'People Literally Dying On Our Streets' As Homeless Crisis Grows

PLAYA DEL REY, CA — Los Angeles City Councilmember Mike Bonin described Tuesday night why it's crucial for the city of Los Angeles to take immediate, aggressive action to end homelessness in the region, an urgent issue heightened by the pandemic and recession.

He discussed a "menu list" of solutions and locations to help eliminate homeless encampments on the Westside by adding cabin communities, tent shelter sites and safe RV parking locations during a presentation with the Neighborhood Council meeting Tuesday night attended by more than 435 people, which was Zoom bombed with a pornographic video and interrupted by an uproar of angry constituents before the council muted the group.

The city of Los Angeles is facing pressure to come up with solutions, Bonin said. The city has added more housing solutions, including Bridge housing sites across the city — one site is located on Sunset Avenue in Venice.

"But that is still not enough," Bonin said. "We have seen over the past year homelessness increasing dramatically. And as people have grown increasingly and understandably frustrated with that, over the past year we have been getting more pressure from the courts."

People have asked about adding tiny home villages for unhoused people and removing sidewalk encampments, he said. As part of its response to Judge David O. Carter, who is presiding over a lawsuit filed against the city and county of Los Angeles, the city has started adding these sites for safe camping and safe parking.

"We have been getting intense pressure from people in the communities we represent," Bonin said.

Bonin made a motion last week to ask the city to add temporary homeless housing sites in the following areas:

• Del Rey
• Pacific Palisades
• Playa del Rey
• Mar Vista
• Westchester

The city continues to purchase hotels and motels under Project Roomkey, leasing them with money from the federal government provided to the city by the end of September. His motion also calls for leasing apartment units to help get people off the street.

"We are looking at taking a portion of my office in West L.A. — the city has a former city attorney's suite, which is very large and vacant — and turning that into a shelter for homeless women," Bonin said.

Cabin communities are a collection of small structures — 75 to 100 square feet — that are constructed quickly and inexpensively, Bonin added.

"They provide services, security, sanitation and the beginning of a path out of homelessness," he said.

A cabin community has opened in North Hollywood and more are slated to open in Reseda and Harbor City and Highland Park. Other cities and sites operate cabin communities, including Redondo Beach, Riverside and Santa Cruz.

Safe camping sites are also part of the proposal, which would be run by a nonprofit and include security, sanitation, case management and housing services. The VA West L.A. site is the first to have this type of shelter. Another was approved by the L.A. City Council for the Rampart Village area. As the homeless crisis has increased across the U.S., other cities have also adopted safe camping sites, including San Diego, Sacramento, San Francisco and Denver.

"Every councilmember in every council district needs to be part of the solution," Bonin said. "On the Westside, in my district and in my colleague Paul Koretz's district, that is particularly challenging. It is particularly challenging because there are almost no low-impact areas."

Private property owners generally say no to adding homeless shelter sites when they are approached, he added.

"And we've approached many," Bonin said.

Possible intervention sites are limited to government-owned properties, including city, county, state, federal and Caltrans sites, Bonin added. Vacant buildings, parking lots and parks are what the city has as options right now.

"We are looking at multiple locations simultaneously," he said. "It may be safe parking, it may be a cabin community, all of those options are open for discussion at each site."

Almost every neighborhood will have a proposed site to help address the problem.

"This crisis demands as much action as possible, even these interventions are not going to be sufficient to deal with the crisis that we're experiencing and the crisis that is coming," Bonin said. "We need to be doing everything that we can, we need to be doing more."

Time is also an element to the process — Bonin described how important it was to propose multiple solutions at once, instead of one at a time.

"I'm sure some of these will get approved, I'm sure some of them won't or some of them might be different," he said. "So we will have solutions and we will have alternatives to this crisis of encampments in every neighborhood and this crisis of people literally dying on our streets every day."

The motion will be submitted to the Homelessness and Poverty Committee in council, and if approved, it will direct the city to begin examining the locations and whether any funding streams could be used to develop these sites, he said. Once they are evaluated and funding is identified, public input and public approval will follow. Some locations are in the coastal zone and will need approval by the California Coastal Commission. Sites near LAX will need approval from the FAA and Congressional leaders.

"Our choice is between the status quo, which is an increasing number of encampments, increasing squalor in Los Angeles, an increasing number of people dying on our streets, or a menu of different options, diverse options to do as many things as possible, to rise to this moment and to address this crisis," Bonin said.

The proposal includes adding permanent supportive housing at the following sites:

• 11950 W. Missouri, West Los Angeles
• 2454 S. Barry Ave., West Los Angeles
• 3233 S. Thatcher Ave., Venice
• 8333 Airport Blvd., Westchester
• 720 Rose Ave., Venice
• 2469 Lincoln Blvd., Venice
• Veterans Administration Campus, Brentwood
• Venice Boulevard and Pacific Avenue, Venice
• 12901 Venice Blvd., Mar Vista

Additional supportive housing has also been recently added:

• 11976 Culver Blvd., Del Rey
• 11368 Beach Ave., Del Rey
• 11738 Courtleigh Dr., Del Rey
• 700 Main St., Venice

It's unclear what could happen if unhoused people do not want the proposed offered solutions.

"What do we do about the people who continually refuse housing?" Sara Kay asked. "Because if you've ever done personal outreach, which I have, that is an enormous problem and it's the ones who continually refuse housing that are the burden on the communities."

Safety is the main concern, Kay added.

"We feel unsafe going outside after dark, there are some people masturbating in front of children at the schoolyards, these are the things that are happening — not from the person who lost their job due to COVID or trying to get on their feet — but who have serious issues and if there's no plan for what happens when somebody refuses then what good is any of this?" Kay asked. "And how does this help the communities who are suffering and being forced to deal with this? Yes, we love those proposed ideas but it has to come with an answer to that question of 'what happens when someone refuses?'"

Colleen Fracisco is a Westchester resident and shared an uncomfortable experience that happened at Westchester Park tennis courts.

"I have a kiddo and we went to go play tennis and on the tennis courts with his coach, my son and tennis coach had a bucket of urine and feces dumped onto the cart," Fracisco said.

They called 311, the non-emergency line, Parks & Recreation, Bonin's office - but no one responded.

"We have not had any response to the fact that we had biohazard thrown at us in our local parks," Fracisco said. "I do support initiatives for relocating to non-family-dense areas. We support moving into encampments, but what are the criteria to have these encampments?"

It's also unclear if mental health services will be provided at the proposed sites, Westside resident Sean Obrien said.

"This is a mental health, alcohol, drug addiction crisis," Obrien said. "It's not a housing crisis. Our local government has spent over the last 30 years gentrifying numerous neighborhoods, pandering to developers to do luxury, market-rate apartments, kicking out low-income units. So they created this crisis, now they want us to give up everything so they can fix it and act like they're our saviors."

Stephanie Popescu asked people to be compassionate and consider that people living on the street are going to be living there as the crisis grows no matter what — and they are often from the area.

"These are our neighbors who have become homeless here in our community," Popescu said. "Research shows that most of the people stay within their own communities once they become homeless. So now, we have this crisis, we have to do something about it. We have to put people somewhere."

Popescu responded to suggestions from some people that the community should house unhoused neighbors at army bases or other sites.

"I am appalled by the suggestion that we create concentration camps and send people to army bases," Popescu said. "Our community is better than this, we can do better than this. We are compassionate, we are strong, we are creative."

Jana Koppula is a resident, music therapist and parent in Westchester. She has also lived in Playa del Rey and Playa Vista.

"I do support the creation of safe camping spaces and affordable housing," Koppula said. "These are our neighbors, we need to assist them. There's currently a disproportionate amount of people who need housing versus the amount of housing that is actually available or beds. Safe camping sites will allow for a transitional space for these neighbors to feel safe, to lessen the stress of having to live on the streets, so they can focus on the work that they need to do to secure permanent housing. And these safe spaces will give people access to facilities and services that they need, that's important for their safety, their dignity and their very humanity."

Some residents advocated for purchasing more commercial spaces to help house people experiencing homelessness. Others asked to create stronger boundaries and keep public spaces safe.

Jess Echeverry runs a nonprofit called Sofesa, which has served and housed homeless families in Los Angeles since 1999.

"I'd just like to express a couple of concerns from having lived experience myself," Echeverry said. "I was homeless for four years, which is why I started Sofesa after I recovered and was stable."

Echeverry expressed several concerns about the proposed sites, including questions about flow and timeline.

"Everything so far that's been proposed as far as serving the homeless has become a stoppage, it's what we refer to in our organization," Echeverry said. "We need a flow. When you have somebody who is homeless you want things to flow into permanent housing and stability. Our organization has had problems over the past five years placing families because there are stoppages. Somebody comes up with a plan, a great idea, this is going to solve this problem, and all it does is create stoppages."

Section 8 housing is an example of this, Echeverry said. It was meant to move families into permanent housing but it hasn't done that.

"The program is a complete failure," she said. "There's no Section 8 housing because people got stopped, they got stuck in it."

Echeverry described why public spaces should remain public access areas.

"A park should be a park," Echeverry said. "I'm all for the homeless. I'm out there every day serving them. I am previously homeless, they do need help. It's a complex situation but we need to keep things in reality of what they are. It's a park, it needs to be a park. What's next? The hotel or the grocery store, is that next? Are we going to move things into there, too? We have to keep boundaries set and still help people."

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