In 2024, the city counted 5,485 unhoused residents against just 1,105 available shelter beds across 21 program sites. (Source: 2024 Point in Time Count; FY 25-26 CHS Program Directory)
The crisis has only deepened as the number of people living on the streets far outpaces the city's available shelter beds: The city maintains about 1,105 shelter beds across 21 different program sites including 146 community cabin beds, 201 emergency shelter beds, 431 interim housing beds, 225 transitional housing beds, and 102 Safe RV Parking spaces. That’s enough to shelter just 20% of its homeless population.
The crisis has only deepened as the number of people living on the streets far outpaces the city's available shelter beds: The city maintains about 1,105 shelter beds across 21 different program sites including 146 community cabin beds, 201 emergency shelter beds, 431 interim housing beds, 225 transitional housing beds, and 102 Safe RV Parking spaces. That’s enough to shelter just 20% of its homeless population.
Oakland’s emergency shelter beds include options such as St. Vincent de Paul, an overnight congregate shelter with 65 beds, and Crossroads Shelter, a 24/7 congregate shelter with 115 beds — both offer gender-separated rooms, shared facilities, and two meals a day. Neither permits pets. The city’s approximately 834 permanent supportive housing units and 110 rapid rehousing vouchers for people exiting homelessness are competitive. The unsheltered status of the city’s homeless population was noted in 2018 by former United Nations Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Leilani Farha, who declared homelessness in Oakland and San Francisco a humanitarian crisis and a violation of human rights.
Homelessness in Oakland is a story of local displacement in which longtime residents, disproportionately from Black communities, are priced out of their own neighborhoods. The 2024 PIT Count found that Black residents comprise just 22% of Oakland's total population yet account for 52% of those experiencing homelessness and 59% of those who are newly homeless. Of Oakland’s Black unsheltered residents, 85% have lived in Alameda County for over a decade and 60-70% of Oakland’s total unhoused residents were last permanently housed within the city. Historically, the majority of Oakland's most established encampments have been concentrated in District 3, which includes neighborhoods where displacement has hit hardest, including West Oakland, Jack London, Downtown, and Adams Point.
OAKLAND’S
GENERAL POPULATION:
GENERAL POPULATION:
22% Black
OAKLAND’S
UNHOUSED POPULATION:
UNHOUSED POPULATION:
52% Black
As this crisis has become increasingly severe, Oakland has built a coordinated policy response that is built around an emergency management system for encampments. In recent years, Oakland officials have become more serious about closing encampments. Beginning in mid 2024, not only have they come to rely almost entirely on full closures over other interventions (like “partial closures” or “deep cleanings.”). In April 2026, this acceleration of encampment closures was codified in a new Encampment Abatement Policy that eliminates a longstanding requirement to offer shelter to encampment residents before they are forced to relocate.
Mayor Barabara Lee is advocating for a different strategy. Her office recently released a draft of her plan to reduce unsheltered homelessness by 50% over the next five years. She intends to do this by significantly scaling up investment in permanent housing, interim housing, and homelessness prevention services, with a price tag of $3.2 billion from local, county, and state funds.
Oakland receives funding for homelessness from both the State of California and Alameda County. Through the state, the city has been awarded over $130.6 million of flexible funds from the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program. The city has also been awarded $15.54 million from the state Encampment Resolution Fund (ERF) to close encampments and transition residents into housing. In the last year, Alameda County’s Measure W has become a major source of funding for homelessness in Oakland: Of the $1.4 billion the tax is expected to raise over 10 years, the majority will go to Oakland.
Oakland’s municipal funding for homelessness services comes from the General Fund, Measure U, Measure Q, and the Vacant Property Tax. In Fiscal Year 2024-5, the city spent over $131 million on a variety of programs. These range from building and rehabilitating affordable housing units, to investing in prevention programs such as Keep People Housed, which provides rental assistance to households that are at risk of homelessness. Of this funding, an estimated $13.7 million was spent on encampment specific measures.
On paper, Oakland’s encampment response is defined by three core activities: the maintenance of active encampments; outreach that is meant to connect unhoused residents to shelter and services; and the permanent closure of encampments when the city determines intervention is warranted.
For the most part, this work rests in the hands of the city’s designated Encampment Management and Abatement Team.
WHO’S IN CHARGE?
The EMAT works under the jurisdiction of the Office of Homelessness Solutions in the City Administrator’s Office. The job of this office is to coordinate policy, funding, and cross-agency efforts, including direct oversight of the EMAT.
When it comes to shelter and resources, Oakland’s Human Services Department has a specific division dedicated to homelessness: The Community Homelessness Services Division (CHS). CHS oversees a number of different programs, from outreach, to interim shelter, to short-term emergency shelters. CHS has contracts with more than 20 service providers to do this work. These include Bay Area Community Services (BACS)—which manages a number of transitional programs—to Operation Dignity—which is tasked with performing outreach at encampments. They also have contracts with nonprofit housing developers and service operators, like Housing Consortium of the East Bay (HCEB) and Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS).
Oakland’s homeless response is also overseen by the Commission on Homelessness, an advisory body that was established in 2020. It oversees the allocation of Measure W and Measure Q homelessness funds, and makes recommendations to the City Council for strategies to address homelessness.
This complex network of individuals works loosely together within the framework of Oakland’s Encampment Abatement Policy.
CITY OF OAKLAND
GUIDING POLICY
The EAP’s stated purpose is to create a structured response to the “adverse impacts of tent and makeshift structure encampments in Oakland… that jeopardize housed and unhoused residents’ safety and health.” It articulates a system for outreach efforts and maintenance services like trash pickup and sanitation stations. However, its primary function is to define the city’s priorities for when and how to close encampments.
Here’s how it works: The policy creates a geographic classification system dividing the city into high-sensitivity and low-sensitivity zones. High-sensitivity zones make up over 90% of the city. These are locations near critical infrastructure or areas requiring safe access, including traffic lanes, bike lanes, ADA-compliant sidewalks, schools, waterways, residences, construction zones, businesses, playgrounds, parks, and emergency shelters. Here, encampments are immediately targeted for closure.
In low-sensitivity zones, encampments are not “automatically prohibited” as long as they meet certain requirements. These include maintaining a 12-by-12-foot personal footprint, limiting hazardous materials, and ensuring that structures are no closer than 6 feet apart. In these areas “public health and public safety findings” like infectious disease cases, excessive vermin or biological hazards, obstructed right-of-way or ADA access, or infrastructure damage are used to justify whether the EMAT will close the encampment, or perform another type of intervention. The city administrator maintains the authority to reclassify high-and-low-sensitivity zones at any time, outside the legislative process.
Based on where an encampment is located, and the city’s assessment of its conditions, the EMAT chooses to enact one of six interventions across two categors: closures and maintenance.
The EAP describes four types of encampment closures:
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Partial Closures permanently close one section of an encampment while residents can remain in other parts.
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Full Closures are complete and permanent closures.
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Emergency Closures are complete closures without notice, triggered by imminent threats to infrastructure or urgent health and safety concerns and determined by the Fire or Police Departments.
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Re-encampment Closures apply when unhoused people return to a recently-closed encampment site within 60 days of the notice of a prior closure or partial closure.
Emergency closures require no notice and are triggered by things like fires, infectious diseases, vermin infestation, and the accumulation of “hazardous materials.” In 2024, that authority was significantly expanded by the Executive Order 2024-1 issued by former Mayor Sheng Thao following the Supreme Court's decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson. It broadened the criteria for emergency closures, and removed the requirement for city officials to offer shelter to encampment residents during emergency closures. This marked a significant shift from the prior standard in local policy, which had followed the Supreme Court’s 2018 Martin v. Boise decision in requiring shelter offers before most encampment closures.
The process of a full closure begins at least 7 days before the scheduled sweep date when Operation Dignity, a non-profit contracted with the Community Homelessness Services Division (CHS), visits the encampment to post pink, “notice to vacate” slips on tents and structures. Operation Dignity outreach workers are also contracted to speak directly with residents during this period about their shelter options.
In Oakland, outreach frequently happens in tandem with closures, though the city says it directs nonprofit partners to do outreach independently from closures as well. According to the policy, “ Outreach prior to encampment operations and tow actions is a critical opportunity to provide information and referrals… At a minimum, outreach will begin at the time of required postings for operations.” However, the city is not required to make offers of shelter during encampment closures — rather, officials are only encouraged to make a “reasonable effort” to do so.
On the day of a closure, representatives of the EMAT arrive at the encampment alongside Operation Dignity staff. Public Works employees remove tents, structures, and personal belongings that are not removed by encampment residents, or “bagged and tagged” — The process by which the EMAT will collect up to one cubic yard of personal items that they decide can be safely stored. Meanwhile, Operation Dignity outreach workers are contracted to continue connecting residents with shelter placements and services. Police officers are tasked with securing the area, and enforcing “safe work zones.” These are parts of the encampment officials designate as off-limits during the closure — those who enter them are subject to misdemeanor charges or fines.
After a closure or partial closure, re-encampment at the site is prohibited. Those who return to the site within 60 days of the notice of closure are subject to immediate closure within 72 hours or less, and may face citation or arrest.
The EAP also lays out some protections for encampment residents during closures, in part as a result of the Miralle legal settlement in 2022. Officials must post written notice before an encampment intervention — at least 72 hours before a deep cleaning or re-encampment closure, or 7 days before a closure or partial closure. Emergency closures do not require prior written notice. These notices must be posted at the site in multiple languages, and include the date of the intended action and information regarding the storage of personal property. The settlement also outlined policies around extreme weather, with the city agreeing to make reasonable efforts to avoid beginning encampment closures in the rain, during weather exceeding 90 degrees or dipping below 42 degrees, and when air pollution levels exceeded 200 AQI. And, the city must inventory, label, and store up to one cubic yard of personal items per person making them available for retrieval within 48 hours.
Since July 2024, the City of Oakland has focused almost entirely on full closures, with only fourteen deep cleanings recorded and roughly two other interventions (partial closures or mixed-type postings). According to the City’s encampment management dataset, there were a total of 1,282 full closure postings in 2024 and 2025 compared to a total of 389 in the whole three years prior.
INCREASE IN FULL CLOSURE POSTINGS
The other two types of intervention described by the EMP are focused on maintenance:
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Health & Hygiene interventions are described as routine sanitation and trash collection at encampments throughout the city.
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Deep Cleanings are characterized by temporary displacement while a specific area is cleaned.
This maintenance work is managed by the Human Services’s Community Homelessness Services Division (CHS), and Public Works’s Keep Oakland Clean and Beautiful (KOCB) division.
KCOB is instructed to perform weekly trash services, as well as routine deep cleanings. However, between July 2024 and December 2025, the city recorded only 14 Deep Cleaning location entries—across roughly 7 operations—compared to more than 300 posted in the preceding three and a half years. Weekly trash collection, meanwhile, is conducted "as staffing allows" across 34 sites in East and West Oakland, covering dumpster services at 7 sites and trash pile pickup at 27 sites.
Meanwhile, CHS contracts with service providers to maintain regular health and hygiene services. The city currently maintains up to 40 “sanitation station locations”—places with portable toilets and handwash stations.
The EAP writes people living in vehicles out of the definition of “encampment,” handing enforcement over from the EMAT to police. Now, vehicles are fully subject to the California Vehicle Code (CVC) and the Oakland Municipal Code (OMC). While police are encouraged to refer vehicle residents to services or let them relocate before towing, none of these steps are mandatory.
The EAP states that the City will not cite or arrest anybody solely for camping in Oakland, but will enforce criminal laws in encampments as they do elsewhere in the city. The city will also enforce Oakland Municipal Code violations that “address health and safety concerns regardless of an occupant or owner’s homelessness status."
Oakland’s Municipal Code contains a handful of laws that pertain to regulating behavior in the public space. While they are not always enforced, the laws that most directly intersect with homelessness include those that govern criminal conduct, health and safety, and the use of public space.
We organized the 54 municipal codes identified as relevant to homelessness in Oakland into two broad frameworks: Behavioral Laws and Sanitation Laws.
The 34 laws governing public space behavior can be organized into four broad categories:
- Laws governing where vehicles may be parked and for how long (8)
- Laws regulating the location and quantity of personal property in public spaces (4)
- Laws regulating standing, sitting, resting, sleeping, and lodging in public places (7)
- Laws restricting or prescribing specific activities within public spaces (15)
Without access to basic infrastructure, such as trash cans, bathrooms, or secure storage, unhoused residents inevitably violate these rules on a frequent basis. The 20 laws concerning sanitation, environmental hazards, and waste disposal can be organized into three broad categories:
- Laws regulating rodent control (1)
- Laws regulating health and safety (10)
- Laws regulating dumping (9)
HISTORY OF
POLICYMAKING
- In October 2017, the Oakland City Council declared a shelter crisis, acknowledging that "the current number of homeless individuals in Oakland far outpaces the number of existing shelter beds, transitional housing or permanent supportive housing units available" and that "this situation has resulted in a threat to the health and safety of these persons." This declaration facilitated the creation of shelters more quickly by using alternative minimum standards and bypassing some regulatory requirements. The ordinance lasted two years.
- In 2017, the Encampment Management Team was established to coordinate the City's encampment response.
- In September 2018, the Martin v. Boise’s decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily constrained local governments’ ability to clear encampments without first offering adequate shelter, framing such actions as potential violations of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
- In October 2018, residents of the East Oakland encampment, Housing and Dignity Village, filed Miralle v. City of Oakland, alleging the city violated their constitutional rights when it closed their encampment and collected, stored, or destroyed their personal belongings during the closure. This lawsuit would eventually result in the Miralle Settlement that enacted significant changes to the City's Encampment Management Policy and required the city to pay $250,000 to former residents.
- In 2019, Oakland faced two lawsuits challenging encampment closures. In February 2019, Bowen v. City of Oakland sought a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, and civil rights violation complaint on behalf of residents at an encampment at the corner of East 12th Street and 22nd Avenue, with plaintiffs fighting to be recognized as rightful occupants of the plot of land under Civil Code 1006. Later that year, Le Van Hung et al. v. Libby Schaaf et al. was filed by residents of an RV encampment at Union Point parking lot fighting against their scheduled eviction.
- In November 2020, Alameda County voters approved Measure W with results certified the following month. The measure established a 10-year half-cent sales tax to fund services including homelessness programs and public health. Although it passed in 2020, legal challenges delayed full implementation until the mid-2020s. Funds were released in 2025 and spending is ongoing.
- In 2020, the City of Oakland adopted the Encampment Management Policy (EMP), which is the basis for the new Encampment Abatement Policy.
- In 2022, following the settlement of Miralle v. City of Oakland, the city was required to implement substantial procedural changes for noticing, property storage, and weather conditions.
- In December 2023, Oakland enacted the Safe Work Zone ordinance that enacts “safe zones” around a worksite or the workers' vehicles intended to protect works, not to limit observation, documentation, or protests. There has been some controversy over the use of these zones in the context of encampment closures.
- In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson overturned the protections established by Martin v. Boise, reauthorizing cities to enforce anti-camping and related ordinances regardless of shelter availability.
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In 2024, Mayor Sheng Thao issued Executive Order 2024-1, which significantly expanded the City's authority to close encampments on an emergency basis.
- In 2025, Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee released her homelessness plan and created a new Office of Homelessness Solutions to coordinate the city’s response. The $3.2 billion plan aims to cut homelessness by 50% in the next 5 years by reducing the inflow into homelessness and increasing the amount of shelter and housing available in the city.
- In 2026, Oakland passed the Encampment Abatement Policy that revised the original EMP to rewrite vehicles out of encampments and rid of shelter offer requirements in some circumstances.
DISCUSSION
The city has been celebrated for some of its homeless prevention programs: Keep Oakland Housed—which helps low-income residents stay in their homes when they’re at risk of eviction or displacement—has succeeded at keeping 82% of its participants housed at a fraction of the cost of other types of interventions. As a result, Alameda County Supervisors are planning to implement a similar countywide program in the coming years, modeled after the one in Oakland. However, its response to unsheltered homelessness is often more contentious.
Oakland’s encampment management and abatement practices have been derided by community organizations and service providers for being fragmented amongst multiple departments and third-party contractors, with limited accountability and insufficient resources. Critics argue the operation has become disproportionately focused on enforcement at the expense of services and support.
WHERE POLICY DIVERGES FROM REALITY
The City’s "bag and tag" policy for the storage of personal belongings, advocates argue, is rarely implemented as written, and rendered meaningless by broad classifications that define the majority of items in an encampment as “debris” that is subject to immediate disposal. As a result, unhoused residents routinely lose irreplaceable possessions despite policy protections. Between September 2023 and October 2024, the city recorded 11 instances of property storage despite there being 147 posted encampment closures. Investigative reporting by ProPublica shows that failure to follow bag and tag policies is rampant across the country.
Encampment residents also say that while they are technically permitted to live in low-sensitivity zones as long as they follow certain guidelines—like maintaining a 12-by-12-foot personal footprint—these conditions are often impossible to meet. Enforcement of these guidelines is largely discretionary, and many describe confusion about where and how they can camp.
Despite the City's stated intention to provide regular outreach for unsheltered residents through its contract with Operation Dignity, outreach in practice occurs almost exclusively in conjunction with encampment closures. The frequency of “health and hygiene” services raises similar concerns. Trash collection is offered weekly “as staffing allows,” but advocates describe the service as inconsistent and opaque—it is often unclear which piles will be picked-up or when the city will come.
TRANSPARENCY
Oakland has a serious transparency problem, and it shows up clearly in how little the public knows about the city's homelessness response. Unlike Los Angeles, which publishes a public dashboard tracking spending and outcomes for its Inside Safe program in real time, Oakland offers no equivalent window into how its homelessness programs are performing.
Oakland’s lack of public transparency isn’t specific to homelessness: An Oaklandside investigation found council members responded to public records requests within the legally required window in just 13 of 91 cases. Similarly, the police department has left over 900 public records requests past-due.
Due to personnel vacancies in the Encampment Management and Abatement Team, the city has not updated its spreadsheet of completed encampment operations data since December, 2025.
STAFF TURNOVER
Staffing instability has compounded these challenges. Community Homelessness Services, the city division most directly involved in outreach, has experienced significant turnover in recent years. In 2024, the department operated at nearly a 50% vacancy rate, including critical positions like the Division Manager (a role that has since been filled.)
This is not the only department that has struggled to maintain staffing when it comes to homelessness in Oakland. There has been significant turnover in the role of the Chief Homelessness Solutions Officer (previously called the Homelessness Administrator), which has changed hands at least seven times since 2018. The person in this role is responsible for managing Oakland's entire encampment response, including the whole Encampment Management Team.
TURNOVER AT THE TOP OF OAKLAND’S HOMELESSNESS RESPONSE
Reducing unsheltered homelessness has become one of Oakland's most pressing political priorities. The city council’s new Encampment Abatement Policy accelerates closures and eliminates the longstanding requirement to offer shelter before forcing residents to relocate. Meanwhile, Mayor Lee is pushing for a wraparound plan for homelessness services that includes housing, services, and prevention. Measure W funding is beginning to flow toward homelessness services, but Oakland still falls short of what Mayor Lee says the city needs to cut homelessness in half. This splintered vision for how to move forward creates uncertainty about which plan—the council’s or the mayor’s—will persist.