Life Enrichment Committee
April 23, 2024
AGENDA REPORT
TO: Jestin D. Johnson FROM: LaTonda Simmons
City Administrator Assistant City Administrator
SUBJECT: SUPPLEMENTAL – Encampment
Management Policy Update
DATE: April 18, 2024
City Administrator Approval Date:
RECOMMENDATION
Staff Recommends That City Council Receive This Supplemental Informational Report On The Encampment Management Policy Update
REASON FOR SUPPLEMENTAL
This Supplemental Report clarifies information that was in the 10-day published report by providing an update on activities under the Encampment Management Policy regarding available shelter, operations activities, and key observations identified in the report.
Shelter and Housing Availability
The informational report issued on April 12, 2024, noted that the Encampment Management Team (EMT) must primarily rely upon the City of Oakland’s (City) inventory of beds in homelessness programs to comply with the requirements of Martin v. Boise. This reliance is made possible based on the City’s authority to provide access to these resources directly to the Encampment Management Team (EMT) for encampment operations. While other beds are also managed by the City, access to the other categories of beds requires adherence to the County’s coordinated entry procedures which provide no dedicated resources to the City of Oakland and therefore take more time for coordination.
The ten-day report noted that the availability of the 729 low-barrier program beds ranges from 40 to zero per month. Examination of available beds in the range of 40 to zero noted the numbers included units that are offline due to necessary repairs, which when removed results in reductions to truly available beds. With the removal of offline units, the average numbers of true vacancies and offline units are depicted in Tables 1 and 2 below.
Table 1
Average VACANT 2021
2022 2023
Community Cabins 2 3 2
RV Safe Parking 4 2 11
Shelter Single Adult* 14 10 26
*Overnight shelter does not provide for dedicated ongoing residency
Jestin Johnson (Apr 19, 2024 06:57 PDT)
Apr 19, 2024
Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: SUPPLEMENTAL – Encampment Management Policy Update Date: April 23, 2024 Page 2
Life Enrichment Committee
April 23, 2024
Table 2
*These numbers include beds offline for program decompression
According to the 2022 Point in Time count, there were 3,337 unsheltered homeless in the City of Oakland. Of the 729 units relied upon for encampment operations within the identified program models, only 514 spaces provide dedicated long-term stay for program participants. According to the 2022 reported number of unsheltered homeless and available dedicated shelter spaces, the EMT had 15% of the beds needed to shelter all homeless in the City of Oakland to fluidly close homeless encampments.
EMT Operations
The two-week report issued on April 12, 2024, noted that the EMT performed 844 operations from the period of January 2021 through December 2023. The 844 operations included returns to many locations for various reasons. Table 3 shows reoccurrence rates.
Table 3
Average of OFFLINE 2021
2022 2023
Community Cabins 3 4 4
RV Safe Parking 1 2 9
Shelter Single Adult* 44 39 20
Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: SUPPLEMENTAL – Encampment Management Policy Update Date: April 23, 2024 Page 3
Life Enrichment Committee
April 23, 2024
Encampment operations may reoccur when shelter beds are insufficient, a location has been re- encamped, or previous operations did not achieve their objectives.
As a strategy, reoccurrence operations are typically used to:
• lessen the impact of large operations by performing deeper engagement with residents and removing unwanted items to reduce the scope of work prior to a future closure, • reduce harmful encampment elements until closure can occur, • aid residents in identifying personal belongings they intend to keep, and • allow early transition of individuals who desire to leave before a closure assuming adequate shelter resources are available.
In the instances when operations cannot be completed, reoccurrences impact the ability to address another encampment that has not been served. Reoccurrence operations are comprised of various interventions given the limitations of resources and operational challenges.
These operations, when planned, are strategically used to advance the work to resolve an encampment. However, when return operations are required as a result of disruption to a scheduled operation, they are not an effective use of EMT resources. This will require consideration in the future amendments of the Encampment Management Policy that ensure more effective use of EMT resources.
Key Observations
The two-week report issued on April 12, 2024, noted the increased complexity of resolving homeless encampments. A factor of that complexity includes crime activities that pose safety challenges to the greater community, the unhoused in the encampments, and City staff working in the described conditions. A review of resident service request data for 2022 and 2023 shows an alarming increase in reports of misdemeanor and felony criminal activity in homeless encampments. A breakout of reported crimes identified nine categories that include drug dealing concurrently with substance abuse jointly reported, human trafficking and sex work with partial reporting overlaps, theft and harboring of stolen goods, car chop shop activity, shootings, violence, and vandalism.
As encampment location elements are verified by EMT members and specifically, OPD officers and 911 reports, these activities significantly contribute to the impact on EMT reoccurrence activity. The numbers and percent of crimes are depicted in Tables 4 and 5 below.
Table 4
Table 5
Crime Category 2022 2023 2022 2023
Chop Shop 46 70 Chop Shop 7.00% 8.00%
Drug Distribution 192 195 Drug Distribution 28.00% 23.00% Human Trafficking 14 9 Human Trafficking 2.00% 1.00%
Sex Work 70 68 Sex Work 10.00% 8.00%
Shootings 38 59 Shootings 5.00% 7.00%
Stealing/Theft 76 110 Stealing/Theft 11.00% 13.00%
Substance
abuse/drug use 200 249
Substance abuse/drug
use 29.00% 30.00%
Vandalism 35 38 Vandalism 5.00% 5.00%
Violence 23 45 Violence 3.00% 5.00%
All Reported Crime 694 843 2023 2022
Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: SUPPLEMENTAL – Encampment Management Policy Update Date: April 23, 2024 Page 4
Life Enrichment Committee
April 23, 2024
The breakdown of the nine crime categories for the years 2022 and 2023 is depicted in Tables 6 and 7 below.
Table 6
Table 7
Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: SUPPLEMENTAL – Encampment Management Policy Update Date: April 23, 2024 Page 5
Life Enrichment Committee
April 23, 2024
A breakdown of the nine crime categories by District for 2022 and 2023 combined are depicted below in Table 8.
Table 8
Notably, the Encampment Management Team has similarly observed a consistent pattern of crime escalation in encampments. Based on the data and observations, this has required the Homelessness Division to work more closely with the Oakland Police Department to determine the validity of reports that are compared to 911 and OPD operations data to ensure the safety of all. This additional data has been prepared to provide context for the information published in the 10-day report.
Jestin D. Johnson, City Administrator
Subject: SUPPLEMENTAL – Encampment Management Policy Update Date: April 23, 2024 Page 6
Life Enrichment Committee
April 23, 2024
ACTION REQUESTED OF THE CITY COUNCIL
Staff Recommends That The City Council Receive This Supplemental Report As A Companion Report To The Encampment Management Policy Update
For questions regarding this report, please contact (510) 238-6903.
Respectfully submitted,
LaTonda Simmons
Assistant City Administrator
Prepared by:
Greta Monares, Acting Administrative Analyst II,
City Administrator’s Office – Homelessness
Division
Signature:
Email:
LaTonda Simmons (Apr 18, 2024 20:21 PDT)
LaTonda Simmons
LaTonda Simmons
[email protected]