This illegal encampment is a health, safety and fire hazard issue. It violates multiple municipal codes. Left unattended, these encampments only grow in number of people & amount of trash & filth.

Been reading that Oakland City employee Kenny Lau likes to log the work hours. Get him on this. City has the money to pay his quadrupling of salary via overtime.

They need to start citing these people and giving them community service. They also need to cite there advocates who are also dumping unwanted crap for these addicts to spread around. The pandering and enabling needs to stop.

ANOTHER tent has now appeared at this site. The situation is getting worse, not better!

This is not a matter of "criminalizing homelessness." It takes volition -- a conscious decision -- to acquire a tent and pitch it on any particular street. The City (and nonprofit advocacy organizations) must stop encouraging the notion that our sidewalks are an available (or acceptable) location for camping, dumping, or personal storage.

everybody in the city is bouncing the responsibility to someone else. I have no hope that this will end unless residents take action. Whether we stop paying property tax or show up at all City Hall and Council Local meetings. They are definitely sending the message that camping on a sidewalk is an alternative for homeless people but ONLY in certain areas. It is common knowledge that this isn't permitted in the hills. Everyone who thinks this is a "solution" is an enabler to this crisis. Including the compassionate communities where the cIty provides syringes dumping areas. They are not fixing the issue but enabling it. It is shocking that no real action has been taken to bring light to this situation. Tents are not a solution to homelessness especially when they are placed in dangerous and confined areas (such as magnolia & 34th camp which caught fire two weeks ago).

FWIW, I made the initial (anonymous) complaint above.

I also wrote, "The City (and nonprofit advocacy organizations) must stop encouraging the notion that our sidewalks are an available (or acceptable) location for camping, dumping, or personal storage."

By the same token, providing for syringe disposal helps alleviate at least one sort of dumping -- arguably the worst and most hazardous, at that. For that matter, dedicated campgrounds for this nomadic population (with toilet facilities and trash receptacles) may be a necessary accompaniment to a zero-tolerance policy toward camping on our streets.

Oakland is obviously experiencing a shortage (and a loss) of low-income housing, but finding or creating that housing is a separate issue, one that needs to be dealt with on its own terms. It's a problem that will obviously take awhile to solve.

Meanwhile, if people want to live in tents (or even do drugs), let them get out of our face, and get their tents (and garbage) off our public streets, and stop trashing our neighborhoods. That's not too much to ask!

Neither we nor the City of Oakland should be in the business of re-ordering or redirecting people's lives. A true "harm reduction" strategy can (and must) benefit all of us.

This is a land-use question; it isn't even really about "homelessness." It's time the City dealt with it on those terms -- NOW!

Hi Mitchell: I agree with everything you said. And my mentioning the syringe boxes is not that it isn't useful and necessary in the current state. It was more to emphasize that while it is useful and prevents more hazardous dumping it is still non-action from the city. People need help and providing them with a box doesn't encourage rehabilitation.

My point, however, is that perhaps we shouldn't be in the business of "rehabilitation." Ironically, if these folks were interested in availing themselves of the "12-step" mumbo-jumbo, the Salvation Army is right across the street. Respect for others living in the neighborhood is quite another matter.