SWEEPS MORATORIUM IN HUCHIUN

For Immediate release: 

contact: tiny or muteado  510-435-7500, POOR Magazine/HOMEfulness

Leajay Harper (510) 484-9774 Wood Street Commons 

Moratorium on Sweeps in Oakland, While Ken Houston proposes more violent criminalization. 

While Council member Ken Houston proposes the life-endangering anti-houseless policy of EAP Houseless/Formerly houseless youth and families present a moratorium on all sweeps in Oakland 

What: Prayer ceremony for victims of sweeps and Press Conference by houseless, formerly houseless sweeps survivors, housed allies, students and advocates to propose a Moratorium on all Sweeps in Oakland

When: 1:30pm, Dec 2nd

Where: Oakland City Hall 

(2) WHEREAS, the City Of Oakland  is experiencing unprecedented homelessness due to an increase in general fund spending on out of control policing and violent sweeps of our houseless bodies, approx. 40 cents of every dollar. Excerpt of Sweeps Moratorium 

“I got out with the clothes on my back,” said Monique M, POOR Magazine RoofLess radio reporter and sweeps survivor. Monique was describing the violent sweep she survived where she lost all of her medicine and clothes and the RV she was sleeping in. Monique, like the majority of Oakland houseless residents is a disabled Black elder who had nowhere else to go after surviving that violent sweep. 

Under Council member Ken Houston’s proposed Encampment Abatement Policy (EAP),  Oakland police can arrest houseless people just for being houseless. The city’s existing policy says Oakland “will not cite or arrest any individual solely for camping, or otherwise for the status of being homeless,” but the proposal slashes that provision and as we see with Monique and so many other Oakland residents, without his punitive measure, Oakland is already perpetraing violence on houseless people everyday with these endless sweeps. 

The daily violence of sweeping houseless humans like they are trash,  that longtime Oakland residents have already been facing since the Grants Pass Vs Johnson ruling by the Supreme Court in 2024  has resulted in several deaths of houseless people, who lose their shelter and their support systems and end up back on the street, losing another houseless sweeps victim just last week.

Studies have shown that sweeps lead to higher rates of death, and sweeping this community without offering residents any of the accommodations provided in its grant proposal, it effectively set out to eliminate 80% of all Black residents from the project. This is according to the city's own data.

This deeply violent policy by Houston will result in more deaths of houseless, Black, Disabled elders in Oakland. 

The only modicum of humanity that has existed up to now is that the City had to offer houseless residents some alternative shelter to stay in (which oftentimes they didn't even do), but under Houston’s plan, Oakland can shut down encampments regardless of whether the city has other shelters to offer residents. 

In addition, the policy follows the lead of San Francisco and so many other cities' anti-houseless policies spurred on by the current federal administration  and promises to cite and tow the last vestige of home many people have on the street, their cars and RVs  

“These violent sweeps of elder, Black, Disabled lifelong Oakland residents by the City of Oakland are shameful. Literally thousands of dollars are spent removing, displacing, and poLicing us. To nowhere. We houseless peoples have solutions, why is this still happening?” said tiny gray-garcia, formerly houseless, co-founder of POOR Magazine and Homefulness.  

Houseless/formerly houseless /low-income youth and family residents of HOMEfulness and students at Deecolonize Academy, a liberation school on the land in Deep East Oakland along with advocates, and allies will gather for a press conference to release this life-saving moratorium on december 2nd  preceding the hearing on the same day called by Ken Houston at Oakland City  about his murderous EAP. We see this moratorium as an emergency and and hope to pass the moratorium before more people die from being Swept like we are trash.

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