This story aired in the May 18, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
Illegal dumping is a big problem in Oakland. Today, we’ll from unhoused people about how the excess garbage that accumulates around encampments impacts their daily lives — and, some of the strategies they use to manage it.
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Story Transcript:
MATT: You’re right near the place where illegal dumping happens, it’s just one block away.
REPORTER: What kind of stuff do they leave?
BRADFORD: Drywall, like wood insulation.
EDDIE: Cosmetics, lotions, shampoos, body oils.
SHANNON: There's a liquor store that comes and brings their trash. There's a flower shop that comes and brings their trash.
BRADFORD: Designer handbags.
SHANNON: I’ve found gold before, I found precious metals.
SLIM: Air compressors, uh, tools.
MATT: I picked up these couches for free. They're really nice.
SHANNON: Old food. Yeah. Yeah. Um, old food, some, you know, pee fecal matter.
MATT: Bags of trash. Like a mattress, a nightstand.
I mean the pile, like, grows and shrinks, you know, like at one point in time it was maybe, 18 feet tall? Yeah. I mean, it was literally a mountain.
REPORTER: How often would you say that happens?
MATT: Um, I would say nearly daily.
DONALD: Yeah, there's trucks pull up all the time.
SHANNON: Oh, it's daily. During the middle of the night. Uh, early morning.
REPORTER: So how does that impact life out here for you all?
SLIM: Yeah, it creates rats. A lot of rats.
SHANNON: It’s got maggots and stuff after it's been sitting too long and it's pretty disgusting.
DONALD: It looks really bad on the homeless people… it look like, why should we give him them anything, you know? …. but it ain't really us.
SHANNON: Us collectively as a group of people, a certain group of people that they already have a preconceived notion about. It can really, it can really change their mind about whether they want to help us or, or not.
BRADFORD: This is, this is your garbage, Oakland. Like, no, no, we didn't go buy this stuff. People are reusing stuff that they find on the street.
SLIM: We get blamed for it. But then how else we gonna get our stuff?
SHANNON: We all come from at least a mile around here to come to the dump spot and see what they got.
MATT: People kind of become pack rats. They haven’t had anything so they find some sort of value or self worth from having stuff, even though it’s sitting out there getting ruined.
SHANNON: Pretty much everything you see here is from there. All the clothes that are here, the blankets. I guess the good outweighs the bad 'cause there's a lot of good stuff that people just throw away new stuff all the time.
REPORTER: What are the challenges with managing the trash that actually is from this encampment?
SLIM 04: We keep our trash neat, like it is over here, somewhat.
DONALD: I take care of the corner down there and like 10 people live right on the corner and they just, you know, let the garbage sit there for weeks and then my RV's right behind that, so I gotta pick it up… I bag it and then I take it over to the park and put it in their dumpster.
SLIM: We live three blocks away from waste management. Like they drive by us every day.
SHANNON: Unfortunately, we don't get any, um, receptacles to put trash or anything…yeah, having the dump spot so close, it's just easy to just load up my garbage can right there and just take it down there.
Those were the voices of Matt Long, Bradford Nicholson, Slim Hiptons, and Donald Goodfellow. Eddie, Ray, and Shannon also shared their thoughts, and wanted to keep their last names private.
That was Sidewalk Stories, a collaboration between Street Spirit and KALW where we hear from unhoused people about how they navigate life outside.
