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Oakland has taken drastic measures to prevent homeless people from parking in front of their businesses.
Any guesses?
Logs.
They're placing logs along a two-block radius between West Grand Avenue and 18th Street.
Which if you're not aware of, West Grand Avenue is one of Oakland's popular streets.
The strategy has worked so far but city officials aren't pleased. Rather than fix the issue of overnight camping, they are upset businesses aren't allowing the road to be cleaned.
Councilmember Lynette Gibson reached out to all the businesses on the block to see who placed it but no one would spill. Now that's what we call loyalty.
“There are all kinds of rules and city ordinances about illegal dumping, but I guess it’s OK to dump and obstruct if you’re doing it to obstruct homeless people from being there,” East Bay Community Law Center attorney Osha Neumann said.
Greg Anderson owns a business across said he has no problem with the logs being there. He said they are not an inconvenience to his customers and prevent the street from becoming an RV encampment.
“Since the city does an extremely poor job in preventing homeless encampments from developing in West Oakland, these logs that were placed out there by a neighboring company have been instrumental in minimizing these encampments,” Anderson said in an email to the East Bay Times.
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