Oakland will shut down two major homeless shelters that house about 70 people in West Oakland by this summer, worrying residents and advocates who say the closures will make its homeless crisis worse. They argue the city continues to lack enough temporary or permanent beds for its large unhoused population.
The homeless shelters are run by the same operator and adjacent. One is an RV safe parking lot, which launched in July 2021, and the other is a community cabin site, which opened in February 2023 . Both sites were opened to serve people who lived at the once-sprawling encampment at Wood Street, once the biggest encampment in Northern California .
The closures , which are scheduled for June 30, come about a month after the site’s service providers raised concerns that the city was behind on making its payments…