While San Franciscans argue over how much warning the city should give to homeless people before clearing tent encampments, Oakland is trying another strategy entirely: Keep the camps in place for weeks or months and make them move livable.

The idea is to provide basics such as trash cans, portable toilets and regular cleanup services while the city tries to devise a long-term shelter program before shutting down the camps for good.

“We’re working on a theory of change, and we don’t know if it’s going to work,” said City Council President Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who devised the new “Compassionate Communities” program with Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson. “But the fact is, these folks are human beings, and this is about human dignity.”

However, the program provoked an instant backlash from neighbors when the city tried its first test-run Monday, at a sprawling encampment in West Oakland where several dozen people are living under an on-ramp to Interstate 580. Residents and merchants already infuriated by the camp grew even more angry when city workers began power-washing the area, installing toilets and putting up concrete barriers to block off traffic.

To some, it looked like Oakland officials had given up trying to shoo away the homeless, deciding instead to use taxpayer money to create permanent outdoor settlements. In June, Oakland set aside $190,000 for this fiscal year to bring services to the camps and fund the Compassionate Communities program, but critics of the plan say that money should be spent on housing.

“My tax dollars should not be paying to put people out here and treat them like animals,” said Michael Engle, who lives nearby and was among the people shouting obscenities at McElhaney and several city administrators who gathered at the camp Monday.

Engle pointed to a pile of human feces on the roadway.

“If I lived next door to this camp, I’d mail that to the city,” he said. “And I’d say, ‘Here are my taxes.’”

Others, including Debra Buckley, who owns an art studio one block from the camp, complained that they’ve lost business because customers recoil at the sight of trash and excrement on the sidewalk.

Adding garbage cans and bathrooms won’t help, Buckley insisted. She said such amenities will only encourage people to stay in the camps longer and draw homeless people from other cities into Oakland.

“Everybody comes here, and now more will come,” Buckley yelled as McElhaney talked up the benefits of the program to a reporter. The camp is in McElhaney’s district, as well as in the district that Carson represents on the Board of Supervisors.

Some city workers shared Buckley’s concern that their new sanitation services will make the camps more attractive.

“Yes, it’s a concern for me — my goal would be to shrink this,” said Sara Bedford, Oakland’s director of human services.

But Bedford also said it’s Oakland’s duty to provide some form of humanitarian aid for people living in the camps.

San Francisco has similarly struggled with the spread of tent encampments under freeways and into business districts. A measure on the Nov. 8 ballot would allow police to clear out encampments with 24 hours’ notice while offering homeless people a shelter spot — although San Francisco’s 1,300 nightly shelter beds are invariably taken.

Oakland’s shelter situation is similar. The most recent one-night homeless census, taken in January 2015, found 1,400 people sleeping outside. The city has just 350 shelter beds — 450 when the St. Vincent de Paul Community Center opens its doors to the homeless during winter — and they’re full nearly every night.

Mayor Libby Schaaf touted the city’s new approach to homeless encampments at a recent Chronicle editorial board meeting.

“We can’t wait until someone comes with a silver bullet to solve this,” Schaaf said. “It’s starting to look like San Francisco.”

For the past few years, Oakland has taken a catch-as-catch-can approach to homelessness, clearing out camps when neighbors complain, only to see them pop back up, McElhaney said.

She said that type of urban triage doesn’t satisfy anyone, and it doesn’t solve the larger sanitation and safety issues.

“The way the city is currently trying to address this leaves both the sheltered and the unsheltered residents frustrated and not served well,” McElhaney said.

City officials hope to close the West Oakland camp by the end of March, assuming they can find transitional housing for its inhabitants. Bedford is confident that Oakland will find creative ways to accommodate everyone, perhaps by partnering with Alameda County and Emeryville.

If there aren’t enough beds, she said, the city might consider opening a sanctioned encampment on a vacant lot.

Some campers said they would welcome the opportunity to move on.

“We’re not really trying to be here forever,” said Denine Houston-Murphy, who has lived in the camp for about six months. “We’re out in the open where anyone can come by at any given time.”

But another camper, Gene Jackson, said he was wary of working with the city.

“I’m worried they’ll come over here, say they’re offering housing, and then come up with some other rule,” Jackson said.

And, Jackson said, if the city shuts down this camp and moves on to the next one, officials will find themselves grappling with a new set of problems. Many of Oakland’s homeless are drug addicts or people with mental illness who need treatment. Others are formerly incarcerated felons who say they have been shut out of the workforce. Unlike San Francisco, Oakland has a very small supportive-housing network and few job-training programs to help such people.

McElhaney pleads that Oakland can’t solve the underlying causes of homelessness in six months. And the Compassionate Communities program is still an experiment, she said Monday, trying to fend off angry neighbors as the homeless campers silently watched.

“I don’t know if it’s going to work,” McElhaney said. “But I do know that in 3½ years of being on this council, business as usual hasn’t worked, either. It’s left you with this rage.”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @rachelswan