Members of the Albany City Council:

We, the undersigned, oppose the expulsion of the community at the Albany Bulb until the City develops a plan to address the human and economic impacts that this eviction will have on the people of Albany—housed and unhoused.

Albany does not have a homeless shelter. Berkeley’s shelters are full. Bulb residents do not have a better option than staying in Albany. It’s neither realistic, nor fair, nor humane to expect to jettison human beings into Berkeley.

Albany does not have public housing, or designated low-income housing. The Berkeley Food and Housing Project has not yet been able to identify long-term, funded housing for a single Bulb resident.

If the City pushes people out of the Bulb without alternative housing, you will force our city’s homeless people to take refuge on the sidewalks of Albany just as the rainy season is beginning.

We insist that the City invest the resources necessary to find adequate, affordable, permanent housing or an alternative site for current Bulb residents—not the sidewalks of Albany. We need you to develop a real plan that won’t leave all the people of Albany out in the cold.