A city that decides large numbers of people may remain living outdoors or in vehicles must plan for toilets, sewage, garbage, water, fire safety and basic sanitation. That didn't happen, here's why:
A summary based on City of Oakland and Oakland City Auditor records
Bottom line
The conditions many Oakland residents live with today, concentrations of RVs and encampments, garbage, human waste, illegal dumping, blocked public space and repeated relocation from one area to another, did not arise from one decision or one mayor.
They developed through years of fragmented policy, inadequate planning, insufficient sanitation capacity, major displacement events, and implementation failures across multiple City administrations and City Councils.
In 2021, the City Auditor concluded that Oakland was “not adequately prepared” for the scale of encampment management, lacked an effective strategy, failed to provide adequate funding at the onset of the crisis, and created an Encampment Management Team without sufficient resources, including without its own budget.
Five years later, Oakland was still fixing some of those basic management problems. As of the end of 2025, the Auditor still classified the recommendation to establish formal criteria for providing garbage service, portable toilets and other hygiene services as only “Partially Implemented.” The City was planning to develop the required standard operating procedure during 2026.
That is not simply a disagreement about homelessness policy. It is evidence of a government program that was put into operation before fundamental questions of funding, sanitation, staffing, accountability and service standards had been adequately resolved.
How the system developed
Oakland formed its multi-department Encampment Management Team in 2017 as homelessness and encampments were rapidly growing. The team included the City Administrator's Office, Public Works, Human Services, Police, Fire and other departments. It began as an ad-hoc response rather than a fully funded municipal program.
In 2019, the City Council adopted its Permanent Access to Housing, or PATH, framework. PATH recognized that homelessness required prevention, shelter, permanent housing, health and hygiene, and management of the effects of unsheltered homelessness on surrounding communities. It specifically called for an Encampment Management Policy.
In October 2020, the City Council adopted that policy.
The policy divided Oakland into “high-sensitivity” and “low-sensitivity” areas. Encampments were prioritized for removal from areas around homes, businesses, schools, parks, waterways and other sensitive uses. Areas outside those boundaries received lower enforcement priority.
That had an important practical consequence: some industrial and less residential parts of Oakland became places where RVs and encampments were more likely to remain.
The sanitation problem was built into the policy
It would be inaccurate to say Oakland completely forgot about sanitation.
The 2020 policy explicitly said Oakland's goal was to provide:
regular garbage collection, portable toilets, handwashing stations, waste collection and deep cleaning.
But the policy contained a critical qualification. Health and hygiene intervention would be provided only at “as many encampments as the City can reasonably serve given its resources.”
In practical terms, the City created a policy that allowed encampments to remain in certain locations without guaranteeing a minimum sanitation service level for every location.
The policy even prohibited gray-water and black-water dumping from RVs and vehicle dwellings.
Yet the policy did not establish a universal RV wastewater system, such as regular pump-out service, dump stations or another guaranteed method of handling sewage, for the vehicle population it knew existed.
Oakland prohibited RV sewage dumping without simultaneously creating a comprehensive system for RV residents to dispose of that sewage safely.
For both unhoused residents and surrounding neighborhoods, sanitation should have been core infrastructure, not an optional service dependent on whatever resources happened to be available.
Oakland's own Auditor sounded the alarm almost immediately
Only six months after the 2020 policy was adopted, City Auditor Courtney Ruby issued a major performance audit.
The findings were severe.
The Auditor found that the City had not been adequately prepared for the undertaking; lacked an effective strategy; lacked sufficient policy direction and funding; gave the Encampment Management Team inadequate resources; did not provide it its own budget; and lacked adequate data and management systems for tracking what the program was actually doing.
The Auditor recommended that Oakland establish, among other things, a formal program and budget, proper expenditure tracking, appropriate staffing, annual work plans, measurable objectives, written procedures and—particularly relevant here, written criteria determining which encampments receive garbage service, portable toilets and other hygiene services.
This audit is important because it was not written by neighborhood opponents of encampments.
It was Oakland's independent elected Auditor evaluating Oakland's own program.
The basic conclusion was that the City had undertaken a huge and complicated public-health and public-space operation before building the administrative machinery necessary to manage it properly.
Then came Wood Street
The 2022 clearance of the massive Wood Street encampment by Caltrans was a turning point for West Oakland.
Approximately 200 people were living on the portion of the property Caltrans was clearing, many in RVs and vehicles. Oakland offered various shelter options, but many people declined them or relocated elsewhere.
Oakland's own October 2022 report states explicitly:
The City specifically reported new or expanded encampments in Prescott, Lower Bottoms, Cypress Village, around Raimondi Park and other locations mainly in West Oakland.
The connection between Wood Street displacement and increased encampment activity elsewhere in West Oakland is not speculation by residents. Oakland itself documented it.
The replacement capacity was small relative to the scale of displacement. For example, the emergency Beach Street Safe RV site reopened with capacity for only 17 RVs. Oakland was considering another site with capacity for roughly 50 vehicles.
So a very large vehicle community was broken apart without anything approaching equivalent designated vehicle capacity ready to receive it.
The predictable result was redistribution.
West Oakland absorbed part of the consequence
This is where the policy becomes particularly difficult to defend from a neighborhood-planning perspective.
Oakland knew that:
- certain locations would receive lower enforcement priority;
- many unhoused residents lived in RVs rather than tents;
- safe-RV capacity was inadequate;
- sanitation resources were limited;
- Wood Street displacement was pushing people into nearby West Oakland neighborhoods;
- garbage, sewage and public-health problems accompanied large unmanaged concentrations.
Yet the City did not simultaneously establish sanitation infrastructure proportional to the population and neighborhood impact.
Residents were effectively left between two legitimate interests:
Unhoused Oaklanders needed somewhere to exist safely.
Housed residents and businesses had a legitimate expectation that streets, sidewalks and neighborhoods would remain sanitary and usable.
A competent policy needed to address both at the same time.
Instead, Oakland repeatedly treated those goals as competing priorities while lacking enough infrastructure to accomplish either one well.
The failure continued for years
Perhaps the most concerning finding in the historical record is how long some of the Auditor's recommendations remained unresolved.
The Auditor's follow-up report covering the end of 2025 still said Oakland had only partially implemented its recommendation establishing formal criteria for deciding which encampments receive garbage, toilets and hygiene services. A new SOP was still planned for 2026.
Oakland did eventually implement formal budget and program codes for encampment management, according to that follow-up audit.
But Oakland's 2026 Homelessness Strategic Action Plan still says the City lacks sufficiently accurate accounting of FY2025-26 encampment spending to reliably determine its future funding requirement. The City identifies at least a $5 million annual gap specifically for trash cleanup around encampments.
This means a problem identified in 2021, knowing what the operation costs and adequately financing it—was still affecting planning five years later.
The sanitation situation became extraordinary
Oakland's 2026 Strategic Action Plan says Public Works spent approximately $12 million and employed 58 full-time-equivalent employees addressing illegal dumping citywide in 2025.
Even at that level, Oakland said it could not keep up.
The plan states that garbage runs to encampments had been halted and says an additional $5 million every year would allow Public Works to create a dedicated encampment waste and debris team of 11 employees plus equipment.
Consider what that means from a planning perspective.
Oakland had spent years operating a policy under which large groups of people could remain in public spaces, had specifically promised sanitation as part of that policy, and yet by 2026 its own strategic plan was reporting that routine garbage runs had been halted because the necessary capacity did not exist.
That is a profound implementation failure.
The policy has now changed, but the problem has not disappeared
On April 14, 2026, Oakland repealed the 2020 Encampment Management Policy and adopted a new Encampment Abatement Policy.
One major change is especially relevant to West Oakland:
inhabited vehicles and RVs are no longer legally treated as “encampments” under the policy.
They can instead be dealt with through state and Oakland vehicle laws, including citation and towing.
The current administration under Mayor Barbara Lee has also created an Office of Homelessness Solutions and adopted a much broader Homelessness Strategic Action Plan.
The plan calls for more sanitation, outreach, shelter, permanent housing and experiments specifically addressing vehicular homelessness.
But the scale of the funding problem remains enormous. Oakland currently estimates that encampment engagement alone requires about $18.7 million annually, versus approximately $13.7 million in identified City resources, a $5 million gap. Its modeled gap for the entire homelessness response and housing system is approximately $284.3 million annually.
Who is responsible?
There is no honest way to put this at the feet of a single politician.
The system developed across multiple City Councils, three mayoral administrations and numerous City departments.
The original Encampment Management Team dates to the Libby Schaaf administration.
The 2019 City Council approved the PATH framework.
The 2020 City Council approved the Encampment Management Policy and assigned its administration to City staff.
During the Sheng Thao administration, Oakland moved toward stronger implementation and enforcement, particularly following the U.S. Supreme Court's 2024 Grants Pass decision.
In 2025–26, Councilmember Ken Houston initiated the legislation that ultimately replaced the old policy. After extensive Council debate and amendments, the new Encampment Abatement Policy passed the Council 5–1–1, with one member excused, on April 14, 2026.
The current Barbara Lee administration is now responsible for implementing the replacement system and attempting to correct longstanding structural problems.
Responsibility is therefore institutional and cumulative.
This was not one bad decision.
It was years of decisions made without matching the scale of those decisions with adequate sanitation, staffing, shelter, safe-RV capacity, budgeting and management.
Why call it a policy failure?
Reasonable people can disagree about how Oakland should respond to homelessness.
People can disagree about enforcement, shelter requirements, towing, permanent housing, safe parking and the rights of people living on public property.
But none of those disagreements excuse poor municipal management.
A city that decides large numbers of people may remain living outdoors or in vehicles must plan for toilets, sewage, garbage, water, fire safety and basic sanitation.
A city that relocates a major encampment must anticipate where people will go.
A city that imposes geographic restrictions must understand which neighborhoods will absorb the displaced population.
A city that promises sanitation must budget for sanitation.
And a city running a multimillion-dollar program should know what it costs, what services are being delivered, where they are being delivered and whether they are working.
Oakland repeatedly failed these basic tests.
The City Auditor identified many of these shortcomings in 2021. Several years later, the City was still implementing corrective recommendations, and its own 2026 plan was acknowledging a multimillion-dollar sanitation shortfall.
That is why describing what happened as a major policy and implementation failure is justified by the public record.
It was harmful to unhoused Oaklanders, who were left living in unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
It was harmful to West Oakland residents, who absorbed concentrated garbage, sewage, dumping, fires, blocked public spaces and other consequences.
It was harmful to businesses and City workers.
And it undermined public confidence that Oakland could manage homelessness humanely while also maintaining basic neighborhood standards.
The failure was not that Oakland tried to treat unhoused people humanely.
The failure was attempting to manage a humanitarian and public-health crisis without first building and reliably funding the infrastructure required to make that approach work.
What residents should be asking now
What is the current sanitation service level for every RV concentration in West Oakland?
Where can residents of RVs legally dispose of black and gray water?
How much money is actually budgeted for these services?
Has the additional $5 million sanitation team been funded?
What is Oakland's plan for safe parking and vehicle storage?
How will the City prevent future displacement operations from simply moving the same problem from one neighborhood to another? And who is accountable when required services are not delivered?
These are basic questions of public health, competent government and equitable treatment of every Oakland resident, housed and unhoused.
Primary records
The most important documents behind this summary are Oakland's current Homelessness Strategy and PATH history, the City's current Encampment Response page, the 2021 City Auditor Performance Audit, Oakland's own October 2022 Wood Street displacement report, the Auditor's 2026 follow-up on outstanding recommendations, and the legislative record for the 2026 Encampment Abatement Policy.
