The sprawling homeless camp\u2019s closure, and the increasingly tense months leading up to it, are captured in \u201cWood Street<\/a>,\u201d the debut feature documentary from Oakland filmmaker Caron Creighton. It screens in Oakland for the first time on July 14 at the New Parkway Theater<\/a>.<\/p>\n The turbulent story is told largely through John Janosko and LaMont\u00e9 Ford, two longtime Wood Street residents-cum-community-organizers. Throughout the film, we see them facilitate meetings among their incensed and tight-knit community at the encampment, confront city leaders and pissed-off housed neighbors, navigate interpersonal relationships as the eviction looms, and deal with addiction.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an immediate and visceral film. We see Wood Street through its homeless residents\u2019 lenses \u2014 often literally, through Janosko\u2019s own Instagram videos. He\u2019s posted some 8,000 videos and photos of his Wood Street world.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were documenting how we were surviving, but we turned our survival, in our heads, into this reality TV show,\u201d said Janosko, who grew up in Oakland and was homeless for about 12 years. Some of those \u201cepisodes\u201d are woven strategically throughout Creighton\u2019s documentary.<\/p>\n In filmmaking and journalism, \u201cthere\u2019s a lot of this idea of \u2018sharing both sides,\u2019\u201d said Creighton, a former producer for the San Francisco Chronicle. \u201cBut I think one side is often louder and more well-resourced than the other\u2026So it felt important to tell the story differently than had been done in a lot of other homelessness films and reporting, which is really just showing the Wood Street community\u2019s perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n The immediacy, propelled by a drum-heavy score by Tyler Blomstrom Moore, is also intentional.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI really wanted the people to feel the tension and anxiety that the Wood Street community felt as this process was happening,\u201d Creighton said. She chose not to include any backstory for the subjects, both to avoid slowing down the natural momentum of the film, and because she believes \u201cpeople don\u2019t need to justify why they\u2019ve become homeless.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWood Street\u201d depicts a group of people who\u2019ve developed a deep-seated skepticism and sense of distrust after experiencing a torrent of broken promises and mistreatment by outsiders and authority figures.<\/p>\n But Janosko said it felt natural to let Creighton into their world, allowing her to capture everything from the beautiful to the messy, including sensitive and stigmatized topics like drug use and mental health crises.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t remember it taking too much for me personally to warm up, because I automatically realized that with her being there, this is a way to amplify our voices. This is a way to show what we\u2019ve been talking about,\u201d Janosko said.<\/p>\n Wood Street residents developed an elaborate system of supporting and feeding one another and honed a philosophy of collective self-determination. Some had detailed plans<\/a> for building a self-sustaining campus on the property, complete with jobs and job training for residents. They hosted events, like the annual Christmas party<\/a> shown briefly in the documentary.<\/p>\n \u201cThis land has held me, kept me, comforted me, kept me out of jail, kept me alive,\u201d says Ford in the film.<\/p>\n To the city, county, and private property owners, it was a perpetual safety hazard. The Oakland Fire Department responded to hundreds of blazes on Wood Street over the years, including one that killed a man<\/a> living in an RV.<\/p>\n In one difficult scene in the documentary, at a West Oakland community meeting, Ford tries to communicate that he and his unhoused neighbors have put out plenty of fires themselves. \u201cI got off the beaten track, I did, but I\u2019m trying,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n A housed woman comes toward him, pointing a finger: \u201cOne of your buddies stole something,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Creighton decided to begin filming regularly on Wood Street after she reported on a virtual court hearing<\/a> there in the summer of 2022. The unhoused community was seeking a restraining order against the California Department of Transportation, which wanted to clear out a portion of Wood Street at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n Creighton recalled hearing the judge\u2019s voice drone out of laptop speakers as cars whizzed by on the highway. \u201cIt was this encampment of people taking the state to court,\u201d she said. \u201cI just thought it was so powerful, and it was something that I hadn\u2019t personally seen before. I just knew there was a deeper story there.\u201d<\/p>\n A central friction in the film develops between Janosko, who wants his friends to move together into the tiny-house shelter the city establishes during the sweep, and other residents, who want to try and stay put.<\/p>\n The interpersonal tensions culminate in a fight between the two men at the center of the film, Janosko and Ford, who are as close as brothers, according to the former.<\/p>\n Unexpectedly, this scene is one of Janosko\u2019s favorites.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt showed the boiling point of where we were at, and how triggered and emotional and angry we were at the situation overall,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n While the film mostly treats the city of Oakland as an abstract entity hurdling toward Wood Street with bulldozers, politics is a key theme.<\/p>\n The Wood Street residents dress up and drive a bus to Mayor Sheng Thao\u2019s inauguration in 2023.<\/p>\n They watch from the crowded room as Thao, who was once homeless herself, says she\u2019ll tackle the city\u2019s most persistent problems \u201cthe Oakland way \u2014 through unity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah!\u201d shout the Wood Streeters, the optimism palpable on their smiling faces. Janosko debriefs on Instagram after, saying he\u2019s hopeful they\u2019ll be able to start \u201cnegotiations\u201d with the administration over their future on the land soon. He and his friends had published a voter guide for homeless people, helped register voters, and had driven several to the polls to get out the vote for Thao.<\/p>\n But soon after the inauguration, the film shows Ford standing outside of City Hall in a suit jacket, calling the mayor\u2019s office. He gets her assistant and isn\u2019t let in. They never got that meeting with Thao, Janosko said.<\/p>\n The statistics say Oakland is in a better position with homelessness than it was even when the film was shot. For the first time in recent memory, Oakland\u2019s unhoused population decreased, by 20%<\/a>, according to the latest biennial count. Mayor Barbara Lee opened a new office<\/a> dedicated to homelessness. The city has built a lot more affordable housing<\/a>, including projects reserved for people who are homeless.\u00a0<\/p>\n (The completed affordable housing project on Wood Street, though, is for people making up to 80% of the area median income \u2014 $95,050 for an individual or $135,750 for a family of four.)<\/p>\n Janosko isn\u2019t impressed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re surrounded by space everywhere that\u2019s not being used,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t have too much hope in politicians or the system or the way they do things.\u201d<\/p>\n Janosko is now living in his own apartment, which he secured with assistance from the Homeless Action Center<\/a>, he said. Wood Street Commons is now a nonprofit organization that advocates for the broader East Bay homeless community.<\/p>\n The film screened first at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana. Creighton was startled by how much people there related to such an Oakland film. After screenings, many viewers have shared moving personal stories brought to the surface by what they just watched.<\/p>\n The Bay Area film industry and community supported Creighton throughout the filming of her first-ever feature documentary. She was an SFFilm<\/a> resident and a Bay Area Video Coalition<\/a> fellow. She financed the project through grants, crowdfunding, and friends\u2019 camerawork.<\/p>\n She\u2019s planning to screen \u201cWood Street\u201d in more locations, but one in particular tops her wishlist: the Ballers stadium at Raimondi Park across from Wood, or the team\u2019s parking lot where many of the film subjects once lived.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that\u2019d be really powerful,\u201d Creighton said, \u201cto bring it back to the space where everything happened.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRelated stories<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tAs Oakland closes its largest homeless camp, some residents resist, others move on<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tApril 24, 2023April 24, 2023, 3:45 p.m.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tA lavish Christmas party caps a tumultuous year on Wood Street<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tDecember 19, 2022Dec. 19, 2022, 2:55 p.m.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"wood](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/wood-street-party-8.jpg\")
John Janosko, a central subject in \u201cWood Street,\u201d filming attendees at the community\u2019s Christmas party and art sale in December 2022. Credit: Natalie Orenstein\/The Oaklandside<\/p>\n![\"wood](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/wood-street-encampment-closure-8.jpg\")
City work crews during the 2023 closure of the Wood Street encampment. Credit: Natalie Orenstein\/The Oaklandside<\/p>\n![\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/-Wood-Street-CalTrans-Court-Hearing-08.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
Wood Street residents and their lawyers speak at a virtual court hearing in 2022 \u2014 the event that inspired Creighton to film a documentary about the community. Credit: Amir Aziz\/The Oaklandside<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"Homelessness](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/large-EncampmentFiles-JK-09-1200x900.jpg\" "\\"Homelessness")
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