Woman Barricaded Inside Oakland Motel Leaves Peacefully After 16-Hour Protest - KQED

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They had tried to get into one of the county hotel rooms, but hadn't moved off a waiting list, they said. At 47, she has health problems that make her especially vulnerable to the virus. The couple had been using Rachel Clemente's disability checks to pay for motel rooms.

"We've been spending $85 here, $85 there, but now," Martin Clemente said, stopping short. His wife finished his sentence: "Now we don't have nowhere to go."

The couple met up with organizers outside the Palms Motel, where they helped get the Clementes a room for the night. Later that evening, the organizers did the same for a man and his young son, who also happened upon the protest.

"We have thousands of people in Oakland right now who don't have the ability to shelter in place because they are living in encampments, cars and RVs," said Talya Husbands-Hankins, an organizer with Love and Justice in the Streets, an advocacy organization for people experiencing homelessness. "This is a life and death emergency, and what we need is to save people's lives."

Romelita Bautista, a homeless resident of Oakland who lives at 37MLK, joined in a demonstration outside the Palms Motel in Oakland on Friday, May 22, 2020. Activist Stefani Echeverría-Fenn chained herself to a window in one of the rooms at the motel to call attention to the need for more hotel rooms. (Erin Baldassari/KQED)

Last summer, Echevarría-Fenn cut through the chain link fence bordering a vacant lot at 37th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in West Oakland, where she lives. The lot used to hold a gas station but had sat fallow for more than a decade.

She started helping unhoused neighbors move into the lot. Dubbed 37MLK, or "The Garden," it serves as home for around two dozen people. Unlike many encampments that line major thoroughfares in Oakland, the lot is neat and organized, has port-a-potties and a solar shower. It's home to primarily older women who grew up in West Oakland.

But then one of the resident's boyfriends tested positive for the coronavirus, putting all the other residents at risk, and supporters of the encampment moved to get people into rooms, where they could better self-isolate.

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Woman Barricaded Inside Oakland Motel Leaves Peacefully After 16-Hour Protest - KQED
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