Homeless Camps Are Being Cleared in California. What Happens Next?
John Janosko recently moved into a tiny cabin in Oakland, Calif., after the city and the state shut down the sprawling homeless encampment where he had resided for most of the past eight years. City officials consider the shed-size unit — with a bed, a folding chair, a desk and a mini fridge — a vast improvement over the makeshift shelters that once sat beneath a freeway.
That’s not how Mr. Janosko sees it.
He says he does not have keys to the free cabin that the city has temporarily assigned him. Nor is he allowed visitors. He had to get rid of most of his belongings and says he has barely slept there.
“It’s not my home,” said Mr. Janosko, 54, who lost his job as a chef, and then his apartment, about a decade ago. “My home was down the street.”
He lived in a structure of recycled wood and corrugated iron attached to a trailer, ensconced in a thicket of other such structures and vehicles. Stretching several blocks in West Oakland, the Wood Street encampment became a community for those who had little else. More than 200 people lived there until California leaders — and Gov. Gavin Newsom in particular — decided last year to clear the camp because of its hazardous debris and fires.
Source: The New York Times
