How does a “punk squatter” become an advocate for policy change?

If you’re Novella Carpenter, whose vivid, irreverent memoir Farm City turned her into an unlikely, but nationally-known, voice of the DIY urban-farming movement, it all came into focus this week when a city worker showed up at her 10th-of-an-acre Ghost Town Farm in West Oakland.

Camera in hand, he insisted that she needed a $2,500 conditional-use permit in order to grow vegetables and run an occasional, by-donation pop-up farmstand to sell off whatever chard, eggs or farm-raised, homemade rabbit pot pies she and her neighbors couldn’t eat. As she wrote on her blog that day:

“The photo-taking city guy said they are going to use me as an example and that I’ll get fined around $5,000 for non-compliance. All of this was triggered by one person, who complained to the animal control, who then passed it on to the city, who is now making my life hell.”

But anyone who’s read her descriptions of dumpster-diving fish guts in Chinatown knows that Carpenter’s not easily daunted. (Those guts? Free food to fatten up a backyard pig.) Especially now that she was, by her lights, going legitimate. Following eight years of squat-farming on the once-empty lot, she’d recently purchased the Ghost Town Farm property from her landlord for $30,000.

“I think a case like this just really highlights the need for the communities and cities to work together to figure out what kind of framework we want to have for urban ag activities,” said Alethea Harper, coordinator of the Oakland Food Policy Council.

After three days, a lot of blog buzz and an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, Carpenter got another visit, this time by a more sympathetic  worker from the city’s Planning Department. Turns out Oakland, like San Francisco, is launching a new urban-ag policy. Come April 14, Phase 1 of the policy will go into effect, making it legal to grow food on empty lots.

Problem is, Phase 1 doesn’t cover raising food that walks (or hops) on two (or four) legs.

“If I want to keep livestock (which I do, very important to have manure for the garden, but also a great source of eggs and meat and happiness), I have to apply for a Conditional Use Permit, which will cost $2,500. That’s sucky," she noted. "If I want to sell produce, I should apply for a business license, which costs $40.”
 
So while she’s prepared to fork over the necessary $2,540 in order to keep her chard and rabbits on site, she’s urging Oakland residents to contact city planner Heather Klein (at hklein@oakland.net) to find out how they can involved in the planning process for Phase 2, which will be taking issues like livestock-raising and product sales into account.

"Oakland is in the process of making some important updates to city zoning for urban agriculture," said Aaron Lehmer, Campaigns Director for Bay Localize. "We need to make sure that as new rules are developed, beneficial activities like neighborhood food growing are not unduly restricted by government red tape or sky-high permit fees."

Follow this issue on Novella Carpenter's blog and follow local food policy issues here at Oakland Local.