A plan for the city to give a portion of a West Berkeley street to Bayer is stirring anxiety for the residents of a homeless encampment on the block, who fear the pharmaceutical giant will soon move to evict them.
The Berkeley City Council signed off last month on a deal to turn over a roughly 380-foot-long section of Carleton Street, on a dead-end block just west of Seventh Street, to Bayer. The company already owns the properties on both sides of the street, and the agreement is similar to ones Bayer has struck to acquire other portions of the formerly public right of way that runs through its 46-acre campus.
But the area that will soon belong to Berkeley’s largest private-sector employer is today home to several people living out of tents, cars and RVs, which could make the west end of Carleton Street the latest flashpoint in a years-long debate over how the city should respond to homeless encampments…