Homeless “unions” on both sides of the San Francisco Bay are suing cities to prevent sweeps of encampments or program closures.
In federal court in Oakland, the Berkeley Homeless Union is seeking to obtain a preliminary injunction against the city of Berkeley’s intended sweep of the encampment located at and around Eighth and Harrison streets. On Friday, the union was successful in obtaining a temporary restraining order keeping the status quo in place pending a hearing that was initially scheduled for Thursday and is now rescheduled for March 4.
Across the Bay, on Tuesday, Ramona Mayon filed a lawsuit against San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and the city in San Francisco Superior Court. Mayon is the founder of the “Candlestick 35,” a union formed by the residents of the Bayview Vehicle Triage Center, a “safe parking site” for people living in their vehicles.
Mayon’s suit requests the court to order the city to hold a public hearing on the closure of the site and enjoin the city of San Francisco from closing the site in the meantime. Mayon argues that the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing failed to comply with a city charter provision that requires a public hearing before the closure of a public program or facility like the VTC.
The separate lawsuits follow in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June 2024 in the case City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. In that case, the high court found it was not a violation of the Constitution’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishment” for a city to enforce its anti-camping ordinances against people sleeping on the streets, even if there was no alternative shelter available.
Following the ruling, cities in the Bay Area stepped up their enforcement of anti-camping laws, but the court’s decision did not end legal challenges to the efforts, though the plaintiffs relied on different legal theories.
Interestingly, the two unrelated suits are spearheaded by women who are living in their recreational vehicles and are treated as homeless because they are “vehicularly housed.”
Berkeley
The area around Eighth and Harrison streets in Berkeley has long been a sore spot for city administrators because of the accumulation of debris and trash from people camping on sidewalks in that area. On Jan. 7 of this year, the city told the approximately 47 people camping in the area that that site was a public nuisance and a danger to public health and safety. The city said that if the nuisance was not abated, those living at the site would be cited or arrested and their property impounded.
In July 2024, the group had formed a loose “union” as a mutual aid organization that would enable the group to band together and raise their concerns with city officials.
Yesica Prado, 30, lives in her RV at the site and was one of the leaders in responding to the city’s notice. The group undertook a massive cleanup of the site — removing more than 3,000 pounds of trash and debris. They also asked for an administrative hearing to request the city to stand down on the closure.
After the administrative hearing, the city denied their request and by a notice dated Jan. 31, said that the people at the site had until Feb. 10 to leave. The city said it intended to declare the site a “no-lodging area,” so the encampment could not return.
The union and three individual members of the union then sued the city. They raised several legal arguments, but a key one was that many members of the encampment were disabled within the meaning of the Americans with Disabilities Act and they were entitled to request ‘reasonable accommodation” in the city’s enforcement of the prohibition on camping.
The lawsuit alleged that 31 of the people at the encampment were disabled and of that group, 16 had submitted formal requests for a reasonable accommodation and more requests were forthcoming. All of the requests were denied by the city. The union requested a temporary restraining order to preserve the status quo pending a hearing on its request for a longer-term injunction.
Obtaining a TRO or an injunction in federal court is never easy. The moving party must show, among other things, that its claims are likely to be meritorious and that it would be irreparably injured if relief is not given.
Last Friday, Valentine’s Day, the union’s petition for a TRO was successful. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr., sitting in Oakland, wrote a three-page opinion in which he said that the plaintiffs had raised “serious questions” about whether the city had complied with the ADA in determining to clear the encampment.
Gilliam said that under the ADA, a disabled person cannot be denied “the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity” because of their disability.
He cited existing rulings that said that enforcement of a local law can constitute “services, programs or activities” of a public entity. He went on to say that the regulations that implement the ADA require cities to make “reasonable modifications” in such services, programs and activities to prevent violations of the law unless the government can show that such modification or accommodation would “fundamentally alter” the government program.
Gilliam noted all three of the named plaintiffs were disabled and had unsuccessfully requested an accommodation. The plaintiffs alleged that “the city failed to engage in a good-faith interactive process to explore reasonable accommodations for their disabilities and ultimately failed to provide them with any accommodation at all.”
“Sweeps are incredibly violent — people are coerced out of their homes, and their belongings are destroyed. It’s a traumatic experience that no one should have to endure, and I don’t wish that harm to my neighbors or anyone else.”
Yesica Prado, Berkeley Homeless Union
The judge did not decide whether the city’s conduct violated the ADA, but he found that the plaintiffs had raised serious enough questions that he would keep the status quo until the full hearing.
Prado, who graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a master’s degree in journalism, was elated with the ruling.
She said, “I feel a deep sense of relief knowing that this TRO has given us a temporary reprieve from the looming threat of forced displacement.” She added, “sweeps are incredibly violent — people are coerced out of their homes, and their belongings are destroyed. It’s a traumatic experience that no one should have to endure, and I don’t wish that harm to my neighbors or anyone else.”
As a journalist as well as a person experiencing homelessness, Prado has a unique perspective on what she describes as Berkeley’s “failure to provide accessible shelter and accommodations for people with disabilities.”
She said, “many of our union members have disabilities that make it impossible for them to just ‘move along,’ yet the city has consistently ignored their needs. I hope this case leads to real mediation and forces the city to rethink its approach to encampments.”
San Francisco
Meanwhile on Tuesday in San Francisco, Mayon requested a state court to stop the closure of the safe parking site at the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area until the city held a public hearing on its intentions.
Mayon, 64, is a colorful battler who identifies not as homeless or “vehicularly housed” but as an ethnic nomad (she came from a Roma/Gypsy/Traveller background). She has lived in a school bus or RV for all of her adult life, but when her husband died during the COVID-19 pandemic and her RV failed, the city treated her as homeless. Her vehicle was ticketed and threatened with impoundment. She fought back with a lawsuit and plenty of street theater and was able to keep the city at bay for months, but she ultimately agreed for her RV to be towed to the VTC, where she says she was told that it would be repaired.
The Bayview VTC had opened in January of 2022 with fanfare after the city had run a successful pilot program at Balboa Park for the “vehicularly housed.”
At that time, nearly a quarter of the city’s 4,300 unsheltered homeless were living in vehicles. The idea was to create a safe place for the owners to park without fear of ticketing or impoundment and where they could access social services.
The program was plagued with problems from the beginning. In September 2023, the city’s budget and legislative analyst declared it to be “by far the [city’s] most expensive homeless response intervention,” an astonishing claim since the city did not provide housing or shelter, but just served up an unused parking lot where residents brought their own vehicles.
Beyond the expense, operational problems roiled the waters. For nearly three years, the city was unable to provide a connection to the electric grid and for most of that time, the residents’ RVs could not connect to power — a fundamental part of the program. There were serious problems with rats at the site getting into the wiring of RVs, the site repeatedly flooded, and there were ongoing complaints over the quality of food delivered to the site because, in the absence of electric power, the residents could not cook or keep perishables refrigerated.
On Dec. 5, 2024, HSH announced that it would be closing the site at the end of this March and all residents had to be out by March 3. Ironically, HSH made its decision just weeks after the years of effort and millions of dollars in expense to hook up permanent power were finally successful.
HSH’s decision was a surprise given the recent electrification of the site and the fact that at that point, there was nearly a year left on its lease.
According to Mayon’s petition, the city acted unilaterally and did not comply with a provision of the city charter that requires a public hearing before closing a program or facility. Mayon and the union wanted such a hearing so they could challenge the basis for closing the site; Mayon alleged that the city’s reasons were pretextual and the real reason was that residents had pursued claims that the city and its contractors violated the ADA.
After months of back and forth, the city is providing repair services for some of the residents so that their RVs will be street legal and fully documented when they leave the site. That will allow them to relocate to private camping sites or join families or friends outside of the city. Mayon’s petition asks the court to give the residents more time to leave the site so that work can be completed.
The court has not yet scheduled a hearing on Mayon’s request.
Meanwhile, on Thursday morning, Mayon fired off a gruesome email to the mayor and each of the members of the city’s Board of Supervisors. She said that on Wednesday afternoon, a resident of the VTC slit her wrist with a kitchen knife after she was advised that she was no longer eligible for a rapid rehousing voucher that would have paid for her rent after leaving the site. An ambulance was called, and other residents bandaged the wound. (A spokesperson for HSH did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the incident.)
Mayon alleged that Wednesday evening, when the resident returned from the hospital with stitches in her arm, HSH’s contractors at the site for more than an hour refused to permit the resident to enter and return to her vehicle apparently because she had used a weapon — the kitchen knife — earlier in the day.
Mayon said the latest incident made her “incandescent with anger.”
Mayon and the union have been a thorn in the side of HSH. A website that documents the alleged conditions at the VTC is titled “Welcome to Camp Dismal.”
The post Homeless unions on both sides of Bay sue cities to prevent sweeps, program closures appeared first on Local News Matters.