similar along 16th Avenue \u2014 and much like the activity moved from Capp Street over to Shotwell in SF, the sex workers just moved a couple streets down in Oakland too.<\/p>\n

Per KTVU, the pilot program does not require full city council approval, and it will begin in June. Wang tells the station, “It\u2019s an experiment. Honestly, I think it\u2019s a 50\/50 chance that it\u2019ll be successful.”<\/p>\n

Previously: Those \u2018Anti-Sex Work\u2019 Barriers Are Now Coming to Shotwell Street<\/a><\/p>\n

Top image: Sex work in action on International Boulevard and 11th Avenue, via Google Street View<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city of Oakland is going to take a page out of San Francisco’s playbook to try to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":291785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-291784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}