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Posted on 09/04/2026 10:19:26 AM PDT by DFG
A federal judge has ordered Berkeley officials to consider specific locations where unhoused people can move when the city closes the long-standing encampment at Eighth and Harrison streets. But Judge Edward Chen rejected homeless advocates’ request for a long-term postponement of the camp closure, and said Berkeley can clear the area “in short order.”
Chen’s order Thursday states that homeless advocates must generate, and city officials must approve or reject, a list of proposed new campsites for 23 camp residents by Aug. 27. It is the latest concession homeless advocates have won in their legal challenges that seek to block the city from sweeping the encampment, though the order does not require the city to approve any of the proposed new camping locations.
Berkeley has been trying to close the camp for several years over what officials describe as issues of sanitation, fire hazards and public health risks, while some nearby business owners and residents have filed their own lawsuit accusing the city of letting public nuisances go unchecked.
“There are open flames in the encampment every day. There are rats running over people, screaming in the night,” Assistant City Attorney Katrina Eiland said in a hearing in federal court in San Francisco Thursday. Those rats have fueled an outbreak of the bacteria leptospirosis which has killed one person and hospitalized one more.
Attorneys for campers with disabilities say Berkeley has not yet done enough to address their needs, and accuse the city of “foot-dragging and obstruction” when Chen has ordered the city to make certain concessions.
Berkeley posted notices July 27 that ordered everyone camping in the area bounded by Gilman Street, San Pablo Avenue, the Union Pacific rail line and the city’s northern border at Codornices Creek to clear out by Aug. 3 so the city could clean the area. A fire marshal declared the encampment a fire hazard and a public nuisance, and the city’s public health officer said that unless Berkeley dealt with rat infestations there, the leptospirosis outbreak would continue to spread, according to the notices.
Chen ordered Berkeley to hold off on the sweep until Thursday’s hearing, when he considered arguments on a longer-term injunction. The Berkeley Homeless Union accused the city of ignoring Chen’s earlier orders to help some residents with their moves, sensationalizing the outbreak and improperly destroying or failing to store property during past closures.
Chen wrote in his order that he “expects the Harrison encampment will, in short order, be abated.” Berkeley must, however, continue to meet with some residents to assess accommodations for disabilities and move or help store property for some people who have to move, as he ordered in April.
Storage has been a sore spot for many unhoused Berkeleyans who say that the city has kicked them out of camps with promises to store personal property only for it to disappear.
“Over the course of nearly three years, Berkeley’s enforcement operations disposed of approximately 959,800 pounds of material across 52 encampment closures, 34 deep cleaning operations, and 11 RV closures,” Chen wrote in an order in a related case over the same encampment. “Despite that volume of enforcement activity and property disposal, the city issued only 34 property inventory notices.”
Attorneys for the city told Berkeleyside officials will post new notices to close the camp, but it is not yet clear when that will happen.
Lawyers for the city and the Berkeley Homeless Union each tried to blame the other for their apparent inability to work together.
Berkeley Homeless Union attorney Anthony Prince said the city should have already provided alternate camping locations to encampment residents who will have to move.
“The fact of the matter is that the city knows very well what it owns in the City of Berkeley, what is a vacant lot, and what is property that is under the management or ownership of the city,” Prince said.
Eiland said the city’s work would be more complicated than just throwing together a list of possible locations, and that outreach workers had to consider each resident’s request for accommodation individually — but that those residents have refused to cooperate. “The fact is that we haven’t denied a single accommodation,” she said.
Homeless plaintiffs and their advocates have long said that Berkeley’s overlapping restrictions on parking, sidewalk space and camping essentially make it illegal to be unhoused in the city. Chen has ordered Berkeley to make other exceptions to its rules, allowing for some RVs to park longer than the citywide 72-hour limit and, more recently, for some residents to use more than a 3-by-3-foot square of sidewalk for their possessions, which is all that city rules allow.
Even if Berkeley removes the camp entirely, it is unclear how it might keep unhoused residents from moving tents and RVs back in, as has happened after every previous sweep of the neighborhood. The City Council slashed a number of health department positions in the budget it passed in June. It also eliminated several vacant positions at BPD which, along with BFD and the health department, has the most frequent contact with unhoused residents.
Berkeley has largely kept Civic Center Park and Ohlone Park free of campers after sweeps last year. At another camp, on Carleton Street, the city gave the street underneath to Bayer, the city’s largest private-sector employer and owner of properties on both sides of the dead-end block, and the company evicted the campers shortly afterward.
Since those closures the camp at Eighth and Harrison has more than doubled in size. Attorneys for Berkeley said Thursday the camp had about 80 residents; homeless advocates estimated there were around 35 residents in June 2025 and 40 in February.
Correction: An earlier version of this article listed an incorrect title for Assistant City Attorney Katrina Eiland.
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“unhoused people”......had to stop reading right there.
Shouldn’t it be Berkeleycide?
Just as the gypsy woman foretold
HOMELESS! Not unhoused.
> A federal judge has ordered Berkeley officials to consider specific locations where unhoused people can move… <
I would put the judge’s back yard at the very top of the list.
That wouldn’t solve the homeless problem in Berkeley. But it would make it more entertaining.
Put it on the ballot in a couple months. Find out who votes for this.
Yep, this gets aggravating, to see so many use politically correct language to describe people and situations.
ON other subjects, some liberals insist on talking of “pregnant people” or “birthing persons”, rather than talk of “pregnant women”. It’s apparently a crime against humanity, to speak in ways which imply or suggest that only women can be pregnant.
Are we still allowed to talk about manholes?
I know that many places have banned “men working” signs with regard to road construction/maintenance, because that allegedly offends the sensibilities of feminist types, because there might just be some females nowadays on a work crew.
It gets absurd after a while.
So with regard to homelessness, we are required/urged/expected to provide a location for a homeless camp, in order to clean up homeless camps? But then aren’t we just moving the problem to another spot, without resolving the problem itself?
Maybe I’m missing something?
I’m sure I’m missing something. Then do people have a constitutional right to vagrancy? And allowed to (fill in the blank) in the streets and sidewalks? Maybe there’s some aspect of vagrancy laws I just don’t understand.
But then any attempt to clean up and clear out, only results in moving the problem to another location?
Put them in the back yards of the Mayor and City Council members. The situation will only be rectified after that. These people don’t want to end homelessness. It is a great source of funds that don’t have to be used to solve anything.
No, you are correct.
Disturb, conflict, catharsis, repeat...
Until it all collapses.
Q.E.D. for DemonCrats and Marxist-Socialists.
There was a group running a homeless shelter in downtown Tallahassee, Florida. The downtown library has a full-time cop constantly patrolling each floor. There had been rapes assaults and feces everywhere as the library wasn’t allowed to kick out the homeless, who occupied every comfortable chair in order to stay indoors. Plus, the local businesses were going bankrupt as nobody wanted to run the gauntlet of aggressive panhandlers and crazy assailants. The city offered a large building at the corner of the county which they said they’d maintain in perpetuity.
The organization running the homeless shelter said, “No. We intend to keep the homeless in your face until you do something about the problem.” The assumption is that these are just normal people who don’t have homes, rather than seriously disturbed drug users.
Eventually, bending to the socialist mayor, the organization moved the shelter next to two community colleges. The homeless have occupied the common spaces and now assault the students. Oh, and a friend who had a rental unit nearby can’t rent it because of the murder and assaults happening in the parking lot.
Berkeley was weird when I visited it in ‘91.
Never went back.
I’m sure it hasn’t improved with age.
Assuming a person is not a drug addict, can take on most entry level jobs, and can apply for public assistance- is there a reason for anyone to be homeless?
My assumption is that if you’re down on your luck the public safety net will probably catch you (no guarantee, but likely). And that for those with drug problems, lack of skills, etc. a boot camp approach of training to change lives would be more useful that arguing over whether or not a tent city in a taxpayer funded public park is OK.
Disabilities? What kind of disabilities? Do they mean things like Addiction or mental illness? Isn’t this encampment just another brand of open air insane asylum?
That is a real tragedy.
It’s right next to student housing and a minute away from a really beautiful campus.
I don’t see why they just camp out on International Blvd or Obama Blvd.....
I saw a long YouTube video on this.
Police officers let the homeless camp in one area, driving real estate values down so residents sell at a loss.
Then developers move in, gentrify the place and homeless are moved to the next area targeted for destruction.
The cycle repeats.
It’s a money game using mentally ill, homeless people as a financial weapon.
First, you take 80% of the money for administration,then start a jobs program for all you friends, next make a jester of helping.......cha ching were in the money.
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