Posted on 01/11/2019 8:15:59 AM PST by EdnaMode
With swelling transient encampments abutting seven-figure homes, the beachside enclave has emerged as a flashpoint for the inequality shaping Los Angeles and a real-world test case for the liberal ideology of the areas showbiz residents.
After the first attack, Randy Osborn figured it was just his turn. Tire slashings in his east Venice Beach neighborhood had become commonplace. But when his vintage Land Rover was hit a sixth time in the course of a few months, Osborn, who runs a small virtual reality company and has lived in Venice for seven years, began to worry he was being singled out.
"It may have been random, but it sure felt targeted and concentrated," says Osborn, who now protects his tires each night with a jury-rigged plywood-and-chain contraption that has so far deterred the assailants. Every time he takes his family out of town, he worries about his house being robbed. "It's not a very fun way to live," he says. A lot of residents within Osborn's 15-block area just east of Lincoln Boulevard where actor Viggo Mortensen owns a home and director Jon Favreau is opening a production office have similar stories. And though they can't say for sure, Osborn and others suspect the crime is tied to several homeless encampments that have sprung up nearby in the past 15 months.
Los Angeles is grappling with a homeless epidemic. "It's the worst human catastrophe in America," says Andy Bales, a pastor who runs the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row. Faced with a growing crisis, city leaders last year budgeted more than $100 million for affordable housing, addiction treatment, job placement and mental health services. And yet, as L.A.'s real estate prices soar, so does the city's homeless population. And nowhere have the twin forces of inaccessible housing and inequality created a more explosive mix than in Venice Beach, a hotbed of entertainment executives and talent where the median home price is $1.9 million. Many of these residents are now grappling with a quality-of-life issue that defies their own liberal ideals.
Sleepless in Seattle and Community producer Gary Foster, who moved to the area two years ago from Westwood and works with the homeless advocacy group The People Concern, says he was surprised by the number of residents who expressed exasperation with if not outright disdain for the transient population. "They tend to be liberal, they want to do good in the world, but they're balancing their beliefs with how that might impact the value of their real estate," says Foster, who began his activism after producing The Soloist, about a journalist who discovers a musical savant living on Skid Row.
The Frank Gehry-designed home of artist John Baldessari. "There are actually [residents] advocating driving the homeless out of Venice shipping them off somewhere, which is such a proto-fascist move," says television writer Evan Dunsky, a 27-year resident of the area. "And then what? Do we have to build a wall around Venice?"
Venice is now home to the largest concentration of homeless anywhere on L.A.'s Westside, with nearly 1,000 non-domiciled people. During the past 18 months, several encampments have swelled in more residential areas where homes can easily sell for eight figures and up. Tents, many of them equipped with mini refrigerators, cupboards, televisions and heaters, vie with pedestrian traffic.
Residents who live near the encampments say mail regularly goes missing. Break-ins have jumped. Hypodermic needles and human waste are appearing on sidewalks and at local playgrounds. Residents have complained to police about harassment and even physical assaults. "This is more of a criminal problem than a homeless problem," says nonprofit worker Carly Voge, who lives next to the so-called Frederick camp adjacent to the Penmar Golf Course.
"There are crime problems in Venice," concedes Mike Bonin, whose Council District 11 includes Venice Beach. Bonin has come under intense criticism for his handling of the homeless crisis by Venice residents displeased with his support of a measure to introduce a massive, $5 million transitional housing project in their city. At the same time, Bonin says, "I can't accept the idea that there is an inextricable link between crime and homelessness. It is wrong, it is not backed up by the data, and it leads to bad policy."
Disagreements over the potential causes of the crimes have begun to factionalize Venice's neighborhoods. "It was six months of terror, absolute terror," says radiologist Maria Altavilla, who lives in east Venice. She says that the period of increased health and safety concerns coincided with the expansion of the homeless encampments the past year. She recently arrived home with her two children to find a woman shooting up in her yard. Lately, her husband has expressed a desire to move because of his frustration with the encampments. Several residents shared an unconfirmed theory suggested to them by a local patrolman that certain assailants were using the social media app NextDoor to monitor which residents are most vocal about their opposition to encampments and then targeting those individuals for retribution.
As the problem worsens, homeowners are banding together to try to reclaim patches of sidewalk in an effort to deter future encampments. At the corner of Millwood Avenue and Lincoln, bulky wood planters now hog much of the sidewalk. Those planters emerged mysteriously two months ago outside a Staples office supply store that was once a popular resting spot for a handful of tent dwellers. The same pattern can be seen on another block, further south on Palms Boulevard, where similar metallic planters have recently appeared.
Others have put up unpermitted planters to eat up sidewalk space on Millwood Avenue
On Venice Boulevard in front of Vice Media's offices, a chain-link fence was erected to prohibit tents from going up. Residents around Penmar Golf Course have started a GoFundMe page and have hit their goal of raising $80,000 to fill a pedestrian pathway with native plants and landscaping a project being called the Frederick Avenue Pass-Through but whose real objective is to deter the large encampment that has ballooned there.
"Honestly, I think we are a step and half away from vigilantism," says a talent manager who has lived in the area for two decades. "I feel like this is heading toward a Guardian Angels type situation that you saw in 1970s New York. Someone is going to go out there with a lead pipe and give someone a serious beatdown. It's awful to say, but I don't see what prevents that from happening."
Life in Venice Beach has always come with its own distinct form of urban grittiness. Unlike its bougie neighbors to the north in Pacific Palisades and Malibu, Venice has embraced its counterculture past. It's the land of head shops and street art that celebrates icons like Jim Morrison, Dennis Hopper and Jerry Garcia. And, to a degree, that grittiness added to the area's allure, helping turn Venice into one of L.A.'s most desirable neighborhoods. Venice now counts as residents actress Emilia Clarke, screenwriter Mark Boal and Participant Media's David Linde, among many others in the industry. The area also has become "Silicon Beach," home to tech giants Snapchat and Google.
Dunsky has witnessed Venice's transformation from a battleground for gangs to one that boasts several Michelin-starred restaurants. A self-proclaimed progressive, Dunsky says he fears that recent gentrification has altered people's sympathies. "There is a fever of money in Venice that has nothing to do with its past. Whatever progressive elements were historically here have dwindled, and they're being replaced by tech money."
Looks like California has a new definition of Silicon Beach . . . microchips instead of implants?
Why can’t we sweep homeless off the streets?
How is it tolerant and liberal to allow these problems to fester?
Isn’t it illegal to pitch a tent and do all bathroom functions publicly?
I’m not necessarily saying they belong in jail, but something such as relocation camps might be a good first step. Homeless have hit bottom in life with no place to go. We should help them identity why they have hit rock bottom and help them. But we should not have to tolerate what is going on with homelessness today.
Liberals are only pro homeless and illegals as long as they live someplace else.
Did Hollywood Reporter do away with the comment section?
This is a very expensive national problem. Im temporarily tankful that California is the homeless paradise but as a nation we need a solution. Maybe California is the best option but maybe it should be be a shared national issue.
Paulette Perry is a total whackjob.
Could be. From the article:
"Several residents shared an unconfirmed theory suggested to them by a local patrolman that certain assailants were using the social media app NextDoor to monitor which residents are most vocal about their opposition to encampments and then targeting those individuals for retribution."
and (underlines mine)
A 2006 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Jones v. City of Los Angeles required that law enforcement and city officials no longer enforce the ban on sleeping on sidewalks anywhere in the city until a sufficient amount of permanent supportive housing could be built. Further complicating matters were two state ballot measures that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2016 Propositions 47 and 57 which decriminalized certain felonies to misdemeanors in an effort to address the state's overburdened prison system.
Lower the penalties to prevent overcrowding. Yeah, that will work.
Nothing a cordless 4 1/2 angle grinder and a 4 pound sledge couldn't take care of in a couple of minutes.
We have to be more pro-active with our activism.
Spend 50 bucks to ship a homeless person to Barbra Streisand's neighborhood.
"Modify" a Venice Beach bench.
Buy a load of horse poopy and "accidentally" spill it at night on a city street.
The possibilities are endless. They're doing it to us.
Elite Liberals are only pro homeless and illegals as long as they live someplace else.
Please ping me with any Southern California related articles. Thank you!
If you want on or off this ping list, please FReepmail me.
Yeah they got rid of it in the last few months.
LA is trying to emulate Venezuela. And winning.
Ping
“certain assailants were using the social media app NextDoor”
Well, that is rich in irony. An area that has become known as “Silicon Beach” now has high tech vagrants preying on the high tech geeks............Probably using obama phones.
It could be a real wild west of comments.
I suspect readership has fallen off too. It always drops when people can no longer comment. I know I stop reading articles on sites I can't comment and I've seen comments fall from 100s to single digits when they drop Disqus.
And if they bring it back it will like be with Facebook login.
My hometown paper dropped Disqus and on the rear occasions I go there to read a story there almost no comments anymore. Few people like to comment using Facebook.
I think letting in a few more illegals should help that problem.
He will turn all of California into San Francisco
Someday things will get bad enough in the USA (or what’s left of it) that a government will come along, round up the homeless and other undesirables and then march them into the gas chambers to the resounding applause of their constituents.
Or we can take concrete measures to actually fix the problem instead of enabling the homeless and etc. to maintain their current status.
I know so many wealthy people who spout lefty platitudes from their übercool homes in Venice. Not one original thinker in the bunch, just really good parroters. NOW they get a taste of what they wanted. I couldnt be happier. Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-e?
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