Shocking images have emerged of a massive slum that has sprung up in Oakland, as the California city continues in crime-ridden squalor.
Michael Oxford, the host of CaliBased, posted a video on May 31 of massive temporary homes built along service roads that connect to main thoroughfares in Hooverville, Oakland.
The footage showed trash built from wood, tarpaulin and other discarded materials lying around the homes.
Particularly shocking was how large the slum is, with a large stretch of road in the Bay Area city covered in makeshift housing.
Oxford was heard calling the area a “slum” which was “absolutely mind-boggling” while noting how “insane it is that [city officials] allow this.’
Michael Oxford, the host of CaliBased, posted a video on May 31 of massive temporary homes built along service roads that connect to main roads in California’s newest Hooverville, Oakland.
He captioned the video: “Parts of Oakland are worse than a third world country. They just let people live in absolute misery wherever they want.
“This looks like Hooverville during the Great Depression. Welcome to Oakland’s very own Gavinville.”
Tom Wolf, a formerly homeless and recovering heroin and fentanyl addict from San Francisco, also reshared the same video and said‘Worse than any barracks in the developing world. Do you know how we got here? Drugs.’
Earlier this month, city officials were forced to remove traffic signals from a busy intersection and replace them with stop signs after the electrical boxes that control the traffic lights were repeatedly tampered with and copper stolen from them.
The footage showed trash built from wood, tarpaulin and other discarded materials being collected around homes
Oxford could be seen calling the area a ‘slum’ which is ‘absolutely baffling’ and how ‘insane it is that they allow this’.
Local residents and business owners in the area say the traffic light problem stems from the nearby homeless encampment, which has grown over the years.
The owner of an auto repair shop at the corner of the intersection, Tam Le, said the city is signaling it is “failing us” by installing the stop signs.
It is the latest in a series of copper thefts in California.
Videos have also surfaced of thieves looting Tesla charging stations for the meta in Mya.
The city of Oakland recently removed the traffic lights from a busy intersection and replaced them with stop signs
The traffic lights stopped functioning for months. They flashed red or turned off completely, causing confusing and dangerous driving conditions in the area. Some blame residents for a very nearby homeless camp.
The traffic lights stopped functioning for months. They flashed red or turned off completely, causing confusing and dangerous driving conditions in the area.
‘The city has tried to fix the traffic light a few times. But as soon as they fix it, usually within a week, it goes out again,” Le says CBS News.
The real problem, he claims, is the homeless who steal power from the city’s electrical boxes and the copper from the traffic lights themselves.
In January, groups of homeless people were found in furnished caves dug into the banks of a river, six meters below street level.
The groups were removed from the eight caves along Modesto’s Tuolumne River and stripped of belongings, furniture and 7,000 pounds of trash, filling two trucks and a trailer.
The caves were difficult to access and police didn’t know how they managed to get so much stuff down there
Some caves were fully furnished with an armchair, clothes and blankets
Some caves were decorated with murals, had broken floor tiles and one even had a makeshift fireplace and chimney.
Modesto police said, “This particular area is plagued with vagrancy and illegal camps, raising concerns due to the fact that these camps were actually caves dug into the riverbanks.”
The community living in the caves had a makeshift staircase carved into the hillside leading up to them. According to Rojas, some caves used to be fully furnished with bedding, belongings, food, an improvised mantelpiece, but also drugs and weapons.
Officials have not yet commented on Oxford’s video.