SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Since President Trump deployed the National Guard and asserted control of Washington, D.C.'s police force, dozens of homeless encampments in the district have been cleared. And while many aspects of Trump's show of force in D.C. are unique, that particular one is not. Political leaders from both parties have cracked down on homeless populations in recent years. California Governor Gavin Newsom, a frequent Trump critic, issued an executive order last year that directed state agencies to clear encampments. KQED's "Snap Judgment" just released a five-part series that follows a group of homeless people in Oakland, California, and their fight for a radical idea, their own plot of land from the city where they could set their own rules and live on their own terms. The series is called "A Tiny Plot." Host Shaina Shealy followed this small group for years and is here with me in the studio. Welcome.
SHAINA SHEALY, BYLINE: Hi. Thanks for having me.
DETROW: How'd you find this story?
SHEALY: Yeah, so during the lockdown of 2020, like a lot of people, I started walking around my neighborhood, and I was living in Oakland. So I started seeing these signs of homelessness all around me.
DETROW: Yeah.
SHEALY: And that's when I came across this local news story about a group of people who lived in a park in Oakland along the water called Union Point. When I went to go meet the people there, I just sort of immediately knew this was a group of people I wanted to follow.
DETROW: Yeah, right away?
SHEALY: Right away. I mean, the first person I spoke with, her name was Deanna Riley. She was 45. She'd been homeless for a little over a decade. A lot of her kids were homeless, too. And people at the park, they actually called her Mama D. Like, grown adults called her mom. And she had six tents there at the park.
DETROW: All right, let's listen to a little bit of that.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "SNAP JUDGMENT")
DEANNA RILEY: The one tent escalated into many tents. I had to have one for my bathtub.
SHEALY: Your bathtub had its own tent?
RILEY: Yeah.
SHEALY: And how'd you get hot water in it?
RILEY: Boil it.
SHEALY: You had, like, a little stove?
RILEY: Like, propane - I had one of those, and I used to just put big pots of water on.
SHEALY: What were your other tents for? You have six - one for your bathtub, one for your clothes...
RILEY: One for your clothes, one for just a girls' spot if we wanted to go and just be girls 'cause I had a lot of nieces out there, too.
SHEALY: Anyway, for a few reasons, the city was desperate to get Mama D and the others who were living at Union Point out of the park. And when public works employees came to sweep the encampment, this group of people actually organized to keep the city out. So they had elections. There was a mayor and a spokesperson. And then they actually went around collecting large items like a broken dishwasher and a toilet seat and a busted-up mattress. And they used these items to build a barricade around their tent encampment. And yeah, there was a dayslong standoff with public works employees.
DETROW: What happened next? - because often, there can be a standoff for a little bit of time, but people clear the encampment. What happened next?
SHEALY: Right. The residents, they did this really remarkable thing. They refused the city's usual offer of temporary housing, and they negotiated for something better, something they wanted.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "SNAP JUDGMENT")
RILEY: Running water.
MATT: Showers and a bathroom.
RILEY: A parcel for three to five years.
MATT: Weekly trash pickup, a tiny house community and of our own.
RILEY: And we don't want to go without each other.
SHEALY: Most importantly...
MATT: A certain level of autonomy.
SHEALY: The city agreed to support this group to build their own little village on a plot of city land. And the residents themselves, they would get to decide the rules. And the idea was that if it worked, you know, if the people at the park could really pull this off, they hoped that they'd set an example, sort of a model that could help other homeless people in Oakland.
DETROW: So this experiment is under way. You're reporting this out. I'm wondering - what surprised you the most as you spent time with Mama D and the others there?
SHEALY: Yeah, I really don't want to give away any spoilers 'cause I really think everyone should listen to the end. But what I can say is that I stuck with this group for over a year. And each time I was with them, something happened that, like, was not at all what I had expected. There was this one group meeting, for example, and it was after months and months of this group waiting for a plot of land for their experiment. And the city finally announced that they'd found a spot. The piece of land was actually in this really nice location, and I thought everyone would be thrilled. But it was quite the opposite.
(SOUNDBITE OF PODCAST, "SNAP JUDGMENT")
RILEY: The site period is an issue for me. We'd have these houses, but did anybody see their child put in a body bag and have to see that [expletive] every day? No. Nobody did but me.
SHEALY: Mama D's son was murdered across the street from this plot of land that they were offered. Like, if you stood on the site and looked across, you could see the actual place where Mama D saw her son get zipped up in a body bag. And obviously, she didn't want to have to wake up to that every day. And while the other residents were initially super jazzed about this plot of land, they ultimately said they wouldn't go without her.
DETROW: So you've got this group of people in this interesting position, kind of sorting out really intense issues like that. What - again, without giving away, what plays out? What were your takeaways from reporting this and seeing all of this?
SHEALY: I think if you listen through the end, you'll really come to see through these people's stories that getting any real kind of housing is just a total gauntlet. I came into reporting this story with the idea that there are these services out there that can help homeless people get into real homes. But I was shocked to learn how much these, you know, lifelines or safety nets don't offer. And so I think the big question that the stories we hear in this series asks is, you know, once you're homeless or once you run out of money in this country, are the choices you're left with even real choices at all?
DETROW: That is Shaina Shealy, host of the podcast series "A Tiny Plot" from KQED's "Snap Judgment." Thank you so much for coming in to talk about it.
SHEALY: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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