Covenant House stirs up debate in Jack London District
Long term residents of the Jack London District have certainly seen some changes over the years, and they've certainly seen their fare share of hot topics on the tips of local's tongues. But few could have been hotter than the issue of Covenant House wanting to put a shelter for housing homeless youths in the area. Now even the global news giant Associated Press has picked up our local Oakland Tribune story on the topic.

Jerry Brown, owner of the building that Covenant wants to purchase calls it a "back-fence spat with a disgruntled neighbor who has opposed more than one Jack London Square project." It's not at all clear who he is referring to by "disgruntled neighbor" because his immediate neighbor actually spoke out for the recent Jack London Square redevelopment project, and most of those who opposed it are not taking a strong anti-Covenant position, just insisting on controls on how it can operate the facility - those any neighbor in their right mind would ask for, including Mayor Brown.

Perhaps Brown is referring to the entire district as his "neighbor"? If so then he should consider that many of those neighbors most opposed to the Covenant House plan are actually property owning ones brought to the neighborhood in recent years by his own "10k plan". In a society that increasingly focuses on property ownership it is natural that people become defensive about issues they perceive will threaten their property values. In fact in the last decade or so it has become almost an expected right that property values will increase, or at the very least remain steady.

Long time property owners like Brown can sit back and reap the benefits of property value increases of one hundred, two hundred or even more percent. Alameda County tax records currently assess 200 Harrison St at a shade over $1.5M (much more than he paid for it) and the sale will certainly net him well over $3M. However recent purchasers, particularly first timers in his 10k plan who have stretched finances like never before to get their first home in the Bay Area, find that even small variations in property values can have serious impacts the pocket book, mobility and general feelings of security.

Beyond property values residents who are opposed to or undecided about this project have frequently expressed dismay about the lack of information they have received on it from Covenant. Even the most well connected people in the district got only two weeks notice of an impending City meeting to vote on the project approval. During that time Covenant then held a community meeting with very short notice that drew only a couple of dozen local residents. The meeting, while initially informative, most closely resembled a PR pitch by a product company or a political cause. Covenant may have a good story to tell, they may have great successes to show for it, but that didn't come across at the meeting. As residents got frustrated by Covenant's inability to give a straight and factual answers even basic questions (like how many of their kids are forced to leave because they wont abide by the rules) tempers frayed and questions got more hostile and answers more evasive.

The recently formed Jack London District Association managed to collate a large number of comments it received from locals and passed those on to the City staff member preparing a staff report and the conditional use permit for the planning commission meeting. As a result some significant conditions were imposed on how Covenant might operate its facility and some people were starting to feel better about the project - even though they knew it had essentially been railroaded into their neighborhood.

Then it appears the original hearing of the conditional use permit application by the planning commission got pushed back to June 1st. The official reason was that the City had not met the Sunshine Ordinance requirements for providing paperwork about the meeting to the public with sufficient notice. Regulars of City meetings have seen this Sunshine Ordinance flouted in Oakland with reckless abandon and complained bitterly before with little effect, why the sudden attention to detail? Could it be that Covenant House need more time to prepare and that those in City Hall supporting them (among others Mayor Brown, Nancy Nadel and City Manager Deborah Edgerley) wanted to help? Could it also be that they expected there would be a legal appeal to any decision and wanted to make sure the eyes were dotted and tees crossed?

Those talking about the good work Covenant for homeless youths seem to prefer the term "kids" - we all have an inherent empathy for the plight of kids. Certainly at other facilities Covenant does work with under 18-year olds, but at the one planned for 200 Harrison it is 18 and over "kids" - young adults in anyone else's book. At 18 they can fight and die for their country, be in a jury of their peers, or in fact do pretty much anything legally except buy alcohol. Aside from those legal things they can also get in a whole mess of trouble. Covenant can't say what kind of trouble their charges are in - sometimes they are homeless through no fault of their own, sometimes, well it appears they just don't know. Covenant went on the record that they don't check criminal records during admission, that's information they appear to expect their charges to volunteer.

In at least one case in Houston a murder suspect showed up along at a Covenant House facility, the murder weapon stashed in a drain pipe nearby. In another a teenage fugitive who had been on the run for 10 weeks was staying at the same Covenant House when he gave himself up. These are the kinds of nightmare stories that keep some neighbors up at night, what if such a person came to my local Covenant House facility and my kid/wife/daughter was the one closest by when things went bad?

Statistically such events may be insignificant, just think about how much crime there is from regular citizens who aren't in a shelter of any sort, but it certainly doesn't help when Covenant wont even provide information about such incidents to future neighbors - even when they expressly request it. People want to hear about the worst and the best and make their own judgement. If all they ever here is the good PR they are naturally going to be suspicious and untrusting of this project. Its natural that Covenant doesn't want to scare anyone needlessly, but in this day and age its extremely hard to bury information about such unfortunate prior incidents. Their best bet is to inform and educate people as to what has changed to ensure such things wont happen again.

In the mean time this writer for one is still sitting on the fence. That's a metaphoric fence and not the literal one that many in my building want Covenant to build around the roof deck of 200 Harrison St. When you post a security guard with a metal detector at the entrance to your premises who checks for weapons isn't it natural you'd want to protect other perimeters? Clearly Covenant believes weapons in their facilities is a problem they have to deal with and have preventive measures for. But what if a friend tossed one onto the roof of an adjacent building? What if a "kid" did what every kid has done at one time or another and climbed out of a window - then across a deck and onto a roof??? There you have it, one weapon in the facility and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to get it there.

Or what if a facility was located in an area where loud late night street partying was prone to break out on a weekend night. Wouldn't you want to discourage anyone from easily leaving the facility and crossing across neighboring roofs to have a little extra fun? Sure most of their charges know that's strictly against the rules and could get them kicked out of a good program, but what about those who are not doing well anyway and might eventually be asked to leave anyway? A fence around the deck would be a simple and relatively inexpensive fix that would engender a lot of good will with neighbors. Yet we've heard that Covenant has hired a property use attorney to fight the condition in the City's conditional user permit that requires it. Why not just talk to residents and inspect the problem from their perspective first? Maybe you could come up with a compromise acceptable to all before bringing in the lawyers?

However, no matter what happens at Wednesday's planning commission meeting one thing is certain, there will be quite a debate among those present. We can expect numerous people to speak on behalf of Covenant providing more and more annecdotal support, and we can expect significant input and lets face it, outcry, from some of the local community. Then its anyone's guess what will happen.

Many expect, as do I, that the approval in some form or the other is a foregone conclusion - there are just too many of the aforementioned well connected supporters at City Hall to allow anyone to let Jack London District residents block the deal, evne if it turns out that they represent the majority opinion. What remains to be seen is whether those who oppose it will come out with their integrity intact, or labeled yet again as discredited loud mouthed NIMBYs who should be ignored no matter what.

If nothing else it will have been a good opportunity for many people to get involved for the first time in their local community and government decision making processes. Even if their opinion is not acted on its good for people to know who it is that is not listening to them and to understand the process by which the City of Oakland makes such decisions and how to get their voice heard better the next time. Come election time such information is sure to be useful...
Posted 5/30/2005