People's Park in Berkeley remains closed to public Thursday night
BERKELEY -- Streets remained closed in the area of People's Park in Berkeley as crews worked Thursday night to completely shut off the park to the public.
Hundreds of officers from the University police department and the California Highway Patrol were on patrol to keep closures in place as UC Berkeley moved ahead with a plan to build housing at People's Park.
"It's pretty intimidating having police cars all around your house," Cal student Kyusek Oh observed.
Oh lives inside the barricade zone and he says that, for the most part, it has been easy to get in and out of the area with a proof of residency. He said that, over the years, he's noticed changes at People's Park.
"I've been here for six years now ... since my freshman year. It is a bit sketchy I guess, a bit scary," Oh said.
According to university spokesperson Dan Mogulof, the effort to stack shipping containers around the park to close it off to the public was carefully planned to minimize disruption to neighbors and for safety.
"Since we stopped enforcing the no-camping rule because of the pandemic, this has become the locus of serious crime and, more often then not, it's been the unhoused people that have been targeted by that crime," Mogulof said.
Some residents are disappointed by the way the university and the city have handled the process.
"There is a little touch of -- I wouldn't say pain but it's like hurt. There is a little touch of hurt," Berkeley resident Stacey Hill said.
Hill says he remembers being here in the 1960s when the park was a hotbed of social activism. On a personal note, this was the where his aunt started going into labor.
He said the park represents "History -- a lot of history."
The university says about 60 percent of the site will remain open green space. The rest will be a combination of student and low income housing.
While the need for student housing is critical, Kyusek Oh wonders what kind of impact the project will have.
"The rents are pretty high up here. Maybe, if they build a new one there, it might relieve the housing costs or it might increase the housing costs because it became a better place to live here," Oh said.
The barricades will remain in place until fencing is installed. There's no word on when that will be done.
As for when the actual construction will start, the state Supreme Court still needs to weigh in on the university's appeal of a ruling that is currently blocking the project from moving forward.