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Oakland is ready to start moving homeless residents at risk of contracting COVID-19 into dozens of new trailers set up on a vacant lot next to the Coliseum, Mayor Libby Schaaf said Tuesday.
The 67 trailers — part of a new city program dubbed Operation HomeBase — will house up to 134 people who do not have the virus, but who are particularly vulnerable to developing severe symptoms if infected. They were delivered to the city a month ago as part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s effort to deploy more than 1,300 trailers around the state to house the homeless during the pandemic.
“This will be giving respite and a safe place to shelter during this pandemic, and possibly beyond,” Schaaf said as she stood surrounded by rows of gleaming trailers, the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum visible in the background.
People are set to begin moving in Wednesday, Schaaf said, and she expects to house about 10 people per day until the trailers are full. The month-long delay in opening stemmed from the “great logistical challenge” of putting together what is essentially Oakland’s first public RV park, she said. To illustrate her point, Schaaf pointed out patches of freshly paved asphalt all around the trailers — evidence of the work it took to connect each one with water, sewage and electricity.
“This is a project that should have taken six months,” she said. “It was done in record time.”
Homeless residents who are 65 or older, or have a chronic medical condition such as diabetes or heart disease, are eligible to move in. People from East Oakland will be given priority.
Couples and people who already were living together will share trailers, but children will not be allowed.
In total, Newsom’s administration sent 91 trailers to Oakland for use as isolation housing during the pandemic. Schaaf gifted 24 of them to Alameda, Berkeley and Hayward to help house homeless residents in those cities. Newsom also shipped 91 trailers to San Francisco, and more than 100 to San Jose.
When asked how long people will be able to stay in the Oakland trailers, Schaaf said there is no set time period. But the vehicles — which the city spent $1.5 million in state funding to set up — are designed to outlast the pandemic, she said. Caseworkers with Housing Consortium of the East Bay will connect with everyone who moves in, with the ultimate goal of transitioning them into permanent supportive housing.
But with more than 4,000 homeless residents living in Oakland — an estimated 53% of whom are at least 65 years old or have a medical condition — a few dozen new trailers will barely make a dent. Schaaf acknowledged there’s already a long waiting list for the program.
“We recognize that giving respite to 130 people does not meet the need that is out there,” she said. “But, this is a tremendous step forward.”
Each trailer has a bed, a three-burner stove, a microwave, a refrigerator and a bathroom with a sink, shower and toilet. On Tuesday, small tubes of toothpaste, new toothbrushes and bottles of hand sanitizer were laid out on the bathroom sinks for the new occupants.
“These will be wonderful, comforting places for our most vulnerable residents to seek shelter during this crisis,” Schaaf said.
But even as city officials prepare to move people into the new site, they have had to postpone two other programs that were supposed to provide trailers as temporary housing for other homeless residents. In January, before the pandemic took hold in the Bay Area, Newsom gave Oakland 15 trailers — six which the city had earmarked to house homeless youth, and nine which were intended as housing for homeless, working families. Both projects will still move forward, Schaaf insisted, but they have been placed on hold to make room for more pressing housing needs caused by the pandemic.
The youth housing is slated to open in July — using all 15 trailers Newsom gave the city in January. The nonprofit Covenant House will set those up in a lot behind the West Oakland post office on 7th Street. The family housing program will open on the lot next to the Coliseum, using nine of Newsom’s new COVID-19 isolation trailers, once the pandemic is over.
