Migz Elliott, EAT founder, makes COB in bare feet

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The City of Oaklands "encampment management policy" goes live on January 1, 2021

1/4/21 2:01pm (The Berkeley Post) - by Max Levine - Oakland, Ca. - Today the team started making bark in the trees and conning the composting toilet. Artist showed up to paint the pillars. Michael Elliott from EAT ran a ChiGong class.

Overview: With the onset of Covid in March came a massive reduction in private donations to the unhoused. Covid added to the already large unhoused Oakland population of over 10,000. Many of the woman and children living on the street, that lack adequate housing, face physical dangers from violence, cold and sickness due to poor health.

To address this, three organizations, running 100% on volunteers and private donations, EFAM, ABC and EAT have come together to build small COB villages consisting of a kitchen, health center, sanitation stations and 8-12 tiny cob homes that each sleep a family.

Amazingly they are building homes for under $3000 plus volunteer labor, which is significantly less than the city just paid: $10 million for 16 houses of renovate in a bad part of Oakland at $208,000 per bedroom.

They have completed 2 structures: a health center and kitchen, both built from COB and 100% fireproof. They are now moving on to constructing 8-10 homes made from COB which would each house one family. 

The layout would encourage building community by bringing people together to garden, cook and perform holistic health and healing practices. The layout would be a huge ⅔ semi circle of tiny cob homes enclosing centralized shared health center, kitchen, gardens, pizza oven and benches.. 

Ben Bartlett, City Councilmember, and un-housed housing advocate says of the Wood Street Project, "This is the truest example of community. It's people having each other's back."

In a recent interview Xochitl Moreno, Co-founder of EFAM explains, "We are teaming up with ABC to build a community kitchen and health clinic. These are the start to many more tiny homes to come. We cofounded EFAM as a response to the fallout of the COVID 19 crisis left in the community. Many forms of aid that the unhoused community relied on vanished at the beginning of shelter in place." 

ABC is a brand new collective of all volunteer artists, activists, change makers, and formerly unhoused folks whose primary goal is to house as many of our neighbors as we possibly can. One of the Co-Founders, Annmarie Bustamante recently explained, "We have built 6 tiny homes so far and we have set a goal to build one a month for the next 13 months.”

DAY TO DAY UPDATE:

1/2/21 2:01pm (The Berkeley Post) - by Max Levine - Oakland, Ca. - Miguel Elliott update: “We started the lime plaster on the kitchen today and started framing out the composting toilet.”

12/25/20 2:01pm (The Berkeley Post) - by Max Levine - The volunteer team came out today, on Christmas, to work on completing the kitchen and healthcare clinic. They continued to place COB on the inside and outside of the building and added decorative touches to the outside of the buildings. Work will continue and volunteers are needed over the weekend. as volunteers work tirelessly to complete as many structures as possible

12/25/20 2:01pm (The Berkeley Post) - by Max Levine -  12/25/20 3:05pm The volunteer team came out today, on Christmas, to work on completing the kitchen and healthcare clinic. They continued to place COB on the inside and outside of the building and added decorative touches to the outside of the buildings. Work will continue and volunteers are needed over the weekend. 

12/23/20 2:01pm (The Berkeley Post) - by Max Levine -  The City of Oaklands recently passed "Encampment Management Policy" goes live on January 1, 2021, in several days. It will allow the city to push over 10,000 unhoused out of their current living situation, in the middle of winter. Many will come to Wood St. looking for hope and secure shelter.  A much larger crisis could unfold if secure and sanitary housing is not provided now.

Below are daily and weekly updates by The Berkeley Post:

12/23 Update

12/23/20 7:21pm  (The Berkeley Post) -  by Max Levine -  Most of the kitchen is finished and the roof on the clinic will be done tomorrow. Migz Elliott, from EAT says, “Thursday we’ll be cobbing and finishing the outside plaster next week. And great news - a lot of people have volunteered to work on Christmas!” 

12/21 Update

12/21/20 8:24am (The Berkeley Post) -  by Max Levine -  Today the team finished up the kitchen build and have moved on to the health center. A large group of volunteers came out over the weekend and made tons of progress. The health center should be complete this week. The GOFUNDME campaign is going well with over $1000 raised in just 3 days

12/19 Update

12/19/20 6:42am (The Berkeley Post) -  by Max Levine - Today the team is expecting a lot of volunteers to show up. "This is an act of God!", says Keenami, an unhoused resident that showed up to build early Saturday morning. "This is so neat. I want one of these! I will work all day. You guys are giving us hope. You're taking land that is so depressing and you're giving us a piece of land. I was in prison for a while. I got out - and I see this. This makes me feel less sad about being homeless - like a real person. I never thought in a million year this would be happening."

12/15/20 Update

12/15/20 6:40am (The Berkeley Post) -  by Max Levine - Today a group of volunteers is getting together at Wood and Grand St. to finish up the kitchen, the first of two COB structures being builtThe exterior of the building was covered in COB. The frame of the door was installed with a rounded header. The door was installed. Broken chunks of stone were put around the base to act as a footer for the COB and to present a more finished look. The team built the home in a way that allows it to be moved with a forklift. says Keenami a resident that came out for the build on Saturday.

12/14 update Today is the 7th day of the build and the team worked mainly with COB finishing out interior spaces such as sculpting shelve edges and creaiting more rounded and three dimensional window sills. There was participation from camp residents. The team ran out of water at one point in the day but creatively refilled the container. COB material ran out but hopefully a new shipment is brought in early Thursday morning.

12/14 Update 

(UPDATE) 12/14/20 9:30pm (The Berkeley Post) - by Max Levine - Today was very productive. The team finished up detail work on the windows and started laying down cob on the interior walls. The roof was completed. It was constructed from locally donated panels from a film shoot   Todays work focused mainly on finishing up the details with the glass bricks along the roofline and positioning the glass bottles and stain glass windows. "We had a great day today," explains Miguel Elliott, Cob Build Project Manager. "We had some local unhoused residents join in and work. Its always great to have people that live here participate," explained Elliott. "Tomorrow will be all about getting the roof on the house," he said.

12/13 Update 

(UPDATE) 12/13/20 8:32pm (The Berkeley Post) - by Max Levine -EFAM and ABC did more great work today on Day 4 of the community kitchen build. The 30 foot tall concrete legs of I-880 supporting the freeway over head provided the team a bit of a break in the rain as they finished up the detail work. Some of the detail work included inlaid stained glass and recycled wine bottle windows. Amazing food was provided by a volunteer. Dimitri provided his generator, tools and great tunes, as always. 

Annmarie envisions eventually building 100s of homes that can house 100s of families for the price the city pays to construct an apartment in a high rise that takes years to build. 

12/12 Update

12/12/20 9:34pm (The Berkeley Post) - by Max Levine - Today  two social welfare organizations Essential Food and Medicine (EFAM) and Artist Building Communities (ABC) got together with cob builder, Miguel Elliott and a team of volunteers to build a a community kitchen and health clinic to serve 150 unhoused in the Wood Street Encampment community. 

Ben Bartlett, City Councilmember, and un-housed housing advocate says of the Wood Street Project, "This is the truest example of community. It's people having each other's back."

12/12 Update

12/12/20 9:34pm (The Berkeley Post) - by Max Levine - Two social welfare organizations Essential Food and Medicine (EFAM) and Artist Building Communities (ABC) get together with cob builder, Miguel Elliott and a team of volunteers to build a a community kitchen and health clinic to serve 150 unhoused in the Wood Street Encampment community. 10am - 4pm: come build cob and help house the unhoused in West Oakland

12/11 update 

12/11/20  10:30pm (The Berkeley Post) - EFAM and ABC are getting together at the Wood Street Encampment in West Oakland with volunteers to build a kitchen and a health center out of cob/straw bail. It’s very open with lots of sun - masks required. Bring gloves. Copy and paste in Google Maps: Wood St. & West Grand

Ben Bartlett, City Councilmember, and un-housed housing advocate says of the Wood Street Project, "This is the truest example of community. It's people having each other's back."

In a recent interview Xochitl Moreno, Co-founder of EFAM explains, "We are teaming up with ABC to build a community kitchen and health clinic. These are the start to many more tiny homes to come. We cofounded EFAM as a response to the fallout of the COVID 19 crisis left in the community. Many forms of aid that the unhoused community relied on vanished at the beginning of shelter in place." 

ABC is a brand new collective of all volunteer artists, activists, change makers, and formerly unhoused folks who primary goal is to house as many of our neighbors as we possibly can. One of the co-founders, Annmarie Bustamante recently explained to The Berkeley Post, "We have built 6 tiny homes so far and we have set a goal to build one a month for the next 13 months.