The University of California at Berkeley took the drastic step of erecting a wall of shipping containers to keep protestors out of a site of a planned student housing complex.
The $312 million project would provide badly needed housing at the site of People’s Park. Protestors oppose the student housing project because the park is landmark site for the counterculture movement of the 1960s. Some homeless people have been camping on the site, though the university said it recently offered them shelter elsewhere.
The shipping container wall rises 15 to 16 feet at the 2.8-acre site and is a response to a mass protest last August at which people knocked down a fence that the university erected to isolate the area. The university says its new student housing complex is urgently needed, as the campus has housing for just 23% of its students.
The university must wait before starting construction until the California Supreme Court resolves legal efforts to block the project.
