Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee introduces five-point plan to address homelessness
CNN Newsource
By Amanda Hari
Click here for updates on this story
OAKLAND (KPIX) — Politics Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee introduces five-point plan to address homelessness sanfrancisco By Amanda Hari August 27, 2025 / 5:00 AM PDT / CBS San Francisco
Mayor Barbara Lee has a new initiative to combat homelessness in Oakland. She introduced a five-point plan, focused on prevention and outreach, as well as creating a new city office, the “Office of Homelessness Solutions.”
An advocate for the unhoused, Freeway, hopes she does it while still recognizing the humanity of those living on the street.
“I’m really hopeful that she will continue to put the voices of the most impacted first and foremost,” said Freeway
They say the unhoused are struggling to survive. Something Freeway experienced for years.
“Myself, I was unhoused for eight years,” said Freeway. “Me and my partner were.”
They have housing now, but they know all too well the reality of constantly worrying about safety and being moved from place to place.
“We have watched sweep, after sweep, happen for the past eight years and watched countless lives be impacted so negatively,” Freeway explained. “The impacts that it has on your health, both mental and physical, and we’ve lost a lot of friends that way.”
Freeway thinks Lee’s new “Office of Homelessness Solutions” and her five-point plan may end the sweeps.
The plan includes support to stop more people from becoming unhoused, deploying outreach workers to help those currently on the streets, providing support, temporary housing, and finally building permanent housing.
District 7 City Council member Ken Houston believes this is what needs to happen.
“It was almost like perfect science,” said Houston. “We have measure W, we have the mayor’s five-point plan, and then we have the encampment abatement plan.”
Measure W is funding the new office, it was a 2020 Alameda County tax measure implementing a 10-year, half-cent sales tax, most of the money will go towards homelessness services and housing.
The encampment abatement plan is Houston’s proposal to aggressively clear encampments. The city council will vote on that in September. Houston thinks the best part of the mayor’s five-point plan is the first point, prevention and helping those with mental illnesses and alcohol or drug addiction.
“How you prevent it is you help the mental and the AODs, you give them the services that you need,” Houston explained. “Then you get them housing. You get them shelter and services first, and then housing. Because if a person is mental, if a person is AOD, how can they hold on to housing? They can’t.”
Freeway hopes that while all this is being executed, leaders don’t lose sight of the toll homelessness has taken on the community and remember those who have lost their lives to homelessness.
“And we lean on those memories and those people who are no longer with us to continue to fight for them,” said Freeway.