New Wood Street Doc Tells Inside Story of Oakland’s Self-Organized Encampment

The Wood Street encampment, built on a stretch of land along the 880 freeway and train tracks in West Oakland, was once the largest homeless encampment in northern California. At its height, the site was home to some 300 people.

And it was organized. A group of residents founded the Wood Street Commons, which functioned as a self-organized community space, with free meals, a “free store,” facilities for health care, a community garden, power and water infrastructure, and shared spaces for residents and friends to gather, which later functioned as a space for meetings with city officials to air demands and grievances.

For residents, Wood Street meant a place where police and city officials wouldn’t continually force them to move. Today, it’s gone — in early 2023, the encampment was cleared, leaving former residents scattered. Some were offered housing nearby on a “cabin site” (basically Tuff Sheds) that closed two years later in June 2025, forcing the residents out. Others were scattered throughout West Oakland and other parts of the city.

Journalist and documentary filmmaker Caron Creighton has spent years filming with the Wood Street residents, including John Janosko, who organized and fought the city’s evictions.

Bay Area Current spoke with Creighton and Janosko about the documentary, the struggle, and what’s to come.

Padmini Raghunath: Could you paint a picture of how Wood Street used to be and talk a little bit about how it was formed?

John Janosko: Wood Street was formed about ten years ago. Homelessness had started blowing up and encampments were popping up all through the city of Oakland and throughout the county of Alameda. The city of Oakland administration directed the Oakland Police Department to start sending people to Wood Street and telling 'em that if you go down there, you won't be bothered, you won't be swept, nobody will mess with your stuff. And so it was just this big migration of unhoused people in Oakland, Alameda County, and Contra Costa County. They all started just coming down to Wood Street.

After about six months to a year, the city finally decided to bring porta-potties down there. And also those center divider barriers, sort of like a safety barrier.

Over time it grew to about 75 people living at the Wood Street Commons lot.

PR: I really appreciate you helping us understand the story in the context of all these other moves.

JJ: You know, the homeless situation just came out of nowhere in a sense, and I think they didn't really know what to do. When I became homeless, a couple of us moved behind the tennis court at Mosswood Park like 12 years ago. There was a strip of land that was Caltrans that was just trees and bushes and a little open patch and we just took over that lot.

And it [Mosswood] started growing just because we built nice little structures. We went out at night and got food from Safeway — all the old food, expired food, and stuff that isn’t pretty enough to be in the produce section and they would put it out on pallets in the back, all nice and neat in boxes. And we would go through that and take pushcarts down Broadway and feed our community.

We were just a little bit more organized, and I remember when Caltrans first came to evict us from there, they saw what we had built, you know, the structures and stuff, and they actually said, we're gonna hold off on destroying this. We gotta go talk to our supervisor about this because we're not really sure we're supposed to be doing this.

And they came back a couple weeks later with their supervisors and took pictures and that was our first time ever being in the news. It just seemed like encampments started growing and I think Caltrans was trying to figure out what they were gonna do.

So I think, Caltrans and the city, maybe they had conversations. And they just directed everyone down to Wood Street because there was no residential stuff there. It was just industrial, next to, you know, the freeway and also the train tracks. They didn't know what to do, but they knew they had an empty space in West Oakland and so they wanted to keep all the unhoused people in one place, just a way to monitor us.

PR: For people who've never been there, could you paint a picture of what Wood Street Commons was like and how you made that place home?

JJ: Whatever lot we were on, whatever piece of ground we were on, we always treat it like home. When I say make it home, like the first thing we would do is I'd go scouting at night for carpets and pallets to make a living room. So you get a bunch of pallets, you lay those down, you find a carpet, put the carpet on top of it. Now you start bringing back couches because, you know, people give away all this great free stuff in front of their houses.

I started building our community center, our community space where everybody can hang out. 

We had a community kitchen where later on we started getting a lot of donations. We could organize all our food and stuff. It was also a place for other unhoused people in West Oakland to come by and get a hot meal. I'm a chef; I love to cook, so we're always cooking. I wanted people to have at least one good meal a day.

We all had a part in making it a home and making it what it was. We just got organized and then we started considering like, “Damn, well, why doesn't the city of Oakland just give us this land so we could make a real community here?”

We all had a part in making it a home and making it what it was. We just got organized and then we started considering like, “Damn, well, why doesn't the city of Oakland just give us this land so we could make a real community here?”

PR: John, do you remember the first time you met Caron?

JJ: I just remember her being there, being a friend and somebody who cared about us. And then there started being questions about doing a documentary. I wanted somebody to do a documentary about us so that more people could see who we are as people. And she's always just been there showing up to support us.

PR:  Caron, what made you want to make this documentary.

CC: My dad's had some struggles throughout his life and so I have some personal connections that make me care about the issue of homelessness.

But specifically for Wood Street, there was just always interesting shit happening there. I started to get to know Wood Street when I met Artists Building Communities. They were building a little house in the back of Wood Street under the highway.

JJ: Sorry to interrupt. Sorry to interrupt. She was a journalist! For the San Francisco Chronicle.

CC: Yeah [chuckles]. I was working for the Chronicle and so I did a video and I was just kinda like, damn, this place is interesting. And then I did a couple of podcast episodes for the Chronicle on Wood Street. They were facing eviction in 2021. A year later they were facing eviction [again], and it seemed more imminent. I was just so struck by seeing this group of unhoused people coming together and taking the state to court. I was just like, that is powerful.

I felt like I could spend my whole life just reporting on Wood Street. So I quit my job and, you know, bought a camera and have been hanging out with them ever since.

PR: We can't really talk about the story without talking about the eviction. Could you talk about finding out that this eviction was gonna happen and how things unfolded?

JJ: They lied to us throughout this [eviction] process, so it made it even harder because we thought we actually had a chance to be there. And then finally that day came where we were gonna have to move.

They came with like, seriously, like 80 police officers, like 30 highway patrol people. They started from the back, week by week just going through it with bulldozers and just terrorizing the community, throwing everybody’s stuff away.

They came with like, seriously, like 80 police officers, like 30 highway patrol people. They started from the back, week by week just going through it with bulldozers and just terrorizing the community, throwing everybody’s stuff away.

We were lucky to a certain degree because we were in the front. We had the strongest resistance, and we were also on city-owned land. But Caltrans land — they came through with like 200 people every day and just barricaded stuff off and tore homes down. It was insane, honestly. It was really insane. And there was no emotion from these people [John chokes up].

Even though it wasn't the perfect place to live or be, it still was our home. We felt safe there. We knew everybody. We had respect for everybody.

And when they finally got to the front of 1707 Wood Street, we watched. We just sat there. There's not much you can do. In a week, we just saw everything we built, gone, just destroyed. And everything that was left was just on the street.

It was terrifying, and it was just hurtful and just disrespectful. Even now, when they close encampments [around the area], it brings up the emotion. It hurts the same because it's chiseling away at our history.

To this day it brings up so much anger and frustration at the system and how people are treated, because of their circumstances.

But even though it was very painful, it gave us strength, knowledge, this bond that most people in so-called normal society never actually have with people living next door to them. I have hundreds of people that I can call my friends because of being on Wood Street that I care about. It wasn't just a phase or a period of my life. Regardless if I'm housed or not housed and stuff, you know, I would do it all over again the same way because I love my community.

PR: Tell me about some of the strategies you guys were using to fight.

JJ: You can't create a foundation if you're getting moved every week, every two weeks or every month or every three months. If you don't know what your future looks like, there's no way that you can thrive living in a situation like that. That's our strategy. Bringing more resources so there's just more support for the people out there. So more people have an opportunity to do the things that I've been able to do — think, slow my mind down, you know, breathe, drink clean water, have a conversation, walk in normal society, as we call it, and not feel ashamed about who I am.

Now we're at a place where we're able to talk to the mayor's office, city administrators, housing directors and stuff. Unhoused people are the professionals in all of this.

PR: It seems like some of the interest that the city has in that land now is just the value of the property itself.

CC: Part of the reason that the city wanted to move folks off of the lot was because they said they wanted to build affordable housing. Two years later it’s still sitting empty and being used as a parking lot for the Oakland Ballers. I think the development there is held up. There was a sign outside that said a hundred percent affordable housing, and we now know that that was a bold-faced lie. The housing there is not affordable. Almost 90 percent are market-rate apartments.

JJ: I want to say this too. The reason why there's always so much trash at these big encampments is because the city of Oakland doesn't provide trash removal services. They told us when we were living out there to dump our trash at the corner.

We actually offered to pay for the trash removal service while we were at 1707 Wood Street. That would've cost us like $500 a month, but we were willing to pay for it so that we wouldn't have people driving by and seeing all these piles of trash.

I just like saying that because the city was a big part of the negative narrative that was set up against the unhoused people. And I think people need to know that. We didn't wanna live in filth, but our resources were very limited. We didn't have money to drive all the way to San Leandro, put gas in a truck and dump it. The city seems to always get away with not being held responsible for the narrative that they created.

PR: Yeah. And it just seems like there is no real strategy. It's just like you move people around, you continue to deny services. You'd mentioned John, that things are just becoming more, much more actively hostile towards people living on the street right now.

JJ: We're in a bad place and we're in a good place. A lot of people can't see the movement that's been happening behind the scenes with unhoused people on different boards and different committees. I think in the next couple of years, we'll be able to see that change.

But also, we're in a dark place because of our administration. The federal administration right now is Donald Trump and he's outta control. On the city level, the order Sheng Thao and Gavin Newsom left in place was to clear all encampments. They didn't have a plan. They just want all the encampments clear.

It's not that the number of unhoused people is going down, it's just that they're scattered around. It’s just that you can’t really see the good unless you're like someone on the ground level in contact with people.

We have Measure W funding, it's gonna be available in the summertime. We're going to present different ideas to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors this month, and hopefully that money gets to the right sources this time.

CC: I'll also add that part of the reason encampment evictions have escalated in the last year or so is because of the Supreme Court ruling Grants Pass v. Johnson, which criminalized being homeless basically and makes it easier for cities and states to push people out of spaces.

I feel like that's empowered Governor Newsom to issue more ordinances. He makes statements every few months telling cities, you know, “We'll revoke your funding if you don't clear more homeless encampments.”

There's a ton going on that has increased the aggression of sweeps — [like] another ordinance that makes it more challenging for journalists to report on sweeps.

PR: How can people get involved?

JJ: I would tell people to go follow the Wood Street Commons Instagram. We do outreach every Sunday where we go to a different encampment and we feed 'em, bring harm reduction supplies, clothes. We play music, we hang out with 'em. We usually spend four to six hours at encampments, and we usually will try to go back to back to back to the same one for about a month. Just depending on what's going on with them: if there's an eviction looming over 'em and making sure they are connected to resources. And really just, [letting them] know that somebody out there loves 'em and that cares about 'em.

Bring somebody with you 'cause I know they can be scary and stuff, but you know, when you have something to offer, that brings people outside.

And you can always donate to the Commons Community nonprofit. One more thing too — donate to the film, woodstreetmovie.com. We're trying to raise $30,000 so Caron can finish the editing so that she can go out and present to these film festivals.

I wanna make sure that Caron gets a big shout out because even though it was sad, this is just another way our history is being saved, and it's very important that this film is finished and done.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. You can make donations to the Wood Street Commons, a mutual aid group for and by unhoused people. You can support the Wood Street documentary at woodstreetmovie.com.