BERKELEY — A homeless camp that had existed for almost a year along the BART tracks near the Oakland border is gone, but not out of sight.

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Berkeley homeless camps: one site evicted, another stays In fact, part of it stands just a few feet away to the north, after BART evicted it early Saturday morning from its previous spot, a grassy strip that the transit agency owns next to the tracks along Adeline Street about a half-mile south of the Ashby station. “We are here,” proclaims a sign in front of a cluster of seven tents pitched adjacent to the BART-owned parcel since the same day they were evicted.

The seven tents had been part of the larger “HERE/THERE” camp set up by the group First They Came For The Homeless in January 2017 and counting about two dozen tents when it was evicted Saturday. About a dozen members of the FTCFTH camp have relocated to Aquatic Park near the Emeryville border, while some half-dozen set up their tents later Saturday in front of Berkeley’s Old City Hall as part of a “protest camp.”

Saturday’s eviction and piecemeal relocation was but one of several recent twists in the turbulent relationship between FTCFTH and local authorities, which includes about a dozen evictions, by FTCFTH’s count, from various spots along the Shattuck Avenue-Adeline Street corridor and the Civic Center area in the three months preceding its resettlement in January along Adeline Street.

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The latest flurry of activity began on Oct. 21, when BART put up 72-hour notices at the now-vacated HERE/THERE camp on Adeline Street as well as at another camp a short distance north on the other side of the tracks. On Oct. 24, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring BART from evicting the HERE/THERE camp, pending an Oct. 31 hearing, but the order did not cover the other camp, on Martin Luther King Jr. Way at 63rd Street. BART evicted that camp early in the morning of Oct. 25.

On Oct. 31, the judge, William Alsup of the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, denied a request by five of the HERE/THERE camp members for a preliminary injunction, clearing the way for BART to carry out the eviction. The following day, BART posted 72-hour notices to vacate at the camp.

Alsup, on Nov. 1, also issued a notice ordering the city to submit by Nov. 28 a practical plan for sheltering its homeless population during the coming winter. He ordered Attorney Dan Siegel of Oakland-based Siegel, Yee & Brunner, which is representing five members of the vacated former camp, to submit a plan as well.

The five — Clark Sullivan, James Blair, Toan Nguyen, Arika Miles and Adam Bredenberg — also are plaintiffs in a lawsuit, filed by Siegel’s law firm, seeking damages from the city and BART for what they claim were violations of their civil and constitutional right. About a dozen times between October 2016 and January 2017, a period of frequent rains, the city evicted the FTCFTH camp from various locations in North, South and downtown Berkeley, they claim.

The plaintiffs also contend that the defendants violated the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 — several of the campers have disabilities. The plaintiffs also claim unlawful seizure of their property; cruel and unusual punishment; and violation of their First Amendment rights for what they say were evictions “based on the content of their (plaintiffs’) speech and their political engagement.”

Saturday morning, by the time BART police came to evict the former HERE/THERE camp, most of the residents had left, said Stacey Hill, who now lives in his tent among a cluster of seven, about 50 feet north of where it stood before. Since the move, authorities have left the group alone, he said.

As for the group at the Old City Hall, Berkeley Police spokesman Lt. Andrew Rateaver, asked how police would react to the new camp there, said Saturday, “BPD is responsive to calls for service. Any action we take involves a range of circumstances. To mention anything to you in this context wouldn’t be appropriate.”

On Monday, Jake Atkinson, sitting in a chair at the Old City Hall protest camp, recalled interactions with police two days earlier after the group set up their tents.

“Basically, they said we couldn’t stay overnight, and that they’d probably remove us if we did,” Atkinson said.

“Been here two nights,” he added.

The city did not respond to a request Tuesday for an updated comment.

Over at Aquatic Park on Tuesday, where about a dozen tents were pitched near the Union Pacific tracks, Sam Clune, Jay DeMello and Trevor “T.Rex” Sullivan watched a passing Amtrak train, noting that it was far more quiet than the BART trains at Adeline.

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Interactions with authorities since the move have been friendly, the group said.

“We’ve had contact with the (city) park maintenance dude, who’s really cool,” Clune said.

Commenting on the homeless sheltering plans that the city and the Siegel law firm are supposed to submit to the court, Clune offered his vision of what he would like them to be:

“Get 10 or 20 parcels. Get 25-50 people on them, and assign a social worker. That’s what I’d like to see.”