The Los Angeles Homeless Containment Thread (Brentwood: permission, apartments, condo)

[Racer46]

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

I bet there are plenty of buildings that could work. It has to be cheaper to acquire an empty office building and retrofit it to accommodate the homeless than to build a new apartment building. I have a friend who is an administrator in the California prison system (CDCR). She said that for at least a decade state parole has been paying a lease on a large office building in LA that they never moved in to. It was only discovered after an audit was conducted, for all I know they are still paying rent for it even after it was discovered. It would definitely be cheaper to retrofit a large office building for the homeless and create semi-private sleeping units. It might not be the Hilton but the law only requires they be offered a clean, safe place to sleep.

I am guessing that's not the only example of buildings acquired by local or state government and sitting empty. In Sacramento they entertain the idea of constructing homeless housing only to give up when nearby residents file lawsuits to stop construction. I don't think there would be that kind of pushback to housing built in commercial areas and that is where most of the homeless hang out in medium to large cities.

And I think there should be safe parking lots. Only running and registered cars and RV's allowed, a security guard at night and we could keep people who are not yet sleeping on the sidewalk from ending up there. Santa Barbara has had these parking lots for several years, I think they have 10 of them.

This is true. Wonder why by now they are not doing this in the major cities. The problem is nothing new.

[MrIndependent]

Major news today in Echo Park
The massive homeless encampment is being cleared, the park will be closed, and the $600,000+ worth of damage done to the park grounds and lake will be repaired.

Remains to be seen where the 100 plus homeless people will go (are they just going to set up their tents on the residential and commercial streets adjacent to the park)? How many will be offered transitional housing and decline it? How many will be able to find more permanent housing?

This is going to become a lightning rod issue for the 13th district election (where Echo Park is located) and for the mayoral race nice coming up next year. Up to now, it appears that homeless activists have had the upper hand in preventing encampment sweeps/clearances, but they haven't been particularly effective at achieving long-term solutions. It's nice sloganeering to say "keys not sweeps" but the massive financial/logistical endeavor of giving 60,000+ people keys to apartments and houses for free, is hard to do.


https://www.latimes.com/homeless-hou...ess-encampment

[TheseGoTo11]

Good to hear, but this is very short term. Unions will sue anyone who tries to build a treehouse without overpaying their members, and good intentions are good enough for most self-important activists.

[Exitus Acta Probat]

The city also needs to clean up on Pico Blvd. under that one overpass where there's trash in the #3 lane. I don't think too many people want to drive their car over all that trash.

[pwright1]

Now the cleanup begins.
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/l...sters/2558742/

[robertpasa]

I read that the homeless people were offered free housing and they all said no. Why would they rather live in the park?

One possibility is that there are rules when they live in the free housing.

[OyCrumbler]

If the city is following through on placing the people into decent shelter and with services, then I don't see how this is a bad thing. The city needs to be able to show that it's able to do so though and then make a very good example of this relatively high-profile clearance, because it'd be important for warding off fights over future encampment clearings.

[pwright1]

Originally Posted by robertpasa

I read that the homeless people were offered free housing and they all said no. Why would they rather live in the park?

One possibility is that there are rules when they live in the free housing.

Most took the offer.

[Finper]

I don’t get why people were protesting the “unhoused” being put in hotels free of charge instead of ruining a park so no tax paying citizens can go to it and feed the fricken ducks. Somebody explain this to me.

[CA4Now]

What happened at Echo Park Lake this week, and over the past couple of years, should never have happened.

...a public park on the edge of downtown Los Angeles never should have been allowed to become an encampment — or a political flashpoint over the conflicting rights and interests of the housed and the unhoused.

It happened because of an epic failure of leadership. And, on a smaller scale, dozens of similar dramas are playing out across the region.

“I do not happen to believe that every citizen has a right to be in a park and live there,” Bishop John Harvey Taylor said, “in part because the park is for the entire community and ultimately you cannot have it be an overnight residential community. And that’s not the fault of the unhoused, it’s the fault of the city.”

To add to that thought, we’ve had thousands of empty hotel rooms for the past year, and thousands of empty college dorm rooms, too, even as our streets and riverbeds are lined by tents and homeless people die at the record-setting rate of nearly four a day.

We move at a snail’s pace, and there’s no one in the halls of power who consistently and convincingly says, "shame on us, and this must change, and I will lead the way."

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...cal-leadership