Judge blocks sweep in West Berkeley, while tensions rise over homeless camp by Berkeley High

A judge has temporarily blocked Berkeley from shutting down this encampment around Eighth and Harrison streets. Credit: Alex N. Gecan

A federal judge has temporarily blocked Berkeley from clearing out an encampment of residents living in tents, vehicles and lean-tos near Eighth and Harrison streets after a group of those residents filed a federal civil suit seeking a restraining order against the city.

The civil suit comes as activist groups have locked horns over another smaller camp, in and around Civic Center Park, after a Berkeley High School student reported being groped there. Some members of the high school community have pushed to close the camp in the name of student safety, while some students have been engaged in advocacy opposing the city’s sweeps policy as harmful to the unhoused.

Berkeley Mayor Adena Ishii has scheduled a public safety meeting to discuss the incident later this month. A homeless advocacy group noted that the suspect in the case does not live in Civic Center Park.

The Where Do We Go protest encampment on Oct. 15 outside Old City Hall. Berkeley cleared out this encampment on Dec. 10, roughly three months after it was set up to protest the city’s new, more aggressive stance on clearing encampments just like it. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside/CatchLight Local

The city was looking to close the larger camp at Eighth and Harrison over what it has referred to as “significant health and safety hazards” — syringes, feces, rotting food and evidence that rodents were running amok. But residents and their advocates, along with volunteers, have undertaken widespread cleanup efforts in recent weeks in hopes of preventing the closure, according to court records. 

That camp has been the focus of another civil suit in state superior court, filed in September, where a group of residents and businesses asked the court to order the city to shut down that encampment and others.

The suit was filed the day before Berkeley finalized a more aggressive policy on closing camps, removing its promise to only close camps when other housing is available, as long as there are certain public health and safety risks at stake. The new policy followed a ruling earlier in the year by the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority that broadened cities’ authority to remove encampments.

On Jan. 7 the city ordered everyone camping in the area of the Eighth and Harrison camp to leave by Feb. 10, and take all personal property with them, and also warned that any vehicles — several campers live in vans or recreational vehicles — could be towed if they were not properly licensed, registered and “in good working order.” Notices posted by the city stated that “anyone remaining in this area after that date will be subject to citation or arrest, and any personal property will be subject to immediate removal by the city.” The city’s notices conceded it could store some personal property but made no guarantees.

Several camp residents appealed the order, but a city administrative hearing examiner denied the appeal after a Jan. 22 hearing.

Camp residents Adrien Bouchard, Nicholas Johnson and Frank Moore, who are disabled, requested accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act and, according to a federal civil complaint filed Tuesday, claim they were improperly denied.

The complaint argues that the closure would endanger residents’ lives, that the city violated the ADA and that the city’s encampment closure policy “is arbitrary and unconstitutional,” among other allegations. The residents claim the city was unlawfully endangering them, conducting illegal searches and seizures and discriminating against disabled residents.

Attorneys for the city deny violating the ADA, creating danger for camp residents or discriminating against the residents.

The Berkeley Homeless Union is also listed as a plaintiff, but since it is not, as yet, represented by an attorney, U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. has opted to consider only Bouchard, Johnson and Moore’s allegations.

Bouchard said he had been unable to walk for 10 years, relies on crutches and lives in an RV decked out with a rope system to help him get out of bed and move around. With an expired registration on the RV and parking tickets piling up, he said his supplemental security income was not enough to get the vehicle properly squared away. “This community is vital to my well-being,” he wrote in a court statement. “Losing it would leave me isolated and without the help I need.”

Johnson said in a court filing that for the seven years he’s lived in the camp, “I have always kept my area around my RV clean.” He said he would not be able to afford the gas or time it would take to move the RV every few days and that leaving would cut off the food he relies on from mutual aid groups that come through the neighborhood and aggravate his anxiety, depression and other behavioral health diagnoses.

Moore, who lives with physical and mental disabilities, said if he lost his gear, he would no longer be able to keep his dog safe, and that his tent is “tailored to my disability needs.” Unable to stand for long periods, he asked not to be forced to move away from health care services he visits regularly. He also said he relied on his community of unhoused neighbors and volunteers to help him with tasks he finds difficult.

All three pleaded to be able to retain stable living conditions.

City’s says lawsuit was filed before ADA grievance process could play out

In a response filed Thursday, attorneys for the city wrote that the city and the administration officials named in the case — City Manager Paul Buddenhagen, ADA Program Coordinator Thomas Gregory, Homeless Response Team worker Okeya Vance-Dozier and Peter Radu, assistant to Buddenhagen — had given camp residents plenty of time to make new living arrangements.

Camp residents “cannot manufacture causes of action by waiting to bring suit after the compliance deadline rather than working to comply with the city’s nuisance abatement order,” according to a response filed by Marc Shapp, a deputy city attorney.

City workers remove a tent from a homeless encampment on 8th and Harrison streets during one phase of an earlier closure on Nov. 7, 2023. Credit: Supriya Yelimeli

Shapp wrote that “Bouchard and Moore’s requested accommodation — to be allowed to ignore the order to leave the Harrison corridor — was not reasonable in that it would fundamentally alter the nature of the activity in question,” referring to the order to leave the area.

And while Johnson filed an accommodation request Feb. 3, “rather than continue the interactive process, BHU filed a formal ADA grievance on Feb. 7, 2025, and then this lawsuit ensued shortly thereafter.”

Shapp said the three residents had delivered “delayed responses, late requests and repeated insistence on asserting their purported right to stay in place despite an order to leave the area,” and so the Feb. 10 deadline had come and gone before any ADA negotiations could be completed.

Judge Gilliam wrote that, since the result of the appeal was not posted until Jan. 31, just 10 days before the deadline to clear out, that “it is not clear that plaintiffs unduly delayed in requesting any ADA accommodation,” and that the city’s assertions of trying to work with the plaintiffs was “not indisputable.” He also took note that camp residents had undertaken “considerable efforts to clean up at least some of the conditions” that prompted the closure order. He issued a temporary restraining order “to maintain the status quo until the earliest possible hearing” on whether it would continue.

As for why the city did not proceed with the closure on Feb. 10, before the lawsuit was filed, the city’s court response addresses that as well: “The city has not yet moved to enforce the nuisance abatement order because the city does not publicize the exact dates of its planned operations,” Shapp wrote.

Representatives from the Berkeley Homeless Union have not responded to requests for comment.

A motion hearing in the federal case is scheduled for Feb. 20.

Some BHS students and families at odds over Civic Center Park encampment

Some Berkeley High School families have recently pressured the city to close  the nearby camp at Civic Center Park after an unhoused man was charged with misdemeanor sexual battery for allegedly slapping the buttocks of a female Berkeley High student on Jan. 29. The same man was previously arrested and charged with indecent exposure in 2019, although that charge was later dismissed.

In an email to Berkeleyside, Rebecca Levenson, a BHS parent and activist against sexual harassment, said the encampment there represented a growing danger to students. Though she acknowledged the need to balance safety with “the needs of vulnerable individuals,” she said the city should not allow an encampment so close to a school.

At last week’s Berkeley school board meeting, several students asked the board and city to take action against the camp, citing several instances of harassment and assault and unhoused people walking onto campus.

Other students, however, have planned a protest march Friday from Shattuck Avenue and Center Street, demanding an end to camp closures citywide and asking the city to do more to find unhoused Berkeleyans housing.

While the suspect himself was not reachable for comment, an attorney for a homeless advocacy nonprofit said the man didn’t live at Civic Center Park.

Organizers of Where Do We Go? in Berkeley set up tents this fall outside the Old City Hall. Credit: Ximena Natera, Berkeleyside/CatchLight Local

“The media and others have unfairly blamed the residents for this act,” Andrea Henson, who leads the advocacy group Where Do We Go, wrote in an email responding to a Berkeleyside inquiry. Park residents, she said, were being used as “scapegoats.” She blamed the city itself for the camp’s existence because the city closed down a camp across the street at Old City Hall.

While the city had found housing for some of that camp’s residents, others were still waiting on placement when the closure took place.

Mayor Ishii and Councilmember Igor Tregub, who represents the district that includes Civic Center Park, have planned a public safety meeting for Feb. 26 from 5:30 to 7 p.m., at a location to be determined. People can register for the meeting online.

Berkeley police have ramped up patrols in the area. Meanwhile, Ishii and Tregub have been meeting with BHS families. They have said that the city simply doesn’t have the resources to pivot from the camps in Northwest Berkeley to the one at Civic Center Park.

While the city’s policy has become more aggressive, the number of staff available can’t address the issue on all fronts at once, officials have said. “Folks are expecting the policy to be carried out expeditiously, and that’s just really not possible right now,” Ishii said in a phone interview.

The lack of resources also makes it difficult to get resources, including housing, to the people that need it, she said, adding that the forecast is especially gloomy with federal resources expected to dwindle under a new administration.

“We are in really challenging times, and I do think that it’s important that as a community, we can come together on these issues that we can really have an impact on locally,” Ishii said. “This is not an issue that’s just black-and-white — there’s so much nuance here.”