Davey D opens with the stakes in Oakland and beyond. Cities are floating policies that make it easier to disappear unhoused people, often by criminalizing basic survival. He notes how public narratives erase who is actually living outside in Oakland. Many are older Black residents. That reality sits in tension with Black leaders invoking civil rights language while backing punitive approaches.

Needa B frames the present through history. She draws a straight line from Black Codes and Jim Crow to today’s statutes that punish sleeping outdoors, cooking outdoors, or living in a vehicle. The target now is poor and unhoused people. She warns that dehumanizing one group opens the door to broader repression. Locally, she flags an Encampment Abatement Policy championed by Councilmember Kevin Jenkins and his chief of staff Ken Houston. The proposal would remove people living in vehicles from encampment protections, making quick tows and arrests possible without outreach or shelter offers.

Brandon Harami brings the inside baseball. He says Oakland’s own equity section admits that a majority of the unhoused are Black, with Latine residents the next largest group, and that most have long East Bay roots. He alleges Brown Act workarounds and a push to rush special meetings outside the rules process. On policy, Brandon argues that the city should deploy incoming county Measure W funds toward rapid, dignified hotel conversions rather than chase quick sweeps that only shuffle people block to block.

Needa cautions that Measure W will flow to service providers, not directly to cities, and that jurisdictions that criminalize will jeopardize both county and state funding under evidence based standards. Sweeps and tows are the costliest and most harmful path. The deeper problem, she says, is that California treats housing like a commodity rather than a right. Until deeply affordable homes are built at scale, the crisis will persist and rents will remain inflated.

The hour ends with a practical call to action. A special City Council meeting is imminent. Listeners are urged to contact their councilmembers to vote no and send the item back to the Life Enrichment Committee, and to sign the Village in Oakland petition for real housing solutions over criminalization.

Hard Knock Radio is a drive-time Hip-Hop talk show on KPFA (94.1fm @ 4-5 pm Monday-Friday), a community radio station without corporate underwriting, hosted by Davey D and Anita Johnson.

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