A Tale of Two Towns: Albany, Orinda, and Homelessness

Orinda resident Maureen Sheehy seems to want to help homeless people.  Sounds good, doesn’t it?  

Many East Bay residents recall with distaste an incident from a few years ago, when Orinda residents rose up against a temporary emergency homeless shelter in their town.  It wasn’t going to be anything as significant or as expensive as the temporary shelter Albany has recently established at its waterfront.  Unlike Albany, Contra Costa County was not going to offer shelter to recently released convicts or active drug addicts.   It was just going to temporarily repurpose an old library in Orinda to help homeless families with kids, and the frail elderly, get through the winter.       

But Orinda firmly said no.  And that ‘no’ stuck.  Orinda had no homeless then and it has none today (and not because it has sheltered anyone). 

Contra Costa County’s most recent census of its homeless population notes the four who live in Danville, the four who live in San Ramon, even the single one living in Discovery Bay.  Orinda?  Not a mention. 

So where does Maureen Sheehy of Orinda want to house homeless people?  Perhaps there is another unused structure or piece of undeveloped land in that town where shelter could be offered?    

Well, no.   She doesn’t want them housed in Orinda.  Actually, she doesn’t seem to want them housed at all.  What she wants is to keep them right where they are:  in homeless encampments, without running water, isolated from transportation and services. 

Right here in Albany, on the Bulb. 

You see, Ms. Sheehy is not your typical homeless advocate.  She is a partner at a major San Francisco law firm and the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the case of Cody v. Albany.  

 She serves on the board of directors of the East Bay Community Law Center (EBCLC), a nonprofit that actually does a lot of good work serving the poor.  But the EBCLC also employs Osha Neumann, locally famed sculptor of the Bulb’s major artworks (with his daughter’s partner Jason de Antonis).  And Osha wants the homeless encampments to remain, along with his family's art works, unless and until Albany has the wherewithal to offer the campers something that they like better. 

How does Orinda’s capacity to help the homeless compare with Albany’s?  Here are a few figures from the Census Bureau’s Quick Facts about the two towns.  They are very close in size:  Orinda’s population is listed at 18,342, versus Albany’s 18,969.  But when it comes to economic firepower, Orinda outguns Albany pretty dramatically:  Orinda’s median household income, at $162,267, is more than double Albany’s figure of $73,728.  Over 10% of Albany’s population is living below the poverty line.  In Orinda?  Just 1.5%.  

So why, in the view of Ms. Sheehy and assorted other homeless advocates, is Albany obligated to keep the homeless living indefinitely in its waterfront park, until it can afford to entice them out with housing within its boundaries that they would prefer?   And, perhaps not so incidentally, pay her law firm and others involved in the case the enormous legal fees that will be generated by the small army of lawyers working the case?   While her own town of Orinda keeps homeless people O-U-T, free of any obligation to contribute either space or funds to the solution of what some of us might view as a regional problem?

Perhaps she can emerge from her Orinda castle (shown above) and explain.  Some of us down here in Albany would love to hear the answer.