0:08 – Leilani Farha, is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing.
0:34 – KPFA Audio Documentary: Evicted
Oakland’s unhoused face untold cycles of displacement
(Read and listen to the original story here)
Earlier this year, KPFA brought you a documentary on day to day life in a homeless community in Oakland near Home Depot in Fruitvale called The Community of Grace. That was a community that – at the time – was more or less self-organized: the people there set rules, enforced them, choose who to let move in, and who to turn away.
This past October, the city carried out a “clean and clear” operation, stating that the trash and debris in the community posed a fire danger. Residents were allowed to move back – but only after the shelters and tiny houses that many lived in were demolished, leaving them in more immediately precarious situations.
Earlier, the city announced that it intends to close that area and evict the residents living there by the end of the year. As of the date of this recording, the residents still aren’t sure of when that will happen. The city did not respond to KPFA’s questions on when that would take place.
So we decided to explore the story of what happens when unhoused people get evicted. And that meant telling the story of a different encampment, one that didn’t get to organize itself, because it consisted of people flooding in from other evictions. Reporter Lucy Kang got to know three women living there, and followed them through what came next.
1:08 – Dani McClain – for the hour – an award winning writer, journalist and author of the recent book We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood.