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 area’s 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."
Oh, and Venice has not become silicon beach. silicon beach is mar vista and Playa vista.
Make homelessness a viable lifestyle choice, and you get people choosing homelessness as a lifestyle.
If you work hard for the man all day and make peanuts, why not slack off, get some meth, and go live in a Garcity?
I was out and about yesterday and observed two male “unfortuates” standing on a corner. One of them was holding a cardboard sign upon which was written “Hobos Lives Matter”.
It’s a leftie zoning problem. If you read the entire article they reluctantly acknowledge the California laws that allow these homeless camps to spring up with no legal recourse or will to take them down.
Open-air dwellers
_____________________
“Residence-challenged”
Should have been “unfortunates”. Darn auto-incorrect.
The commie left wanted America to turn to sh*t and now they have it..and whenever they want to open up a homeless shelter in their communities they come out and protest it LOL..Commies don’t want it in THEIR neighborhoods, just in someone elses neighborhood so they dont have to deal with it. LA Unified is one of the WORST school districts in the nation, why, because they let in hundreds of thousands of illegal alien kids, pay for their education, and they dont speak a word of English..and we are paying for it..instead these funds should be used to help the homeless get off the street
Heard stories about how they are shipping homeless from other states to California because they know once they get here, they dont have to leave, ever
“Just 50 year ago the bums would have been ran out of town before it got this bad.”
In Soviet California, bums run YOU out of town!
On Halloween night, 1976, I roamed the streets of Venice distributing door hangers for Robert K. Dornan, aka B-1 Bob, who was running in what would be a successful campaign for Congress in that district. I wouldn’t do that today. Besides being too dangerous, there are no longer any Republican voters in the area.
Note the first photo. Row of homeless in tents on the left by the fence but on the right is someone’s home with the backyard filled with trash. Difference is not much. That guy is sitting on multi millions but probably does not know it as he is probably a hoarder.
Yeah it’s about time that the left have to deal with the consequences of their terrible policies.
There is a Netflix show called Flaked that has as part of its storyline the gentrification of Venice Beach. I haven’t been there in years, and last time I was it was like it is depicted in movies like White Men Can’t Jump, a funky town filled with druggies, hippies and weirdos, people roller blading, lifting on the beach, maybe not dressed. The real estate was pretty run down, it was not a place where I would have considered living.
But it is by the beach, and housing in LA is scarce, so it makes sense that money has moved in and bought up housing and established restaurants and the whole infrastructure of hipster life. Those hipsters now have to deal with the contradictions in their world view by living alongside an army of homeless druggies. Good luck, Venice!
Flaked is OK, not great but mildly entertaining if you want to give it a try. There are 2 seasons of it; not sure if there will be a 3rd.
Urban campers
bttt
Do you have a link to pic(s) of same? I tried to look for same, but with the devolvement of Google, found I came up short after a few tries.
The People’s Republic of Bozeman, MT used to give vagrants a bus ticket to the urban Utopia of Butte. [apparently because Bozeman was not yet a total leftist Utopia].
Time will tell.
Well, THERE is some Intersectionality...
Indeed, the homeless people will go away if vigilantes started beating the shit out of them.
There are solutions to these problems.
Thank you my friend. I may give it a look.
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