The LA Reporter, Issue 5: 'There's nothing we can really do'

It’s not unusual for a 17-year-old to get a job at the mall to earn a bit of extra cash.

But the high-schooler who stopped to speak to The LA Reporter this Thursday amid an encampment sweep in West Los Angeles said he was earning money to help out his dad with the bills. To do that, he said he has been attending online school for the last two years.

And despite doing that, he and his father had to give up their apartment three months ago because they could not afford the high rent. So they used a single month’s worth of rent to purchase an RV to live in.

“This is the only way we can live without having to be literally on the street,” he told The LA Reporter. He added that they’re “good people, we’re clean. Every time we stop on the street, we clean.”

Still the police and other city workers have shooed them around town at least three times in as many months. At their last location, they left because there was an encampment clean-up, and their SUV, which had broken down, got towed by a company working for the city.

Now they’re getting told again they need to leave the street they are now staying on, next to a Staples office supply store just a few blocks from the apartment where he and his dad used to live.

“We spoke to a cop two days ago that said we had to move, and tomorrow, if we weren’t out of here, they were going to take the trailers” whether or not there were people in it or not, he said.

Several other unhoused residents on that street also told The LA Reporter that an officer had come by that day, telling them they had to leave or their vehicles would be towed.

The residents in that area said they have been experiencing twice-a-week encampment sweeps for the past month. Each time, there is usually a dozen or more Los Angeles city workers, including ones from LA Sanitation, the police department and the local City Council member’s office. They were all on hand as residents’ tents and structures were being dismantled. The trash that was there was bagged up and in neat piles set up by the curb for the sanitation workers to pick up.

One resident who lives in a vehicle told The LA Reporter that he found the number of workers involved in what could potentially just be a trash-pick-up operation to be excessive. And in the sweep that occurred on Monday, there had been a power-washing vehicle that pulled up, but the workers did not get out to spray down the street, and they usually never did, he said.

At one point on Thursday, the resident, who goes by Kenny, sat down by The LA Reporter and joked that he “was just thinking” he might need to give those workers something to do the next time they come.

“From right here — from this corner to the next — they’re going to have piles (of trash) every time they come,” he said. “You want to come every three days, you’re going to earn it.”

But in actuality, Kenny said, he planned to try to get out of the area, especially after the police had shown up to say they were planning to tow.

The 17-year-old told The LA Reporter he doesn’t think city leaders would do much to stop the sweeps or police shooing people out of places.

“I feel like they're always gonna be like this,” he said. “There's nothing we can really do. It would be nice for them to tell us what we can do, you know, like go to places, maybe a parking [location] that … lets us have the RVs.”

“They're pretty big trucks, and I understand that,” he said. “But, you know, when there's families that can't really have an apartment that are way too expensive, this is the only way we could do that, you know?“

A bill that would make it easier for Los Angeles and Alameda counties to scrap more RVs is now on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk. AB 630 which was sponsored by LA Mayor Karen Bass — ostensibly to go after vanlords — and carried by Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, would allow the two counties to more quickly destroy vehicles they tow that are valued at $4000 or less. Newsom has until Oct. 12 to decide to sign the bill or to veto it.

Los Angeles City Council member Traci Park went to the Housing and Homelessness Committee on Wednesday, Oct. 1, to pitch an affordable housing project she is proposing to be built on a parking lot in Venice, known as Lot 701. She declared to the panel of five of her colleagues that “after many years, we'll finally move forward on a viable affordable housing project on city land in Venice and a much-needed mobility hub.” 

But Park was certainly not referring to the Venice Dell project, which was green-lighted by the LA City Council in 2022 to be built on a parking site across the street from Lot 701 known as Lot 731. That project has since faced numerous hurdles that have stalled its construction indefinitely, after Parks campaigned for office on the promise of killing that project, which would put low-income housing for unhoused people next to the affluent beachside Venice Canals community. 

The project has been tied up in court. The latest dispute has to do with a decision by the Board of Transportation Commissioners last December to deny the project. That decision was seen by some, including Park, to have overturned the prior approvals of the project by the LA City Council and other entities. The Transportation Commission’s decision is now being challenged in court.

Parks had been speaking at the Housing and Homelessness Committee on Wednesday to support the motion she authored in January, and that was seconded by Councilmember Adrin Nazarian, that aims to move forward based on the Transportation Commission’s decision. It calls for building a “mobility hub” where the Venice Dell project is now supposed to go, and calls for affordable housing to be built on Lot 701 instead. 

Sonja Verdugo, lead organizer for the progressive political organizing group Ground Game LA, which supports the Venice Dell affordable housing project, characterized Park’s statements to the Housing and Homelessness Committee this week as “political theater to create cover for killing affordable housing.”

She said the city should do what Parks’ motion asks for, but also “break ground on Venice Dell Community – a fully approved, substantially funded, and much-needed project that is a reality, not a ploy.” Ground Game LA is affiliated with POWER, which is part of a lawsuit filed by the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles that challenges efforts to block the Venice Dell project.

The Housing and Homelessness Committee voted Wednesday to approve an amendment to Parks’ motion that asked the City Attorney to report back on the “legal suits related to the LADOT’s Parking Lot 731.” The amendment was made by the committee’s chair, Nithya Raman, and seconded by Councilmember Ysabel Jurado.

LA County CEO Fesia Davenport told the Board of Supervisors at their Tuesday, Sept. 30, meeting that they’re working out a plan to avoid cutting dozens of positions in the Public Defender’s Office. That office provides legal defense to the county’s poorest residents who are accused of crimes – a service that is required under the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment. 

But because many of the county’s departments were instructed to slash 5.5% of their budget – as part of an effort to address significant financial challenges related to a settlement, higher employee costs, the January wildfires and federal funding cuts –  the Public Defender’s Office had been looking at needing to reduce their staffing by more than 50 positions. They are among various departments that are facing potential cuts. Other cuts could affect parks, arts and youth programs.

Now, Davenport said that they may have come up with a way to save the public defender positions by downgrading them to a lower-level attorney positions. They’d likely do this through the office’s lawyer pipeline program that pulls people fresh from law school, who then take and pass their bar exam and begin working at the Public Defender’s Office.

State Senate candidates running to fill the District 26 seat have distanced themselves from AIPAC in recent weeks, amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Sara Hernandez, who had posted on Facebook in 2018 about a trip she took to Israel with AIPAC, said in response to a video about donations she’d gotten from AIPAC board member and president Michael Tuchin and others with ties to AIPAC don’t make her a “candidate who accepts AIPAC” money.

And Wendy Carrillo, another candidate, told The LA Reporter that because she was unable to refund a $900 donation from another donor who is strongly supportive of Israel, she is donating to World Central Kitchen, which is working to feed people in Gaza amid a genocide taking place due to the war Israel is waging there.

This is all happening in a race to represent communities on the east side of Los Angeles that are considered among the most progressive in the area.

Read the full story by The LA Reporter here.

The Housing and Homelessness Committee had been operating with just three members, less than the usual committee. Late last month, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson assigned members Tim McOsker and Heather Hutt to help hash out housing and homelessness policy in Los Angeles, bring the panel up to five people. Harris-Dawson also assigned Imelda Padilla and Adrin Nazarian to the Transportation Committee; and took Hutt off of the Personnel and Hiring Committee, adding Hugo Soto-Martinez to that panel.

Hugo Soto-Martinez, who had been going unopposed in his re-election bid, now has a challenger. Colter Carlisle, vice president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council, has filed paperwork to begin fundraising for a campaign for the District 13 City Council seat.

Councilmember Curren Price was taken to the hospital on Wednesday, Oct. 1, when he suffered a health emergency during the groundbreaking ceremony for the Los Angeles Convention Center expansion project. His spokesperson said in a statement to The LA Reporter that doctors determined that Price was suffering from dehydration.

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