It's officially live! Swept Off The Map, created by Maria Toldi and Geography Senior, Cole Haddock, for Street Spirit, is a five-piece, seven-month investigative series documents the scope, scale, and consequences of encampment sweeps in Richmond, Berkeley, and Oakland. The project creates invaluable new tools that will make it easier to understand unsheltered homelessness in these three East Bay cities, as well as the politics and policies that define the region’s response to homelessness.
Chief among these are:
- An interactive map that visualizes four years of encampment closure data in Oakland, and
- An in-depth series that investigates the ins and outs of local homeless policy in Richmond, Berkeley, and Oakland, including their encampment management policies, the government officials leading the local homeless response, sources of funding, and more.
The research and investigative journalism project was funded by UC Berkeley’s Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize. Following the Supreme Court's ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, municipalities across the Ninth Circuit gained broad new authority to manage homelessness as they saw fit. In California, the decision triggered an increase in aggressive new policies, which advocates say criminalize homelessness with impunity. It also ushered in a wave of encampment closures: Governor Gavin Newsom pushed cities to clear encampments or risk losing state funding. Without any documentation or data about closures—often called “sweeps”—, these events often happen without much fanfare, data, or documentation.
Swept Off The Map seeks to create resources for journalists, researchers, and the public in their own research about encampment sweeps. Drawing on public records and oral histories, this project provides a critical analysis of the legal and regulatory mechanisms cities use to manage encampments in Richmond, Berkeley, and Oakland.
Finally, Toldi and Haddock tried to document the human consequences of encampment sweeps with three narrative articles that focus on the health impacts of consistent displacement.
“This is public service journalism in its truest form,” says Alastair Boone, Executive Director of Street Spirit. “It is a resource that has already made my reporting smarter and more comprehensive. I believe it carries immense potential to help researchers, journalists, and community members more fully understand the crisis of homelessness in our region.”
Find the whole project online at sweptoffthemap.com and the June, 2026 print issue of Street Spirit.