Letter to community about the crisis of homelessness

By Ms. Omowale Fowles

We still desperately need to raise the discriminatory issue that the City of Berkeley does NOT FUND ANY homeless housing nor make available any voucher-based housing programs for unhoused parents, single women or single men, with children under the age of 18!

It has been tragically notable that the City of Berkeley, several years ago, discontinued its funding to Family Front Door--as affirmed by an administrator at Family Front Door during the same week that I was trying to enroll two of my homeless client families into their program on a Wednesday, their primary intake day; and yet, when challenged and questioned by phone and in a Berkeley City Council meeting, the standard reply given said that Berkeley did not have a contract with Family Front Door!  If true, then how was I able to house several BERKELEY families with minor children in Family Front Door facilities in the previous year?

Image from Family Front Door https://bfwc.org/

Berkeley's cutoff of funds to the service contract with Family Front Door, without any public notice nor agenda item during any City Council nor Finance Committee meeting, constituted one of the most flagrant acts of racial and economic class bias and discrimination that the City has enacted, making temporary housing COMPLETELY UNavailable to homeless Berkeley residents with children enrolled in Berkeley Unified Schools, K-12; the vast majority of whom were PEOPLE OF COLOR (Black, Indigenous Native, Latino, Asian) and POOR  Whites. That act was obscured by the simultaneous and continuous curtailment of support for poor people living in RV's who parked at the Berkeley Marina and by the shutdown of tiny homes and City-Rented RV programs under the Public Health Department which had housed high-risk patients who were the most vulnerable to COVID.  Those patients were either transferred to other pre-COVID-19 RISK motels, hospitalized if they became seriously ill, or otherwise removed from Berkeley entirely.

The city's taxes and fees for Bike Lanes that endanger disabled persons corresponds directly to the City's moves to make homeless housing dollars available for NON-homeless housing projects and city renovation priorities like special bus traffic lanes, re-building and other infrastructure plans. ((Editor's note: these bike lanes refer to the additions on the Adeline Corridor, an area home to many disabled individuals who are endangered by bike traffic when exiting specialized vehicles))

Do the words " misappropriation of funds" strike a familiar chord with anyone?  They should, since funds from the past ten years (2016-2026) of voter approved parcel taxes SPECIFICALLY FOR HOUSING HOMELESS PEOPLE OFF OF THE STREETS have NOT EVER BEEN put into special Financial Accounts for those specific purposes, but instead have been conveniently and UNtransparently merged onto the City of Berkeley’s General Account.  

So, now we have millions of dollars of prettily colored, wasted paint; unnecessarily doubled, white-lined traffic lanes and plastic parking cones that do not, and have not, improved traffic flow in the selected circle of streets that "sort of" surround downtown Berkeley such as Telegraph, Durant, Bancroft, etc, and the mess that is now a partially paralyzed one-way street that used to be a free-flowing, two-way Milvia.

So where DO Berkeley's Homeless Parents with Children SLEEP?  Perhaps if we could return the City Council's focus to its residents' health and safety, both of which adequate Housing provides for individuals and families as well as communities as a whole, we could  spend less time and money worrying about air-borne infectious diseases like COVID and Measles--which the Hanta-virus is NOT--and re-invest our energies, tax dimes and dollars on more accessible, up-to-date Public Health Testing stations and free masks on public vehicles such as buses, BART and maybe even LYFT and UBER as well as on HOUSING: all of which are health preventative strategies that work effectively, efficiently, less expensively, and much more humanely than plastic littered, painted streets, slower traffic- flow lanes, and police sweeps!

Thank you.

Peace and Health,

Ms. Omowale Fowles, Housing Director, Telegraph Community Ministry Center; and Former Health Commissioner, City of Berkeley