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On a cool morning last week, long before dawn, I went to skid row to work on a story with Times photographer Francine Orr.
We first roamed those teeming streets together in 2005, and guess what: After 16 years of detailed strategies, grand promises and truckloads of money, it was hard to see much change.
“It’s worse,” Francine said as we walked past row after row of tents, watching cleanup crews shovel up mountains of trash. Here, in the U.S. epicenter of homelessness, we saw one person after another in mental distress, just a few blocks from the halls of power.
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One morning in late April, several unhoused neighbors living in their vehicles off Venice Boulevard awoke to find their windshields marked by the notorious, red-striped envelopes used by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s parking enforcement.
The city relaxed its parking restrictions earlier in the pandemic, but a new sign forbidding parking from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. had recently appeared. Over the next few nights, more tickets appeared. Although some people were able to move their vehicles, others were not because of a combination of inoperability and unease.
I’ve known Kim, 70, for over a year now, having first met her under a nearby overpass where she was sleeping in a tent with her service dog. As a Street Watch L.A. organizer and UCLA doctoral student researching homelessness, I spend a lot of time with unhoused people. It’s clear to me that the city’s parking enforcement policies impose a huge burden on unhoused Angelenos who live in their cars. Rather
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Nearly two months since the city erected fencing around its perimeter and evicted a large homeless encampment, Echo Park Lake will reopen at 3 p.m. on May 26.
City Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, whose district includes the neighborhood, made the announcement Wednesday morning at a private invitation-only event inside the park. O’Farrell’s office also issued a press release in which he said the closure was necessary for the Department of Recreation and Parks to conduct
O’Farrell also cited unsafe conditions in the encampment. There were at least three overdose deaths in the park in 2020. (Drug overdose has been
LA residents revolt over shanty town plans: Thousands in Venice and Brentwood sign petition to STOP plan to house homeless in tents and cabins at popular beaches
Councilmember Mike Bonin summitted a motion to add more shelters in areas such as Los Angeles International Airport, Marina del Rey and Pacific Palisades
Bonin, who represents affluent communities including Venice, Westchester and Brentwood, argues that the temporary solutions will get people off the streets
But more than 19,000 people have signed a petition to stop the plans
The petition says the camps are not a solution to homelessness and would bring the problems of drugs, mental illness, crime and danger to the community