A California-based podcast host took to
CaliBased host Michael Oxford posted a video on May 31 of huge temporary homes built along service roads leading to major roads in Hooverville, Oakland.
Images showed trash strewn around homes built from discarded wood, tarps and other materials.
Oxford could be heard calling the area a ‘shantytown’ which is ‘absolutely mind-boggling’, while commenting on how ‘insane it is for (city officials) to allow this.’
CaliBased host Michael Oxford posted a video on May 31 of huge temporary homes built along service roads leading to major roads in Hooverville, Oakland, California’s last district.
He captioned the video: “Some parts of Oakland are worse than a third world country.” They simply allow people to live in absolute squalor, wherever they choose.
“This is like Hooverville during the Great Depression. Welcome to Oakland’s Gavinville.
Tom Wolf, a former homeless man who is a recovering heroin and fentanyl addict from San Francisco, also reshared the same video and saying, ‘Worse than any third world shanty. Do you know how we got here? Drugs.’
Earlier this month, city administrators were forced to remove traffic lights from a busy intersection and replace them with stop signs after electrical boxes that controlled the traffic lights were repeatedly tampered with and the copper stolen from them.
The images showed garbage piled up around houses built with wood, tarps and other discarded materials.
Oxford could be heard calling the area a “shantytown” which is “absolutely mind-blowing” and how “crazy it is that they allow this.”
Local residents and business owners in the area say the problem with the traffic lights is due to the nearby homeless encampment, which has grown over the years.
The owner of a vehicle repair shop on the corner of the intersection, Tam Le, said the city is signaling that it is “giving up on us” by installing stop signs.
It is the latest in a series of copper thefts in California.
Videos have also emerged of thieves looting Tesla charging stations for the meta in Mya.
The city of Oakland recently removed traffic lights from a busy intersection and replaced them with stop signs.
For months, the traffic lights did not work. They flashed red or went out completely, causing confusing and dangerous driving conditions in the area; some blame the occupants of a nearby homeless encampment.
For months, the traffic lights did not work. They flashed red or went out completely, causing confusing and dangerous driving conditions in the area.
‘The city tried to fix the traffic light at least a few times. But once they fix it, usually in about a week, it goes out again,” Le said, according to CBS News.
The real problem, he says, is the homeless people who steal power from the city’s electrical boxes and copper from the traffic lights themselves.
In January, groups of homeless people were found living inside furnished caves dug into the banks of a river 20 feet below street level.
Groups were removed from eight caves along the Tuolumne River in Modesto and emptied of belongings, furniture and 7,600 pounds of trash, filling two trucks and a trailer.
The caves were difficult to access and the police were not sure how they had managed to get so much stuff in there.
Some of the caves were completely furnished with chairs, clothes and blankets.
Some of the caves were decorated with murals, had broken tiles, and one even had a makeshift fireplace with a chimney.
The Modesto Police Department said, “This particular area has been plagued by vagrancy and illegal encampments, which has raised concerns due to the fact that these encampments were actually caves dug into the banks of the river.”
The community living in the caves had dug makeshift stairs into the hillside leading to them. Some of the caves were often fully stocked with bedding, belongings, food, a makeshift mantelpiece, but also drugs and weapons, according to Rojas.
Officials have not yet commented on the Oxford video.