A Tiny Plot: "Moving Camp" EP 2

Summary

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Snap Judgment: A Tiny Plot – "Moving Camp" (EP 2)

Date: August 26, 2025
Host: Shayna Shealy
Produced by Snap Studios & PRX

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Episode Overview

In the second chapter of the five-part series "A Tiny Plot," host Shayna Shealy returns to Oakland's Union Point Park to follow the next stage in an experimental housing initiative—this time, as residents face the messy aftermath of what seemed like a groundbreaking agreement: the promise of co-governed, city-funded housing for the formerly homeless. The episode captures the chaos, broken trust, personal loss, and the emotional cost as the group is evicted, relocated to a motel, and then offered a plot of land that holds traumatic memories for one of their leaders.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. After the Victory: Chaos on Move-Out Day

• Recap of Last Episode: Residents at Union Point Park had defended their encampment and negotiated with the City of Oakland for a unique, resident-led housing experiment called "co-governance."
• Despite a handshake agreement, the city abruptly sends in police, public works trucks, and heavy equipment before most residents are ready to move out ([04:14]).
• Residents’ Reaction:
  • Papa Eddie: “The chaos was already in full swing.” ([04:08])
  • Mama Dee: “It was just like a riot going on… you couldn't even hear yourself think.” ([04:55])
• Destruction of Possessions: Residents lose personal belongings, including treasured items, to bulldozers and city crews.
  • Notable moment: Papa Eddie’s prized barrel of handmade walking sticks almost gets destroyed, but is saved by a volunteer, Judy ([07:13]).

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2. Transition to Motel Life: Relief & Uncertainty

• The City moves the remaining 15 residents to the Travel Inn motel, with the community carrying what little survives.

  • Papa Eddie: “I just wanted to make sure everybody else, you know, got broke off something, you know.” ([09:53])

• Initial relief gives way to anxiety about the future.

  • Mama Dee: “The first few days of the motel was nobody seen nobody. Everybody went in, just closed their doors. The beds, just being in a warm room—it was awesome.” ([10:33])

• Motels as Transitional Housing: The city pays $100 a night per room, but residents don’t know how long this will last ([10:55]).

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3. Building a New Community—With a Critical Middleman

• Introduction of Adam Garrett Clark: A nonprofit leader tapped as the intermediary between the city and Union Point’s residents.
  • Adam: “The bird's eye view of this is that there's just not enough homeless spots for housing for low income people. The tiny home community... that's what we need.” ([16:16])
• Adam helps organize, motivate, and wrangle logistics for the motel-based community while also managing his worries about worst-case scenarios.
  • Adam: “It’s a document that I've... a list of all the worst case scenarios. There’s drive by shooting, there’s stabbing, you know, there's fire. So that's a very serious thing that I think about.” ([21:43])

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4. The Search for Land—and Political Resistance

• City Complications:

  • Adam, following city suggestions, explores various city-owned sites—but faces resistance from Council Representative Noel Gallo.
  • Gallo: “The role of government is to take care of the needy… But you just can't come here and trash it and drug yourself out… and you want me to feel sorry for you? I don't.” ([24:22])

• Alternative Land Offered: City Council President Nikki Fortunato Bass, an activist for unhoused people, offers a portion of the East 12th parcel for the housing experiment—but expresses concern:

  • Bass: “Operating two programs side by side that were different... did the city have the staff... and leadership needed to help support a successful co-governed encampment? No.” ([26:40])

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5. Painful Ironies: The New Land’s Traumatic Significance

• Community Involvement: Residents, now calling themselves "Union Point on the Rise," meet to discuss their supposed 'win'—the East 12th parcel ([29:16]).

• Co-Governance Doubts: Residents feel decisions are being made for them, rather than with them.

  • Mama Dee: “We are not co-governing because we are not over there designing our own spot.” ([32:13])
  • Nita B (housing rights activist): “The city's checking off a box, being like, oh, we had a meeting. Check off a box.” ([32:36])

• Personal Trauma: The land offered is across from where Mama Dee’s son, Kendrick, was murdered.

  • Mama Dee: “Why would you guys give us a spot where, you know, my son was murdered?” ([35:01])
  • Mama Dee (on seeing the place): “It’s too much for a mother... being told where she’s gonna live, and it’s right there where your son was murdered.” ([36:46])

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6. Refusing to Be Split Apart

• The group decides not to accept the East 12th site if it means trauma for Mama Dee.
  • Mama Dee: “If Mama Dee isn’t going to East 12th, none of them go.” ([38:25])
• Papa Eddie: “They disbanded a lot of communities like us… If they separate, they lose.” ([38:29])
• Mama Dee: Her community’s refusal to leave her behind reaffirms their solidarity:
  • “That just made me see the love that they have for me as family. Not friendship, but family. And we would let nobody break us apart.” ([39:47])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We accomplished something. Now let’s see how much further we could go.” — Mama Dee ([02:28])
• “It was, oh God. Like the sounds. It was just like a riot going on.” — Mama Dee ([04:55])
• “The city is buying the car... they're picking the make and model.” — Adam Garrett Clark, on the limits of co-governance ([31:44])
• “Why would you guys give us a spot where, you know, my son was murdered?” — Mama Dee ([35:01])
• “If Mama Dee isn’t going to East 12th, none of them go.” ([38:25])
• “We would let nobody break us apart.” — Mama Dee ([39:47])

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 01:46 – Episode/Chapter begins
• 02:28 – Reflections on victory after eviction standoff
• 04:08 – City’s eviction’s chaos, residents' perspectives
• 10:33 – Motel move-in, community recovery
• 14:58 – Introduction of Adam Garrett Clark
• 20:24 – City's plan for building a new village and co-governance begins
• 23:10 – Resistance from local council to placing the encampment
• 25:14 – Nikki Fortunato Bass's advocacy for using East 12th parcel
• 29:14 – Motel meeting, residents discuss proposed new site
• 35:01 – Mama Dee’s trauma over site selection
• 38:25 – The group’s vow to stick together
• 39:47 – The meaning of family in the face of forced relocation

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Conclusion

Episode 2 of "A Tiny Plot" exposes the tension between well-intentioned political compromise and the lived experiences of Oakland’s unhoused citizens. It highlights broken agreements, the trauma of forced relocation, the inadequacy of bureaucratic solutions, and the unwavering solidarity of those forced to live at the margins. The group’s refusal to be divided—no matter what the city offers—underscores a demand for dignity and true self-determination.

Next episode preview: More on the emotional struggle of reliving trauma, the political football of homelessness solutions, and what happens as the community's hopes for a new beginning seem to evaporate.

Transcript

[Snap Studios Host]

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[Shayna Shealy]

From KQED's Snap Studios, this Is a Tiny Plot. This episode contains strong language and graphic imagery. Sensitive listeners, please take care. Welcome back to A Tiny Plot, A story told in five parts. I'm your host, Shayna Shealy, and this is Chapter two. When we left off, the shields was awesome. The residents of Union Point park defended their encampment against the City of Oakland's eviction order with homemade shields and a barricade of broken toilets and refrigerators. And they sent city cleanup crews back where they came from.

[Mama Dee]

Man, we did something. We accomplished something. Now let's see how much further we could go.

[Shayna Shealy]

The standoff ended with a handshake between Dariel from the city and President Matt from Union Point Park. A deal to build a new kind of housing community funded by the city, where homeless residents make their own rules. An experimental model called co governance. But right away, the civility of this agreement seemed to break down. From KQED's Snap Studios, I'm Shaina Shealy. This Is a Tiny Plot. Chapter two. Moving camp. With huge relief that their hard work had paid off in anticipation for their new Life to come. The group took down the barricade, Pulling down the couch and the rocks and the toilet.

[Mama Dee]

My arms just felt like they was gonna fall off, they were so hot and numb. Cause I couldn't move them no more.

[Shayna Shealy]

As the sun went down that night, Momady thought she'd finally be able to relax, to move out of Union Point park on her own time peacefully. She and her neighbors slowly started packing up years worth of supplies and equipment and things. Most people weren't ready by the city's move out deadline. They weren't worried. They had this agreement, a plan to work together. But the morning they were supposed to leave the park, before most residents had even woken up yet, it was.

[Papa Eddie]

The chaos was already in full swing.

[Shayna Shealy]

The city had blocked off the streets early that morning.

[Papa Eddie]

And there was like two dozen police cars and a couple police vans and this armored SWAT team vehicle and like 15 DPW trucks and heavy equipment.

[Shayna Shealy]

I talked to a lot of people who were here at the park during this eviction. Some said the eviction lasted for days. One person who worked for the city at the time said they never saw an armored vehicle. But the residents all agreed on one thing. They were surprised by the show of force.

[Papa Eddie]

I mean, just had this like, this like sinking feeling in my stomach where it was like, oh, no.

[Mama Dee]

It was, oh, God. Like the sounds. It was just like a riot going on. It was so many different voices going on and yelling that you couldn't even hear yourself think.

[Shayna Shealy]

After that handshake, Dariel left his position with the city of Oakland. The people I spoke with from Union Point said they never saw him again. And this is kind of how it would go. The city was this invisible force, an ever changing cast of characters, but with the power to make big changes. And when the move out deadline came around, someone from some department in the city had ordered trucks to come and clear the camp. Mama Dee told me that most residents were still asleep in tents or cars.

[Papa Eddie]

They brought in these weird machines that they stand on and like big giant claws and munches and crunches and rips and tears everything in his path.

[Mama Dee]

The claws of them little bobcats or whatever they are, put them, put their stuff in them claws and threw it in the dumpster truck.

[Papa Eddie]

They look like langoliers. Langoliers. You ever seen a Stephen King movie? They like eat time and they have big old teeth like pac man or something. And he eatin the sky away.

[Shayna Shealy]

Papa Eddy woke up to the noise when he looked outside his tent and saw tractors coming his way.

[Papa Eddie]

I kept telling him to stop. Fucking stop, man. Just quit.

[Mama Dee]

Can't do that, Mr. Edward Hansen. He was screaming, you better not touch my stuff. I'm gonna kick your. You know. And I'm not playing with you.

[Papa Eddie]

I was pulling my hair out, hoping I wouldn't have a heart attack or a stroke.

[Shayna Shealy]

Papa Eddie walked as fast as he could to guard his most prized possessions.

[Papa Eddie]

My barrel's a stick.

[Shayna Shealy]

His highly finished walking sticks. He spends months on each one.

[Papa Eddie]

It's the root of a rosemary. It had gold paint.

[Shayna Shealy]

Eddie stood in front of the barrel of sticks as the bobcat came closer and closer.

[Papa Eddie]

Quit. Stop. Quit.

[Shayna Shealy]

Stop. When the truck got hold of the barrel in between its teeth, a volunteer at the park that day, Judy, she bolted after it.

[Papa Eddie]

She was pretty bold. She snatched you right out of the jaw, that thing, man. And yelled at him.

[Shayna Shealy]

When Eddie got his sticks back, he surrendered the rest of his treasures to public works.

[Papa Eddie]

I was so tired, I had to sit down. I was afraid I was gonna get work myself up into another stroke.

[Shayna Shealy]

Mama Dee was also shouting.

[Mama Dee]

Y' all need to get the out of here. Don't come back. Get your little bobcat and go. You don't know what they have in there. You don't know if they have somebody's ashes that's deceased. You don't know none of that. So before you start just going in there, bulldozing, taking, trying to take charge of people's stuff, let them at least get the chance. You know, we have a negotiation. Let us clean up.

[Shayna Shealy]

When city workers showed up, the people at Union Point park just weren't ready. A lot of them had been living here for years. They said they needed more time. Papa Eddie's hands don't work. But the city had a deadline, and the public works crew continued their sweep. Just weeks after the handshake agreement on top of the barricade, the experiment was in a state of chaos.

[Papa Eddie]

I lost my generator. I lost my recycle container. A whole box of antique bottles that I dug up from the shoreline, and it tore us up.

[Shayna Shealy]

A lot of people living at Union Point park from all sorts of backgrounds peeled off during the days of the cleanup. Others, specifically families with children, many of them black, were offered placements in transitional family housing. At the end, There were around 15 people who held out at Union Point. And as promised, the city sent someone to help them get set up in motel rooms. Papa Eddy, the founding father of this village, sat on the ground in his socks and watched folks packing up for the motel with their dogs, binders of baseball cards Bags of clothes, whatever they could carry of what hadn't been destroyed. He stayed until everyone was gone, until he was alone again, looking up at the moon from an empty parking lot.

[Papa Eddie]

I just wanted to make sure everybody else, you know, got broke off something, you know.

[Shayna Shealy]

When he finally got to the motel late that night, he lay down and.

[Papa Eddie]

Just relaxed, had some ice cream, drank.

[Shayna Shealy]

Some wine, and he fell asleep. When these 15 or so people checked into their motel rooms at the Travel Inn, about two miles from the park, they were a community bound together by an exodus and a promise.

[Mama Dee]

The first few days of the motel was nobody seen nobody.

[Shayna Shealy]

When they first got to the motel, everyone was resting, recovering.

[Mama Dee]

Everybody went in, just closed their doors. It was the beds just being in a warm room. It was like, it was awesome.

[Shayna Shealy]

As comfortable as they were with showers and TVs and beds, the group was at the motel on borrowed time. The city was paying for these rooms around $100 per night per person. No one knew how long the city would keep paying for these rooms, or who would be making that decision, or who from the city would help them find a plot of land to live on, or how long that would take. And as they waited, people seriously moved into their rooms. At the Travel Inn, it's Shaina. Shaina the journalist. Hey, I'm at the motel. It's weird because it's in this really expensive part of Oakland and the street outside is lined with people living in tents and RVs. And like a lot of motels in the city, the motel rooms are filled with homeless people. A lot of shelters don't accept families. So if a family loses their house, motel rooms are sometimes the only way for them to stay together.

[Mama Dee]

I love my room.

[Shayna Shealy]

Momma Dee and the folks from Union Point have been here for over four months now. Mama Dee's room is on the second floor. Her grandkids spend a lot of time here.

[Mama Dee]

No, I don't want it.

[Shayna Shealy]

She has two queen size beds.

[Mama Dee]

Yeah, that's my little kitchen over there. I got two microwaves in here. My refrigerator, My son blocked it, but I have this.

[Shayna Shealy]

A two burner, two burners, a slow cooker, a microwave balancing on her toilet lid. Her pantry is stacked with bags of dried beans, Mac and cheese, rice, sugar.

[Mama Dee]

Jelly, hamburger helper, mashed potatoes, my oatmeal, my flour, barbecue sauce, barbecue. And then I have canned foods down here.

[Shayna Shealy]

And you do your dishes in the bathroom? Uh huh.

[Mama Dee]

I love this bathroom. This is a lovely shower here.

[Shayna Shealy]

Momma Dee grows two cherry tomato plants she got from grocery outlet on the Balcony. Mustache Mike knows the closing times of all the neighborhood cafes.

[Mama Dee]

There's times they give away whole sandwiches, cream cheese on the smoked salmon on there.

[Shayna Shealy]

I see him bring back sleeves of.

[Mama Dee]

Bagels to share what I get every day. I can get bagels, fresh bagels.

[Shayna Shealy]

A woman named Tammy has workout equipment in her room.

[Mama Dee]

So this is for health and it.

[Papa Eddie]

Helps with balance, everything.

[Mama Dee]

And then, you know, that's a massage table. Brand new massage table.

[Shayna Shealy]

You got a massage table?

[Mama Dee]

Yeah.

[Shayna Shealy]

The hotel manager, Sweetie, is keenly aware of just how moved in these folks are. I just have to call out their names and they'll be there for me. Mustache Mike helps Sweetie sweep the hallways. And Mama Dee regularly straightens her hair behind the check in counter. My hair is really thick, and Mama Dee offered to do it one time. Now every week, I tell her, please, please help me out. In these months and months of waiting, the group has pretty much settled in at the Travel Inn.

[Mama Dee]

If we forgot that we have things we need to work on in order to be able to be successful, the first thing we had to figure out was where was our location going to be? How are we going to get this spot and know that we're not going to be put out of this hotel?

[Shayna Shealy]

Mamady and the others had a lot of questions about how the experiment was going to come together, how they'd find land, build their village, make their own rules, all in partnership with the city. Especially because, again, the city was this ever changing figure. A committee here, a new council member there. The actual person this group got answers from was Adam Garrett Clark.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

Before you leave this meeting, please either come up here and write your room number.

[Shayna Shealy]

Adam wasn't a city employee. He had a nonprofit, and the city delegated him to be the official middleman between the city and the Union Point group.

[Mama Dee]

He was definitely always showing up to keep us on track.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

All right, Eddie, do you want me to put your jacket and your drinks up at the meeting spot?

[Mama Dee]

Adam, yes. Is awesome.

[Shayna Shealy]

Adam's black. He wears clear rimmed glasses and loves a good neck bandana. One day, I meet him out where he's picking up fried chicken for a group meeting.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

Sorry about the mess.

[Shayna Shealy]

When I climb into his pickup truck for a ride back to the motel, I see that it's loaded with supplies for the group that he's been collecting from Facebook. Free groups.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

You'll probably do in your description of this. Like, he's got a straw hat. The printer he found on the street doesn't work. Extra pair of work boots.

[Shayna Shealy]

Adam grew up in San Francisco with a single mom who was a social worker. He was around homelessness often and he has this strong belief that homelessness can be solved with tiny homes.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

The bird's eye view of this is that there's just not enough homeless spots for housing for low income people. The tiny home community, those are spaces where there's communities and it's affordable and that's what we need.

[Shayna Shealy]

Dariel from the city introduced Adam to this group early on. Days after that handshake on the barricade during his visit to the park, Adam told the group about his vision to build low budget tiny homes quickly in community. And after the group and the city vetted Adam and his organization Tiny Logic, they accepted him to do this job. After the break, we'll hear more from Adam. This is a tiny Plot. I'm your host Shaina Shealy. Stay tuned.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

At Radiolab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry, but.

[Nita B]

But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics, country music.

[Shayna Shealy]

Hockey, sex of bugs.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers and.

[Nita B]

Hopefully make you see the world anew.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

Radiolab Adventures on the Edge of what.

[Mama Dee]

We Think We Know Wherever you get.

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[Shayna Shealy]

Welcome back to a tiny plot. Chapter 2 Moving Camp when we left off, we had just met Adam, who was telling us about his belief that homelessness can be solved with tiny homes. The city gave him a budget of $350,000. The task ahead of him was to help this group build a village, to help them make choices about all the rules of their community, like who'd be able to live there, how they'd keep it safe, about what the space would actually look like, how they'd get plumbing and showers. And here's a key. Adam had to help them figure out how they'd make all these decisions together as a community in cooperation with the city. This is what co governance is. The city gave Adam a deadline of around eight months. And every week he showed up to the Travelin Motel to lead this group towards their promised land.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

Let me know when you guys are ready to listen to go ahead.

[Mama Dee]

I am listening.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

All right, so two things. You guys want to keep yelling? It's all good.

[Papa Eddie]

Yeah, I want to yell.

[Shayna Shealy]

I'm going to yell.

[Papa Eddie]

I want to yell. I want to fucking scream.

[Shayna Shealy]

Since Adam started this job, he's kept a list of things that keep him up at night.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

And it's a document that I've kind of started, but just a list of all the worst case scenarios. There's drive by shooting, there's stabbing, you know, there's fire. So that's a very serious thing that I think about.

[Shayna Shealy]

Adam mostly keeps that document to himself. At these motel meetings, he's all optimism.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

Yeah, it's part of the game that I gotta play is just figure out how I can regulate and be a soothing downer de escalating presence for people.

[Mama Dee]

I don't care what Nobody else say.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

And let's acknowledge too that Mama Dee has had a tough time, tough couple of days. So it's not that leap of faith that I, that I was asked to take is still, I'm still mid leap.

[Shayna Shealy]

Adam's first task was to help this group find a place to build their community.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

Citi produced a list of properties, but when you go through the list, you look at all of them and there's always like, well, this is promised to this program or this has this issue.

[Shayna Shealy]

Some believed that the burden should land in District 5 where Union Point park was. And Adam actually found a viable piece of city owned land there. It was a triangular lot and walking distance of Union Point. District 5 was represented by Noel Gallo.

[Noel Gallo]

I know Oakland well and we're trying to change it.

[Shayna Shealy]

Council Representative Gallo knows this group from Union Point well. He and volunteers from the district used to clean Union Point park on the.

[Noel Gallo]

Weekends, picking up rats and all kinds of nonsense. If I didn't pick up like a hundred and something needles, that wasn't enough. So it got way out of control.

[Shayna Shealy]

He told me someone he went to high school with was actually killed at the park. He said another morning he went to clean the bathroom and found a young woman dead on the ground laying there, gone. Gallo did not want this mess in his district.

[Noel Gallo]

Well, you know, at that time we had other goals for that site. It used to be a neighborhood park and we wanted to restore it to that level.

[Shayna Shealy]

So you did not want this group of union pool?

[Noel Gallo]

No, because then my kids growing up here pay the price.

[Shayna Shealy]

It just seems like so complicated to try to find an appropriate piece of.

[Noel Gallo]

Land when we say I mean appropriateness. Would you like me to put everyone in front of your house? How is that? Would you like me to do that?

[Mama Dee]

No.

[Noel Gallo]

Hell no. The role of government is to take care of the needy. I understand that. But we also have to have some respect for the children and families and provide a safe, clean environment. You just can't come here and trash it and drug yourself out and just because. And you want me to feel sorry for you? I don't. I grew up with that kind of setting.

[Shayna Shealy]

The city of Oakland was hemorrhaging money every day on motel rooms. And after months of inaction, the City council president, Nikki Fortunato Bass, put her foot down.

[Nikki Fortunato Bass]

At the time, the thing I had been pushing for was using public land for homeless interventions.

[Shayna Shealy]

BAS had activist roots, a history of advocating for the homeless, and she knew about this one place the group could go.

[Nikki Fortunato Bass]

It's an incredible parcel of land. And the fight over how that land would be used really galvanized this movement. Public land for public good.

[Shayna Shealy]

The East 12th parcel, a plot of land owned by the city right by Oakland's crown jewel, Lake Merritt. Before Bas was a politician, she was part of a protest movement that supported affordable housing on the East 12th parcel and sought to drive out developers from building condos there. And now that she was in charge, she finally had a plan to use this public land for public good by turning it into a temporary housing site. An emergency intervention for homeless people who lived around Lake Merritt, called Lakeview Village, with space for 65 people on the largest parcel of city owned land near Lake Merritt. As Adam became more and more desperate to find this group a home, Bass said she could slice off a piece of land from her project on East 12th for the group from Union Point. Two programs side by side, both devoted to homelessness intervention, but only one would be co governed.

[Nikki Fortunato Bass]

You know, it was really city staff who said, look, I think we can have these two programs here. And myself and my staff had some concerns about operating two programs side by side that were different. Like, could that really.

[Shayna Shealy]

So you have some concerns already?

[Nikki Fortunato Bass]

Oh, yeah, I did. Did the city have the staff and the experience and the leadership needed to help support a successful co governed encampment? No.

[Shayna Shealy]

No. And it's my understanding that, like, despite these reservations, you still advocated for using this land for the Union Point group.

[Nikki Fortunato Bass]

Yes. In the end, I acquiesced and said, okay, let's try it. And that was largely because there was nowhere else for people to go. I wasn't going to be the person to say, no, you can't live here and continue to have a dignified existence here in our city.

[Shayna Shealy]

Finally, an actual plot of land from the city, A slice of the East 12th parcel land to build a home for their little village. This felt like a huge win for the group, at least for a few moments, because that land had ghosts.

[Mama Dee]

I was mad. I was. I was fumed.

[Shayna Shealy]

More after the break. Stay with us. Personal finance isn't just about spreadsheets and investing. It's emotional. Talking to your partner about money, negotiating a raise. Even the smallest decisions, like splitting a bill, can bring up feelings of shame or anxiety. I'm Marie Mejres, host of this is Uncomfortable, a podcast from Marketplace about life and how money messes with it. In this season, we get into topics like workplace drama, tough financial trade offs, and the quiet tension that builds when love and finances collide. Listen to this is Uncomfortable. Wherever you get your Podcasts. Welcome back to a tiny plot. You're listening to chapter two, Moving Camp. I'm your host, Shayna Shealy. When we left off, Momady was just learning about the new piece of land for the group experiment, and she was not happy.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

Hey, Papetti. Meeting.

[Shayna Shealy]

It's meeting time at the Travel Inn. One of the first since this group of homeless people has chosen an official name for themselves. Union point on the rise.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

All right, we got pizza. We got meeting.

[Papa Eddie]

You got donuts.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

I forgot to get donuts, man.

[Shayna Shealy]

Also one of the first since council president Nikki Fortunato. Bob has offered a piece of land for their project.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

All right, meeting time.

[Shayna Shealy]

Adam's rallying residents onto the second floor balcony. Some wheel out chairs from their rooms. Others arrange folding chairs into a half circle around this whiteboard.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

You got your own pizza.

[Shayna Shealy]

There are boxes of pizza stacked on the balcony ledge. From Adam.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

I think we should get started. I'm gonna get Mama Dee.

[Shayna Shealy]

Mama Dee is uncharacteristically one of the last people to show up to this meeting. She walks onto the balcony without a word, holding a bright red 711 slushie.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

All right, welcome, guys. We have a full house here.

[Shayna Shealy]

She grabs a seat in the corner and picks up one of the four chihuahuas being passed around. She's pissed, and Adam knows it.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

We jump right in. We had a big question, a big pivotal question from Mama Dee last week that kind of set everybody off, which is, is this a true co governance space?

[Shayna Shealy]

It's been seven months since city officials made a promise to help this group build a co governed model of housing.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

So I'm curious to go around the circle like we always do and tell me what co govern means to you.

[Shayna Shealy]

And then second is, Adam goes around the circle, asking each person to define co governance. Adam once told me that poor people don't often have a seat at the table when it comes to solving problems that impact their own lives. The co governance model was developed to try and address that root problem.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

Rachel, what does co govern mean to you?

[Mama Dee]

Co government. Oh, God. Co government. Make sure that we have some control. What we say goes, what we say goes.

[Shayna Shealy]

Control where we get funding and we.

[Mama Dee]

Get guidance through the city. Boat the history.

[Shayna Shealy]

Eventually we decide on our own. Shit.

[Papa Eddie]

Yeah.

[Mama Dee]

Having a say in what's going on. The vote counts.

[Shayna Shealy]

Adam talks about this metaphor he heard from someone at the city when he first was hired to do this job. Co governance is like a car where the Union Point residents are the drivers. Adam is the co pilot, and the city is in the backseat passengers.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

The city is in the backseats.

[Mama Dee]

You're the co pilot.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

Co pilot. The other part of that conversation is the city is buying the car. So then that's a good point. They're picking the make and bottle, you.

[Shayna Shealy]

Know, still holding onto a dog face. Stoney. Mama Dee blurts out, they got their.

[Mama Dee]

Feet on the, on the, on the brakes. Gas and brake at the same time.

[Shayna Shealy]

Yeah, yeah. For Mama Dee, it's not just a metaphorical car being jerked around. It's her future.

[Mama Dee]

We are not co governing because we are not over there designing our own spot.

[Nita B]

I think that if this was truly around co governance, they would have decided that they wanted to move on East 12th.

[Papa Eddie]

They already decided where we were going to be.

[Shayna Shealy]

There's a housing rights activist at the meeting today, Nita B. Her graying hair is pulled back into two braids.

[Papa Eddie]

Because we had no.

[Nita B]

My thing is that rather than call it a co governed site, like, be honest, you know what I'm saying? Because all that I witness happening is that the city's checking off a box, being like, oh, we had a meeting. Check off a box.

[Shayna Shealy]

Oh, you know, at this point in the meeting, Momma Dee is holding in her rage, arms crossed. She's barely sipped her slushie.

[Mama Dee]

The site, period is an issue for me, like, and they know this.

[Shayna Shealy]

Mama Dee has a big problem with the East 12th street site.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

When we went through this process a couple months ago, it was like, where can we go? We had this one site over in District 5. The.

[Shayna Shealy]

You can hear the desperation in Adam's voice. For nearly half a year, he's been calling, emailing, begging city council members and staff for a piece of land to get this experiment going.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

We just didn't have a site for a long time. And the thing is, guys, is like, there was, if you remember, if you go back and, and think about it, you listen to our conversations, there was no place. There was no place for us to go. And then we got this place.

[Shayna Shealy]

Mama D breaks.

[Mama Dee]

I'd rather go back to Union Point.

[Papa Eddie]

I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I would.

[Mama Dee]

Because nobody's looking at the big issues here. They're only looking at, oh, we got these houses. But did anybody see their child put in a body bag and have to see that every day? No. Nobody did but these. And nobody's giving a fuck about me. I knew that was gonna be a problem.

[Shayna Shealy]

That's how I did. I did too.

[Mama Dee]

So come again with all that shit with me.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

You guys are right. You're totally right. I Love that this is being recorded. There are a ton of spaces out there. Nita B. Knows as well actually, but they're just picking up. The issue is that, is that you got who owns it or who has.

[Shayna Shealy]

Okay, try talking and I'm gonna test it out.

[Mama Dee]

Can you hear me crunching on a chip? Perfect.

[Shayna Shealy]

So I want you to say a little bit more about finding out about getting placed at the 12th street site. What do you remember from that?

[Mama Dee]

I was heated. My son had just been deceased a.

[Shayna Shealy]

Year and a half.

[Mama Dee]

You know, I kind of like put it in the back of my mind. It's hard. I was like, why would you guys give us a spot where, you know, my son was murdered?

[Shayna Shealy]

Kendrick was Momma Dee's third son. She had six. As a kid, Kendrick was always getting left behind by his siblings.

[Mama Dee]

I used to keep Kendrick so close to me.

[Shayna Shealy]

Kendrick spent a lot of time with his mom. And when he was in his 20s and had a kid of his own, he came to stay with Momma Dee at Union Point Park.

[Mama Dee]

Everybody loved Kendrick. Just being playful or joking and having fun. Everybody at the park loved him.

[Shayna Shealy]

Every so often, Momma Dee would send her kids to a motel for the night to take actual showers. And one night, Kendrick got his things together from his tent at Union Point and went to America's Best value on East 12th Street. He hugged his 6 year old son JC on Goodnight and tucked him in with Mama Dee.

[Mama Dee]

I was just falling asleep and it was. And I thought they was playing with my sister. She said, deanna, no, somebody got hurt. Somebody got hurt.

[Shayna Shealy]

Momma Dee went to East 12th Street. Kendrick had been shot 13 times in the parking lot.

[Mama Dee]

When I got there, they wouldn't let me go see my son. That was the most hurtful, just knowing my son was on that ground and somebody would kill my son like that. The police, the coroner's office came and picked him up. And I seen him put my son in a bag. I couldn't sleep for, like, I didn't get no sleep for four days. It felt like time was stopped.

[Shayna Shealy]

The piece of land on East 12th street that the city gave this group, if you stand anywhere on the plot, you can see straight to the entrance of America's Best Value Inn where Kendrick was killed. Like it's feet away right across the street.

[Mama Dee]

It's too much for a mother to have to go through being told where she's gonna live. And then it's right there where your son was murdered.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

So how do we move forward on this? Cause we have this space. We have some people that wanna move in?

[Papa Eddie]

No, you can't file a.

[Shayna Shealy]

But back at that meeting when Momma Dee erupted in anger, all Adam could do was try to save this experiment.

[Papa Eddie]

Now as far as Deanna's situation.

[Shayna Shealy]

Need to be the activist. She raises her hand again.

[Nita B]

I just want to lift up like the trauma that Deanna is talking about. I just think about the fact that every day she literally has to see the place who her and her family. Right. And that, that is just. That is like so like it's deep. I can't even like. And that they need to find another spot because this community wants to stay as a community. But one of their members, if not all of them, because at some point they were all touched by Kendrick's life, but that his family has to actually be in proximity of where he was shot down. And that's freaking.

[Papa Eddie]

I think the city should offer her another option. So it's kind of made it close so that she could still come to meetings.

[Snap Studios Host]

We could still coordinate.

[Shayna Shealy]

I agree with you.

[Mama Dee]

I don't want them to offer me nothing else. But where my community that we started is going to be together. You see, that's what I'm trying to say is we're all together. We're all going to go to a different site.

[Shayna Shealy]

If Mama Dee isn't going to East 12th, none of them go.

[Papa Eddie]

They disbanded a lot of communities like us. They disbanded them. They moved them here, there. They tried that in the beginning. Separating us from the econo.

[Shayna Shealy]

From 2021 to 2024, the city of Oakland closed more than 537 homeless camps and cleared hundreds more. Separating communities. If there's one thing this group believes, it's if they separate, they lose. So just when this group is so close to their dream, when they get an actual piece of land free to build their own co governed home, they decide they are not willing to risk breaking up the group. They say they aren't going to East 12th without Momma Dee.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

Are we collectively rejecting the moving in?

[Papa Eddie]

I say this is march back on Union Point.

[Shayna Shealy]

It's kind of like they're back to square one. Threatening to resist the city because they don't want to be separated.

[Papa Eddie]

I say we need to go back to Union Point and motherfucking chain ourselves to the the fucking crown. Right?

[Mama Dee]

I didn't know that. They all felt like if I didn't go that they wasn't gonna go. And that just made me see the love that they have for me as family. Not friendship, but family. And we would let nobody break us apart.

[Shayna Shealy]

Adam breaks down empty boxes. On the wall behind them is a blueprint mockup for the East 12th site, a timeline to move out of the motel by the end of this month. But for now, on the Travel in balcony, President Matt disassembles the dry erase board. Others fold up chairs. Momma Dee takes her melted slushie back to her room and locks the door behind.

[Mama Dee]

You.

[Shayna Shealy]

Just heard the second episode of Snap Studios original series, A Tiny Plot. There's more. Over the next few weeks, we'll be releasing episodes here on the Snap Judgment Feedback on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Don't miss it. Next up on A Tiny Plot, Deanna.

[Mama Dee]

You can do this. You can't. I'm not gonna do this. I don't want to see my. I don't want to relive this every day.

[Adam Garrett Clark]

It's hard enough to do what we're doing. We're dealing with the layers of people, dealing with the trauma of transitioning from survival mode on the streets. And then we gotta layer on top of this, this like weird political football, you know, it's like setting a grenade, you know, in a pile of wood.

[Shayna Shealy]

A Tiny Plot is a production of kqed SNAP Studios Hosted and produced by Shaina Shealy. Edited by Anna Sussman Original music by Renzo Gorio Made possible by the entire SNAP team and everyone who lived at Union Point Park. Thank you for sharing your stories. Extra special thanks to Jen Chen, Catherine Winter, the city of Oakland, Sweetie at the Travel Inn, Ryan Finnegan, Will Craft, JP Dobrin, Thomas Browns, Suki Lewis, Alastair Boone and the street spirit Odd House Audio the entire cast from Union Point park and KQED Legal engineering by Pat Mesiti Miller director of production Marissa Dodge Executive producers Glenn Washington and Mark Ristich on Team snap, the union represented producers, artists, editors and engineers are members of the national association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications workers of America, AFL CIO Local 51. And this is not the news. No way is it the news because this is Snap Judgment. Get your ears ready and keep your hearts open because this is prx.