Emeryville Semi-Monthly Newswire: May 15-31

In this edition of our Semi-Monthly newswire, we share five stories relevant to Emeryville that you may have missed, including:

Unhoused from E12th Encampment moved to Mandela House
More Whale Deaths Perplexing Scientists
DHS puts Sanctuary Cities on notice
Sutter Health Receives Massive Donation to Aid Expansion
West Oakland’s California Hotel “in Turmoil”

E12th Encampment Residents Moved to Mandela House

70 occupants of the recently dismantled East 12th encampment in East Oakland have been moved to the Mandela House on the Oakland-Emeryville border.

The former Extended Stay America Hotel was recently converted to a interim housing for homeless with 149 rooms.

The East 12th encampment had been considered Oakland’s largest after the sprawling Wood Street Encampment has been whittled down.

Local organizations have been critical of the site for not housing members of West Oakland’s large homeless population.

Several More Whale Deaths Leave Researchers Scrambling for Answers

Scientists are feverishly working to determine what is behind a large surge in whale deaths across the greater bay area.

The Emeryville shoreline was the site of a beached juvenile Minke whale back in April that was ultimately euthanized. The cause of the mammal’s illness is still undetermined.

“Domoic acid toxicosis was detected in the system of the minke whale,” provided Marine Mammal Center PR Associate Director Giancarlo Rulli. “But that the levels were not high at the time of death.”

Rulli cautioned that it was still too early to speculate on the cause of death as few lab results had come back and other tests were still weeks or even months away.

Since the Emeryville beaching, 10 whales (all gray whales) have died along Bay Area shores bringing the total to 22 whales thus far in 2025. These include 19 gray whales, 1 pygmy sperm whale, 1 cuvier’s beaked whale, as well as the minke whale beaching in Emeryville.

The cause of four of these deaths have been identified as “probable vessel strikes” while the other 18 are still undetermined or have not had a necropsy initiated.

“Necropsy response efforts and data collection have been challenging for a number of cases,” The California Academy of Sciences shared in a press release. “Due to inaccessible locations that hinder full post-mortem investigations, as well as poor tissue quality from advanced decomposition, and the lack of available locations to tow for further investigation.”

The Marine Mammal Center has chronicled all of these strandings on their website.

Emeryville Among Cities Targeted by DHS for Sanctuary Policies

Back in February, Emeryville joined a coalition of local governments who preemptively filed suit against the federal government at the threat of withholding federal funding for adopting so-called “sanctuary” policies.

Fronted by then councilmember Dianne Martinez in 2017, Emeryville passed a Sanctuary, or “Welcoming City” resolution joining neighboring cities of Oakland and Berkeley in providing certain protections to undocumented immigrants. “The City of Emeryville shall refuse any requests that are an extension of any federal immigration policy enforcement actions to federal authorities,” Emeryville’s resolution states in statements.

This defiance may have landed Emeryville and these other cities in the cross-hairs of The Department of Homeland Security under the Trump administration. The federal government is apparently building a list of cities that have adopted sanctuary policies that it can target for “non-compliance” with federal law. After initially posting this list publicly, it was removed on June 2nd with some sources citing errors.

“Each jurisdiction listed will receive formal notification of its non-compliance and all potential violations of federal criminal statutes,” wrote DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in a tersely worded press release. “DHS demands that these jurisdictions immediately review and revise their policies to align with federal immigration laws and renew their obligation to protect American citizens, not dangerous illegal aliens.”

This “formal notification” that Noem mentions was never been received according to Emeryville City Manager LaTanya Bellow.

Emeryville has a US citizenship rate of 81.5% as of 2023 according to DataUSA.io which is significantly lower than neighboring Berkeley (88.8%) or Oakland (86.2%).

The percentage of Emeryville’s roughly 12.8K residents that are undocumented is unknown but roughly 5% of California’s population is estimated to be undocumented according to Axios. That 5% of Emeryville’s population would translate to about 600 residents.

Sutter Health Receives $110M Donation to help Expand NorCal Access

Sutter Health announced an unprecedented $110 million philanthropic gift from a long-standing anonymous donor – the largest in the not-for-profit health system’s history.

The donation will help bolster Sutter’s regional expansion plans which include a $1B campus that was announced last February.

“Extraordinary generosity like this allows us to create a lasting, positive impact in the lives of our patients and change and save lives,” said Warner Thomas, Sutter Health’s President and CEO.

The health system’s 57,000+ staff and clinicians and 12,000+ affiliated physicians currently serve more than 3 million patients.

West Oakland’s California Hotel “In Turmoil”

The East Bay Times published a damning story on the reportedly squalid conditions of West Oakland’s California Hotel.

Just a decade after a $43 million renovation that restored and converted the historic hotel to 135 units of permanent supportive housing, the complex is spiraling into dysfunction according to some.

Residents and advocates complain of failing elevators, absent support staff and piles of waste in common areas that attract rodents. Tenants also report being ignored by management and threatened with eviction despite payment.

“Every tenant I’ve talked to wants desperately to leave the property,” noted an attorney representing tenants in eviction proceedings.