The operator of two Oakland homeless shelters is pulling out of the sites a month ahead of schedule, after threatening to immediately shutter them earlier this year.
Oakland officials said the operator, Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), notified the city in mid-May that it plans to cease managing the sites on Saturday. But officials said they have identified “short-term emergency support” to keep the sites through the planned closure date at the end of June and help the remaining 40 residents find other shelter or housing.
In March, the Berkeley nonprofit had warned it could be forced to close the shelters on Wood Street in West Oakland — a cluster of about 80 tiny home cabins and an RV safe parking lot — after claiming the city owed it $1 million in back payments.
On Friday, the city said it had resolved the payment issue but did not provide a reason for BOSS’s decision.
“The City recognizes this is especially challenging for the residents in these programs, and is taking all available steps to make this transition as caring and supportive as possible,” the City Administrator’s Office said in a statement.
BOSS did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment.
The city says it must close the shelters on private property because the lease expires at the end of the year, and that it will take six months to clean up the area.
The shelters opened in 2023 with an $8.3 million state grant, after authorities cleared a massive encampment on Wood Street. At its peak, the camp had more than 300 people in tents, vehicles, and makeshift shacks sprawled across multiple city blocks.
Related Articles
Bay Area homeless encampment ‘sweeps up’ as opposed to being ‘swept out’
Berkeley housing program cuts could be ‘tragic’ but needed, officials say
Clearing of San Jose encampment raises questions about where the homeless will go without shelter
Letters: San Jose’s homeless law is cruel and unnecessary
Meta promised $1 billion for affordable housing. Then it quietly walked away
The city moved some encampment residents to the shelters and promised job placement support, case management and help finding permanent housing. But facing a severe affordable housing shortage, BOSS struggled to place people in lasting homes. Residents soon complained that the cabins were falling into disrepair and that life there was often chaotic.
In March 2024, a city employee wrote to Assistant City Administrator LaTonda Simmons and other city officials to outline concerns about the cabin site, according to an internal email obtained by the Bay Area News Group through a public records request.
The employee, who worked in the Oakland Human Services Department, described high staff turnover, frequent drug use among residents and challenges keeping the cabins clean “due to the abundance of items” residents brought with them, often through holes cut through the chain-link fence around the property.
An Oakland homeless advocate who goes by the name Freeway said given that history, BOSS’s decision to pull out hardly comes as a surprise.
“This is one more disappointment,” the advocate said. “But it’s not shocking, it’s just not OK.”
