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OAKLAND — Ending a two-month-long standoff with housing activists who had taken over a vacant home, deputies on Tuesday removed and arrested several squatters and their supporters — but the fight is far from over.
“What happens next is the next movement,” said Misty Cross of activist group Moms 4 Housing, as Alameda County deputies led her in handcuffs to a sheriff’s van. “This is only a piece of it. We’re going to be out in a minute. We’ll be back. We’ll be right back.”
The mission of Moms 4 Housing has touched a chord in Oakland and beyond, as a deepening housing crisis forces many residents from their communities and the rate of homelessness increases. Roughly 200 people showed up at the Magnolia Street house on Monday night in anticipation of deputies arriving that evening.
Instead, deputies arrived around 5:15 a.m. Tuesday and soon arrested Cross and Tolani King, who had been living in the house and refused to leave when deputies ordered them to, as well as supporters Jesse Turner and Walter Baker. The four were booked into Santa Rita Jail on misdemeanor charges of resisting and obstructing the eviction, and had their bail set at $5,000. They were released Tuesday afternoon.
.@moms4housing founder Misty Cross as she’s put in a sheriff’s office van, in handcuffs: “We’ll be back.” pic.twitter.com/buZ7HFUr2o
— Marisa Kendall (@MarisaKendall) January 14, 2020
Members of Moms 4 Housing — a group of women who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless — and their children moved into the empty, investor-owned house without the owner’s permission Nov. 18. The group hoped to call attention to Oakland’s homelessness crisis, as well as to speculators who buy homes and leave them vacant.
The number of homeless residents in Oakland grew by 47% between 2017 and 2019 — to 4,071 people, according to the city’s biennial point-in-time count. Meanwhile, there are 5,898 vacant homes in Oakland, according to the latest census data.
The owner of the home, real estate investment company Wedgewood, served the squatters with an eviction notice, which they then fought in court. On Friday, an Alameda County judge ruled the women had no right to the home, and ordered the sheriff’s office to evict them within five days.
Sam Singer, who is handling public relations for Wedgewood, said the company was happy with Tuesday’s outcome.
“Wedgewood is pleased that the illegal occupation of the home has ended peacefully,” Singer said. “That is what we have sought ever since the very start.”
The eviction process culminated in a tense and dramatic scene Tuesday. Dozens of sheriff’s office personnel, including a tactical team wearing camouflage fatigues and carrying rifles, showed up at the house and blocked off the surrounding streets. They broke down the door — which Moms 4 Housing had barricaded — with a battering ram, then sent a robot into the house to search it for possible threats.
The amount of publicity Moms 4 Housing has garnered, and the throngs of supporters who had surrounded the house Monday, forced the sheriff’s office to take extra precautions, said Sgt. Ray Kelly. Deputies arrived before dawn Tuesday to avoid a confrontation. At that time, there were only about five supporters stationed outside the house, Kelly said.
“This is not your typical eviction — I think we can all recognize that,” Kelly said. “This is something that swelled into an enormous movement with a tremendous amount of people that created a series of concerns for safety on a number of levels. So we had to go in there with the right tools. I think we handled this very professionally. I feel that we did a great job.”
No injuries were reported, and Kelly said no force was used during the arrests. The children living in the house were not present during the eviction, and their mothers said they were safe.
Even so, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf expressed concern.
“My heart goes out to those mothers,” she said, speaking at an unrelated news conference in Oakland, “and I was pretty shocked to see the tactics that were used to take them out of the home in the early dawn hours this morning.”
Moms 4 Housing has not specified what the group’s next steps will be, but Kelly said the sheriff’s office will be watching to see if members attempt to occupy another vacant house.
“That’s definitely something we’re looking at, obviously — that this is part of a movement, and that there will be other similar incidents,” he said. “We won’t know about that until they occur.”
Carroll Fife, regional director of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, which has been working with Moms 4 Housing, wouldn’t say whether the group has immediate plans to occupy another vacant house.
But she said Moms 4 Housing is prepared to further its campaign against speculative housing by “any and every means necessary.” The arrests haven’t changed that, and don’t mark a defeat for the group, she said.
“People are talking about things and changing their relationship to land and who deserves it, just because of this action that (Moms 4 Housing) took,” she said. “Just having their children be housed was a victory. But the larger victory is what this means for the larger community.”
Moms 4 Housing set up a GoFundMe page to raise bail money for the four people arrested. More than $29,000 had been raised as of Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, the eviction enforcement cost tens of thousands of dollars, and the sheriff’s office is considering sending the bill to Wedgewood, Kelly said.
Wedgewood did not have a response to that as of Tuesday afternoon.
Just after 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, Moms 4 Housing sent out a mass text message to its supporters, asking them to come to the Magnolia Street house because deputies were banging on the door.
Sarah O’Neal, who rushed to the scene as soon as she got that text, was blocked from reaching the house by a line of deputies at Adeline and 30th streets. O’Neal, 24, had intended to be arrested alongside the Moms 4 Housing members and said she was “angry and hurt” that she was stopped.
O’Neal, who lives just a few blocks away, intends to continue working with Moms 4 Housing.
“I think they’ve reminded all of us what it means to actually be in community with each other,” she said. “To love each other.”
