Shocking footage has emerged showing a gigantic shantytown that has sprung up in Oakland, as the California city’s slide into crime-ravaged squalor continues.
Michael Oxford, the host of CaliBased, posted a video on May 31 of massive temporary houses built along service roads that open up into main roads in Hooverville, Oakland.
The footage showed trash strewn around the houses that were built of wood, tarp and other discarded materials.
Particularly shocking was just how large the shantytown is, with a large stretch of road in the Bay Area city covered with the makeshift dwellings.
Oxford could be heard calling the area a ‘shantytown’ that is ‘absolutely mindboggling,’ as he remarked how ‘insane it is that [city officials] allow this.’
He captioned the video, ‘Parts of Oakland are worse than a third world country. They just allow people to live in absolute squalor, wherever they choose.
‘This looks like Hooverville during the great depression. Welcome to Oakland’s very own Gavinville.’
Tom Wolf, a former homeless man who is a recovering heroin and fentanyl addict from San Francisco, also re-shared the same video and said, ‘Worse than any shanty in the third world. You know how we got here? Drugs.’
Earlier this month, city administrators were forced to remove traffic lights from one busy intersection and replaced them with stop signs after the electrical boxes that controlled the traffic lights were repeatedly tampered with and copper from them was stolen.
Local residents and those who own businesses in the area say the issue with the traffic lights stems from 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 the stop signs.
It is the latest in a string of copper thefts in California.
Videos have also emerged of thieves ransacking Tesla charging stations for the meta in Mya.
For months, the traffic lights malfunctioned. They either blinked red or went out completely, causing confusing and hazardous driving conditions in the area.
‘The city did try to fix the traffic light at least a few times. But once they fixed it, normally within a week or so, it will go out again,’ said Le, according to CBS News.
The real problem, he claims, are 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.
The groups were removed from the eight caves – along the Tuolumne River in Modesto and they were emptied of belongings, furniture and 7,600 lbs of rubbish, filling two trucks and a trailer.
Some of the caves were decorated with murals, had broken floor tiles and one even had a makeshift fireplace with a chimney.
Modesto Police Department said: ‘This particular area has been plagued by vagrancy and illegal camps, which have raised concerns due to the fact that these camps were actually caves dug into the riverbanks.’
The community living in the caves had carved makeshift stairs into the hillside leading down to them. Some of the caves used to be fully furnished with bedding, belongings, food, a makeshift mantelpiece but also drugs and weapons, according to Rojas.
Oakland’s two most visible lawmakers – progressive Mayor Sheng Thao and her DA Pamela Price – are both facing recalls over soft-on-crime policies blamed for ruining the city.
One in thirty Oakland residents had their car stolen in 2023, with violent crime also soaring.
Thao backed defunding the police earlier in her career, with Price parroting her focus on ‘equity’ when prosecuting crimes.
Critics say she has effectively put the needs of criminals over those of victims.