This conversation aired in the July 16, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
This week, the City of Oakland closed its Wood Street “community cabin” site: A transitional housing program for unhoused people that has been open for two years. But the closure of this shelter has been rocky, with the shelter operator pulling out one month early, leaving some residents without support.
Here, KALW’s homelessness reporter Alastair Boone spoke with Crosscurrents host Hana Baba about what's going on there.
Click the button above to listen.
Conversation Transcript:
H: Hi Alastair.
A: Hey Hana.
H: So this week, a transitional housing program in Oakland called the “Wood Street Community Cabins” closed. Can you tell us about that program, and why this is such a big deal?
A: Unlike an overnight shelter, a transitional housing program is a place where folks can stay for months, or years, while they get help looking for permanent housing.
But these transitional programs are not usually permanent themselves. They often have two year contracts, because of funding limitations, or, like in this case, because the City of Oakland leased the land from a private developer, and now they have to return the lot to them.
H: OK - and so what was the setup, how was it designed?
A: The program was on Wood Street in West Oakland. It was basically built to replace the Wood Street encampment, which, at the time, was the largest encampment community in the city, with hundreds of residents.
The shelter had capacity to house about 100 people at a time, between two adjacent outdoor lots: One side had small wooden cabins, which folks could live in alone or with a roommate, if they wanted one. And the other side was an empty lot where people could live in RVs.
Both sites were behind locked gates with security, and had other staff like housing navigators onsite. There were also bathrooms with running water, a kitchen that had prepared meals in the fridge, and other appliances so folks could cook for themselves.
H: So is that what a transitional housing program tends to look like?
A: Yeah, all this is very normal — the “community cabin” model of transitional housing is common in Oakland, and many of the programs look something like this. But the way its closure went down was NOT normal.
H: Tell us about that.
A: What’s going on at Oakland’s Wood Street Community Cabin shelter is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my reporting. But to understand why, I need to give you a little context.
H: Ok let’s go for it.
A: A nonprofit called Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency — or “BOSS” — got a contract from Oakland to operate the site beginning in 2023. It’s one of the major service providers in Alameda County.
But BOSS pulled out of their contract one month ahead of the scheduled closure date, because they say the city just stopped paying them. So even though the shelter was supposed to close at the end of June, BOSS just up and left the site completely on May 31.
H: That’s pretty wild. What do you mean the city just stopped paying them?
A: It’s not clear what happened, honestly. After months of late payment, the city said they did pay a couple of BOSS’ invoices. But BOSS’s CEO, Donald Frazier, told me he hasn’t seen any money since December, 2024.And he said the organization couldn’t afford to pay the $400,000 it would cost to keep the site open for one more month.
H: So they just…. left. What did that look like?
A: Yeah it was unbelievable to me too, so I decided to just go down there and see what was going on.
REPORTER: Okay I’m walking through the open gate of the Community Cabin site on Wood Street. There’s no one here from BOSS, no security. Gate’s unlocked.
A: When I got there the gate was wide open, so I walked right in. I saw that the shelter had basically been ransacked: The pipes had been stolen so there was no running water, and no toilet paper. The only food in the refrigerator was expired or moldy, and the former front office had been completely torn apart. And there were documents scattered all over the place, some of them containing confidential information about cabin residents, like their full names and which cabins they were living in.
H: That's awful.
A: I ran into one of the people living there, Terry Walker, who told me he had been living in the cabins for two years, the whole time they were open.
TERRY: As you see, it's anarchy, like, like martial law…from what I seen, um, I don't, I try not to be out here at night. …I'm like, every and anybody come through here, I guess they're trying to take things and recycle.
A: I also met Tamara Roselli, and asked her to tell me a little bit about what had been going on.
TAMARA:I saw signs on the doors of the cabins next door that says, 24 hour notice. As of now, you are trespassing. And like, what the heck? So I asked someone and they said, yeah, we're leaving. You guys all gotta get out.
A: The city ultimately took those signs down. And, after BOSS left, city and county officials started doing outreach to the 37 people they estimated who were still living at the site, trying to find new shelter placements for them.
But still, residents were confused. And kind of hurt, too.
TAMARA: I feel kind of like, well, you know, they just walked out like, oh, well sorry guys. Sorry you guys didn't get housed before we left. But ya, so I think people are feeling like we're not worth anything to them.
H: Okay, so what are they going to do? What will happen next for the people who were living there?
A: According to BOSS’ exit data, over the last two years, they moved 68 people into some kind of permanent housing.
But the experience of getting a housing placement wasn’t easy. Both Terry and Tamara described a good deal of dysfunction in this process. Terry was frustrated that it took two years to get any housing matches, despite having all his documents in order. And similarly, Tamara says she waited for a placement over a year before learning she hadn’t even been put on the waitlist for housing at all.
H: Yeah so what about the people like Terry and Tamara who didn’t get a housing placement?
A: On July 2, the city told me that 15 of the 37 people who were still living there have been moved into other shelter programs, including Terry and Tamara, who are both in new transitional housing programs. And I think they’re both grateful that the county found these new programs for them. In Tamara’s case, she’s not necessarily excited about the new program, but says it’s better than the street.
H: Alastair, this just all feels almost unbelievable. I mean… is anybody being held accountable?
A: I talked to one person for this story who wanted to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation from their employer. But they suggested that both entities — the city and BOSS — were equally responsible.
The City was responsible for paying BOSS to operate this program, and they seem to have failed to do that.
H: What about BOSS?
A: My source also suggested that BOSS failed to properly close down this site. They said everyone knew the closure date was coming, and that BOSS should have been preparing for months.
H: What will happen next, for the folks who were at the cabins as it was closing…. and didn’t get housed?
A: A lot of these folks have lived outside together before, at the Wood Street encampment. So taking care of themselves and each other without support is nothing new.
REPORTER: Was it you who made pasta for everyone?
TAMARA: Yeah.
REPORTER: Tell me about that.
TAMARA: Oh, I just love to cook, so I. I went down, um, you know, with my last, like, $45 and went to Target and got as much as I could, and came back and made a big pot of spaghetti and fed everybody that was here that wanted some.
A: It wasn’t easy, but residents were making it work.
But what seemed to upset folks the most was this feeling of being left behind. Like, the whole premise of the community cabins is that they will help people get housing. And then the people who were supposed to be helping them just disappeared without explaining why.
H: Thanks Alastair.
A: Thanks Hana.
