The life and death of informal settlement in California

Encampments of unhoused people grew to among their largest levels ever in recent years, especially in California, where policy approaches to unsheltered homelessness have ranged from tacit tolerance and assistance to rapid evictions. This article presents research on the evolving political and regulatory contexts in which such settlements have grown, persisted, and been destroyed in the city of Oakland. Policies were long inconsistent and encampments grew massively during the COVID-19 Pandemic as cities invested in comparatively supportive on-site services; this changed, especially following the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grant’s Pass vs. Johnson, when California’s governor ordered that cities remove all encampments. Through policy analysis and extensive site documentation and ethnographic fieldwork, this study analyzes cases of several large settlements in terms of architectures and land use, legal contexts, and community life, demonstrating their significance as urban places. The article argues that the destruction of large informal settlements can be understood as a formalized process of spatial erasure, caried out through policy enforcement by authorities targeting the physical places where people have built shelter, place, and community. As such, the life and death of informal settlement in California offers an illustrative case of “urbicide.”