Bay Area city to pay homeless to clean up their encampments in controversial pilot

A Bay Area city plans to embark on a novel way to tidy up homeless encampments as California desperately tries to tackle its homelessness crisis — by paying the homeless to clean up after themselves.

Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee teased to ABC7 that she will announce a pilot program in which homeless residents would be paid to clean areas around encampments, similar to a program in Oregon.

“We have to move in a new way to make sure every neighborhood is clean and safe and my goal is to make Oakland the cleanest, safest city in the country,” Lee said.

“I established the Office of Homeless Solutions so we’re looking at out-of-the-box kind of solutions that are working in other areas to try to put pilots here in our own city to see if it works,” she added.

Lee told the outlet that she’s confident the pilot program will move forward, but offered no specifics on start date or pay rate.

The California Post reached out to the mayor’s office to seek additional details.

The mayor claimed her proposed solution is “good for the community” as it would bring financial help to the homeless if the streets are cleaner. If the streets are cleaner, it’ll attract fewer homeless people and less filth, she said.

Lee had floated the idea of paying the homeless as early as February, part of her overall approach in dialing down the aggressiveness of encampment sweeps in line with the stances of homeless advocates.

But city councilmembers have taken an opposite approach, voting in April to pass a stricter policy to make it easier for the city to clear encampments.

“For us to consistently be the region’s social safety net, it’s just not fair,” Councilmember Charlene Wang said before the vote. “This is about providing relief to the neighborhoods that have had encampments in their backyard.”

As of May this year, Oakland has an estimated 4,410 homeless people — a notable decline over the past two years — but the number of encampments still grew to over 1,900 locations.

Some homeless residents told ABC7 they liked Lee’s idea of paying them to clean up the camps.

“All she needs to do is have someone pick up trash,” said Sean, who lives in an encampment. “Just like they do with everybody that has a house. We’re just in a homeless encampment.”

In Oregon, the city of Portland pays unhoused individuals through initiatives like the Ground Score Association partnership to clean up litter and waste around public spaces and encampments. Workers make an hourly wage ranging from $20 to $29 helping collect hundreds of thousands of pounds of trash.

The program seems to still be going, and the nonprofit behind it claims that all workers who were living in tents during their first shift have been able to move into temporary or permanent housing.

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