This story aired in the February 27, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
Down by the train tracks in West Berkeley, a group of RVs and tents line the intersection of Second and Cedar Streets. It’s a homeless encampment that many have lived in for years.
But, like many encampments in the Bay Area, it probably won’t be around for long: the City of Berkeley plans to close it down soon, and they got special funding from the state to do so.
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Story Transcript:
REPORTER: The encampment at Second and Cedar stretches north to south on Second and East to West on Cedar for a couple blocks each way. It’s at the western border of the city: so close to the shoreline that blackbirds sit in every tree, singing loudly day and night.
FANNY: I'm six years in. I'm the first one that was down that block before everybody came.
REPORTER: This is Fanny Hall. She lives in an RV in this community.
FANNY: And I feel like this is home for me because it’s a familiar. You know, my neighbors know me. We all kind of like a little community now. Especially down on that end.
REPORTER: Today, Fanny and other residents gather on the corner in a cluster, standing or sitting in chairs they dragged to the intersection. Berkeley city staff and service providers are here to talk to them.
PETER: Can we just do very briefly just names? And then we can kind of get into the conversation.
REPORTER: Everyone goes around and introduces themselves.
VARIOUS: I’m Michael…Fannie…Dave…
REPORTER: The purpose of the meeting? The group is here to tell them about some new resources they are offering to residents of this encampment in particular. Assistant City Manager Peter Radu — who manages the city’s homeless response — takes the lead on explaining.
PETER: Specifically, uh, an RV buyback program, as well as a new motel shelter program.
REPORTER: These new resources come from California’s “Encampment Resolution Fund” or “ERF” — a statewide program that awards grants to cities to help them close encampments.
Berkeley has received this funding three times — every year since the ERF program started back in 2021. Last year, it was one of 12 California cities to receive the grant — over $5 million to close this one encampment, at Second and Cedar.
ANONYMOUS: Is there an actual date when this is going to happen?
REPORTER: Pretty much every day, Monday to Friday, there are encampment sweeps in the Bay Area that are not funded by the ERF program. As a result, most unhoused people have been through this before. They know the drill: The city puts up fliers telling everyone in the encampment to leave by a specific date. If they don’t leave, city employees show up on that date early in the morning, with cops, and force them out. Sometimes they’re offered a spot in a shelter, but even if there isn’t one, they have to move.
The promise of these state funds is that cities might have the opportunity to change this script. In this case, the money will help the city offer motel rooms to most of the people at this encampment, where support staff from a local non-profit are supposed to help them find permanent housing. The city is also offering to buy people’s RVs from them—which has never before been done in Berkeley. And, Peter says the city will move slowly: Start by trying to get people into shelter rather than posting an arbitrary closure date.
PETER: Our goal is to not have any enforcement date… We don't have one. We have not planned one. And we don't intend to plan one until we've seen that we have to.
REPORTER: But Peter tells the residents, they have to take advantage of these options, otherwise it will be business as usual: the city and cops, scheduling a closure date and forcing people to leave, sometimes under threat of arrest.
PETER: We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. The easy way is everything we've just described. The hard way is there's one or more series of enforcement interventions, which we don't want, and we know you don't want.
ANONYMOUS: [No]
PETER: Right?
REPORTER: The thing is, because of a Supreme Court ruling last summer, the city no longer has to provide any shelter before a sweep. So Berkeley could technically close this encampment even without the ERF funds — without the new motel or the buyback program, or anything else. The resources just provide an incentive.
DREW: I mean, it sounded good, promising more than we've heard before. And the buyback program getting us off the street…
REPORTER: This is Drew Green. He lives in an RV at Second and Cedar.
DREW: Before they weren't offering anything to get us off the street, they were just saying, okay, you got to do this, do that or move. So now they're offering.
REPORTER: Drew says he’s ready to get off the street because of his health — he had a major stroke back in 2001, and a series of heart attacks since.
DREW: Now that I've taken ill with my heart and all that, it's kind of like, I think it's good to get us off the street or get us where we can be safer.
REPORTER: Berkeley is under new pressure from the state to crack down on homelessness. In July, Governor Gavin Newsom ordered California cities to close encampments, or else risk losing state funding. The ERF funds are supposed to make this process easier.
But not everyone feels like this is truly “the easy way.” Here’s encampment resident Fanny Hall again.
FANNY: Some of us are out here trying to actually get permanent housing, but then there's barriers that keep us from going in, whether it's income, whether it's our credit, whether it's a job, whatever it is, and some of us are actually trying to work towards those barriers.
But in the meantime, we're being hit with this and this to me personally, it's stressful for me.
REPORTER: Fanny doesn’t trust that she would be able to actually get a housing placement through the motel program. These placements are ultimately made by the county, not shelters, and they can take a long time. Back in 2022, Berkeley opened a different transitional housing motel with ERF funds. Last year the city told Berkeleyside – only half of those people have moved into permanent housing — either in a rental or with a family member. About a third are back to being homeless, or are unaccounted for.
Fanny says she wants to keep looking for housing on her own from her RV, around people she knows. She worries that if she moved into the motel, she could end up back on the street with less than she started with.
Two weeks after the community meeting, I go back to Second and Cedar to see how everything is shaping up.
REPORTER: Hey, how you doing?
REPORTER: Drew is outside his RV, cleaning it out in preparation for it to be towed. He and his neighbor are taking advantage of both programs. For them, it’s all happening. Fast.
DREW: Yeah, right now we're in the hotel and our motorhomes have been bought.
REPORTER: Drew is one of 15 people who has taken advantage of the RV buyback program so far.
But things are not moving as quickly for others I talk to that day.
CHRISTOPHER: Just a whole bunch of empty promises so far. But I'll play by ear. I'm optimistic. So hope for the best. Prepare for the worst, I guess.
REPORTER: This is Christopher Shelton. There are more people living at Second and Cedar than there are rooms at the motel, and Christopher says he’s at the bottom of the city’s priority list because others have lived there longer than he has.
REPORTER: [What do you think, where do you think you'll go if you don't end up getting a room in the motel?]
CHRISTOPHER: Uh, probably Fourth and Cedar
REPORTER: Two blocks away, still on the street.
CHRISTOPHER: [laughing] I don't know. I'm sorry. [continued laughing].
REPORTER: The day I visit, Fanny isn’t there. But she tells me over text that she’s trying to get a spot in the city’s “safe RV parking program” while she looks for housing on her own. In the meantime, she braces for business as usual: Waking up to the beeping of a tow truck. Waiting for the Order to Vacate to come.
