You don’t have to squint to see suffering in Oakland because it’s always there.

Behold the shopping carts with wobbly wheels, stacked with dirty blankets, cans, bottles and other randomness, the detritus of life on the streets.

Walk or drive under the highway overpasses where tent communities sprout like weeds. Because that’s where you’ll see people crashing on soggy mattresses, sleeping bags and cardboard.

There you’ll see clothes scattered like confetti after a parade and hills of garbage rising as if banked by a snowplow blade.

And don’t cover your ears, because this is a city where coins rattling in fast-food cups — the pantomime for “can you spare some change?” — chime louder than a Salvation Army volunteer’s bell.

This is a city where hundreds of people aimlessly wander streets with matted hair, soiled clothing and ragged shoes — if they’re even wearing shoes.

Every day, every night.

But it seems Oakland is willing to look the other way so it can help build a stadium to please an NFL team itching to relocate.

Unlike football, Oakland’s homeless problem is not a game. Lives and livelihoods are at risk, which is why it’s disheartening to see the city playing games with its future. How can public money be on the table?

Led by former NFL players Ronnie Lott and Rodney Peete — and their financial backers at the Fortress Investment Group — the plan is to build a $1.3 billion, 55,000-seat stadium on the Oakland Coliseum site. The plan has provisions for offices, hotels, a transit hub and, if they get around to it, housing. It includes $350 million in public funds and land value.

Oakland shouldn’t consider building a stadium without a housing component. But on Tuesday, the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors both voted to approve a term sheet bereft of specifics and to begin earnest negotiations on stadium details.

According to the plan, 130 acres of public land at the Coliseum site would be transferred to Lott’s group. And while the city and county say they would recover the $150 million value of the land, how that would happen is unclear.

On top of that, Oakland would also agree to invest $200 million in public “infrastructure, site preparation and other related expenses” that are not part of the “hard construction costs for the stadium,” according to the term sheet. But there is no relief in sight for the $91 million that Oakland and the county still owe from the Coliseum expansion that brought the Raiders back from Los Angeles in 1995.

Suppose this deal goes through, an eye-catching stadium is built and the Raiders stay in town. Guess who will get to sweep up the costly pieces when something breaks and the team starts pouting? Look to Santa Clara, which is locked in a power struggle with the San Francisco 49ers over 2-year-old Levi’s Stadium, for the answer.

I’ve got love for Raider Nation, and I feel your pain. But I love Oakland more, and I will always stand for its health and stability. Besides, as my colleague Scott Ostler succinctly wrote: The Raiders are not getting a new stadium.

I realize in politics that posturing is de rigueur, and Oakland has to appear to exhaust every effort to keep the Raiders. But I question the hustling for Mark Davis, the team’s owner who doesn’t even want to meet to discuss the new proposal. It’s because Davis and the NFL have seen this before from Oakland. Remember Coliseum City?

I’d rather see city officials get back to wrangling over practical matters, like affordable housing and homelessness. And after the fire in a converted warehouse claimed 36 lives two weeks ago, this should be a moment of soul searching and compassion.

That’s why talk about building a football stadium is such a bad look for Oakland right now.

Otis R. Taylor Jr. is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist whose column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr