NOTES BY NORSE: As here and elsewhere, an unholy coalition of gentrification gents, NIMBY’s, homeless-o-phobes, “public safety” flimflam hysterics, and (strangely) environmentalists are pushing or backing the deportation-to-nowhere of homeless folks, who haven’t created any notable problems (and certainly less than when they are dumped and dispersed). In Santa Cruz, this takes the form of Clean-Up’s, a Public Safety Task Farce, a collection of tightening restrictions on the use of public spaces for everyone, & a neighborhood siege mentality targeting homeless survival camping as the Menace of the Month.
Laying waste to the primitive hovels and tents of poor homeless people is billed in the mainscream newspapers as garbage disposal, drug dealer seizure, and public security enhancement. ( See http://www.santacruzsentinel.
The Sierra Club and the Albany Bulb
Protected from people who created works of art out of found materials, set up and operated a free lending library?
Over the years the police occasionally sent homeless people from the streets out to the Bulb but otherwise the city of Albany pretty much ignored the camp. Some churches and community organizations and local citizens who enjoyed the place regularly brought food and supplies to the campers. The Sierra Club never took an interest in them. Other than contract with Berkeley Food And Housing Project to provide “Outreach and Engagement” the city has done nothing for the campers. Albany has no homeless shelters and apparently little or no affordable housing – only one of the 60 or so campers has been housed.
One might ask the question, why now? Why do the Sierra Club and Citizens for East Shore Parks demand the Bulb incorporated into the Park at this time? The Bulb juts out from the shoreline and would not be an integral part of the Park nor would any section of the Bay trail go through the Bulb. With a few amenities such as toilets and running water and possibly some help in getting rid of the rebar and concrete it could continue to serve as a campground – at least until Albany can provide proper housing for homeless.
Albany Landfill Evictions Affect Berkeley
I watched the City of Berkeley spend 100’s of thousands if not millions of dollars on the people they ejected from the landfill, most of whom eventually died on our streets. With the help of a non-profit they paid a nominal $13,000 they shifted their responsibility to their homeless to Berkeley.
Now they are in the process of doing it again. In the 14 years since the last big dump upon our City, Albany has done nothing. Still not a single penny has been spent on any program or plan to deal with its homeless.(Unless you want to count the very recent plan to put it’s responsibilities on the backs of the Berkeley taxpayer)
To keep the heat off themselves they permitted their homeless to occupy the landfill again but now they want to pull another people dump at our expense. Every item in their plan is the same except that this time instead of employing conservation corps members to tear out the foliage. They have employed goats. I like goats and to use these noble creatures to serve their hateful plan is very disturbing.
Albany has already hired a willing Berkeley non-profit to do their fakery. And the rest of their non-plan is rolling along. I ask the Mayor and City council to direct the City attorney to put a stop to this in and by any and all means available to us.
We have been hard at work with our own responsibilities,The Homeless Task Force, the revitalization of our SRO’s and creating movement in that system among many, many other things.) And now Albany wants to throw another 70+ people on our streets and into our programs and services?
Albany has one plan. One Action
Dump all its problem’s and expenses on us, on Berkeley.
Time to flip switch at Albany Bulb park, city says
Carolyn Jones
Published 5:21 pm, Monday, September 9, 2013
A view of the bay from inside the Castle, a piece of conceptual art that was built by an Albany Bulb resident. Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle
For more Albany Bulb Art go to http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/
But some of the homeless, a few of whom have camped there for decades, pledge to resist any relocation efforts. Affordable housing in the Bay Area is scarce, far too expensive and potentially too far away or unsafe, they said.
In short, Albany is their home, and they want to stay there, they said.
“It’s frustrating, aggravating, scary,” said Katherine Cody, 60, who’s lived at the Bulb for about two years. “I’m comfortable here. I feel safe here. Rainy season is coming – I don’t know where I’ll go except the streets of Albany.”
The Bulb, named after its shape, is comprised of old concrete, rebar, dirt and other debris from the construction of East Bay highways. Since the landfill closed in 1984, it’s evolved into a somewhat more natural setting, with a beach and dense acacia, broom, eucalyptus and other plants.
Decades ago, artists began colonizing the Bulb as a sort of outdoor studio not unlike the old Emeryville mudflats, leaving anonymous works of all shapes, sizes and quality. Some works have endured and others have disintegrated over the years.
In the 1980s, homeless people also started moving in, taking advantage of the relative quiet and million-dollar bay views. Some have semipermanent homes, with generators, sturdy wooden walls and even multiple stories.
The Bulb is also a favorite among dog walkers, who enjoy the informal off-leash rules, beach and relatively wild environment. Some have noted it’s one of the only shoreline parks that’s not manicured or developed with paved paths.
Part of state park
In the mid-1980s, the Bulb became one of the original pieces of the Eastshore State Park, envisioned as a continuous strip of bayside greenery stretching from Oakland to Richmond and linked by the Bay Trail.
Most of the park is completed. But the Bulb remains as woolly as ever, due in part to complications with the Regional Water Quality Control Board over seepage.
Those issues are finally resolved, and last spring the city began moving ahead with plans to clean up the Bulb and turn it over to the East Bay Regional Park District and California State Parks to incorporate into the Eastshore State Park.
Relocating the homeless is an important part of that transition, said Robert Cheasty, a former Albany mayor who’s president of Citizens for East Shore Parks, a nonprofit.
“Thousands of people have worked for three or four decades to turn this area into a usable shoreline park,” he said. “We cannot break the faith of all these people just to allow a small group to essentially privatize public land.”
Helping the homeless
To ease the transition for the homeless, the city has spent $60,000 on a contract with Berkeley Food and Housing Project, a nonprofit, to help the Bulb campers find homes, counseling and other services.
The anticamping enforcement should have come months, if not years, ago, said City Councilwoman Peggy Thomsen.
“It’s a safety issue and a health issue, and we need an end point,” she said. “A lot of people are afraid to go out there. We need to worry about the safety not just of regular park users but the inhabitants as well.”
That’s little comfort to the homeless, who say they’re safer there than they would be at a shelter or at affordable housing in sketchy areas.
“Everyone’s stressed,” Cody said. “We don’t know where we’re going to go. It’s very discouraging.”