Oakland shelters no longer required to accept surrendered pets

CBS News

16-07-2025

At Tuesday afternoon's meeting, the Oakland City Council approved a new ordinance that would allow its animal shelter to refuse unwanted or abandoned pets being surrendered to their care.
The head of Animal Services said it's a best practice, but some volunteers point out that it's only happening because of budget cuts.
On Tuesday, if someone had an animal to turn into the shelter, they were out of luck. Prior budget cuts have closed the facility to the public on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
But the new policy, just approved, would allow them to refuse new animals at any time when there just isn't enough room or staff to care for them. Oakland Animal Services Interim Director Joe DeVries said other cities have a similar ordinance.
"We want to be abiding by best practices," he said. "But it's also true that by doing that we will make it easier for the staff, so the staffing shortage won't have as severe an impact."
Oakland had always been what's known as an "open admissions" shelter. By law, they were required to accept any animal surrendered to them. The new ordinance will give them discretion. But some volunteers, who make up the majority of the shelter's workforce, say it's just an excuse to accept inexcusable cuts to their budget.
"What they're changing is, the shelter can say, 'Well, we can't take this dog, we can't take this cat because we no longer have the staffing, the resources, the ability to do it,'" said volunteer Johanna Widger. "And that's the problem. The problem is that they keep cutting the budget. Just recently, they cut eight permanent full-time staffing positions, so we'll have even less people working with the animals. It's just a mess and we want the people of Oakland to know about this."
Widger and Willow Liroff donate their time in taking care of the animals in the shelter. They said the new ordinance may be a practical reality, but it will have dire consequences in the future, when people begin abandoning their animals in the community.
"We have people in the parking lot letting animals loose. We have people in our streets, at parks. This problem is only going to compound," said Liroff. "We have never seen such a severe and drastic staffing shortage as we have now. To lose eight full-time positions from an already skeleton crew staff is devastating. And the shelter is truly in crisis because of it."
And the heartbreaking results were suddenly there to see. A woman arrived carrying a tiny newborn kitten she had just found in the street.
"This little baby was under a car, a parked car," she said, expecting to drop it off.
But then she was told there was no one available to accept it, and she left with the kitten still in her arms. Whether it lived or died was now her problem. The volunteers said the shelter has been an easy target for the budget ax and they have been dealing with more and more cuts every year. But now, they say they have been cut too far and the solution of turning away animals from an animal shelter is really no solution at all.
"I had to bring this up because I think that it's important for people to know that we've had death by a thousand cuts!" said Widger.
"With the staffing crisis, there's no easy immediate answer for it, but changing an ordinance is something that is disastrous to the community," said Liroff.
Director DeVries said, rather than surrendering their pets, he would prefer a system that tries to connect owners with the help they may need to keep their animals. But the volunteers said, after the budget cuts there is simply no one left in the building to do that.