RVs Populate Closer and Closer to the Beach. When Will a Solution Be Offered?
By Nick Antonicello
Don’t believe the hype.
While our elected officials, homeless advocates and government bureaucrats preach a different tune, what seems to be happening is that a large percentage of the unhoused that were on the streets are now in vehicles that are illegally parked, many with expired tags and immobile while public policy remains rudderless and lacking.
It’s just more of the same and Venice once again is getting the brunt of the short end of the stick.
While protected neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades remain immune from this migration of the mobile homeless, Venice suffers for the most part in silence and exhausted by the indifference that this neighborhood is, in fact, a containment zone no matter who sits on the LA City Council.
The vehicle in the image above is parked at Clune and Washington Boulevard, directly in front of Charcoal, one the area’s more popular dining venues.
For whatever reason it has not moved for more than a week while bike tires and tubes are now in front, a clear indication that this vehicle isn’t going anywhere soon, just steps from the beach and in the heart of a tourist district to say nothing of the locals who reside here and have to tolerate such nonsense.
About 200 yards closer to the beach where the historic Venice Canals meet Washington is a two-person encampment with garbage all over the sidewalk, usually two men arguing and begging for change as the makeshift shelter is now occupying the entire stretch of sidewalk and passing has become problematic thanks to its size and stench!
The question is now obvious, why is this tolerated and why the lack of enforcement?
Who is tying the hands of the LAPD?
Venice Stakeholders President Mark Ryavec, a former VNC member and unsuccessful candidate for the Los Angeles City Council in 2017 had a letter published recently in the Los Angeles Times and couldn’t be more on point:
“In Venice Beach we see the results of this misguided decision (Boise) in the constant influx of homeless campers, from around the nation, and scores who have left local shelters because they cannot abide by reasonable rules of behavior. Boise v. Martin, which was recently appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, should be either struck down in its entirety, or amended to allow cities to enforce camping bans after a written offer of a shelter bed has been given to an individual and the individual has rejected it. Only then will we begin to stop Venice Beach and other California communities from being the favored destination for the nation’s homeless.”
For the question needs to be begged, why isn’t the City of Los Angeles seeking relief in the courts to overturn this misguided ruling?
This this “one step forward, two-steps back” approach to permanently address the unhoused crisis is not working and those monetarily contracted to fix it like these so-called service providers just have their hand in the city’s proverbial cookie jar where these “not-for-profits” have a dedicated ATM machine where $1.3 billion has been appropriated this year alone, and they seem determined to spend every single cent of it without a stitch of results!
The hard reality is that the homeless issue is worse today in LA and Venice than it was yesterday, last week, last month and last year.
The unhoused population here in LA is the largest in the nation, even larger than New York City that has a population double that of Los Angeles!
LA Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, a newbie to county government, is now allegedly the elected official in charge of LAHSA (Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority), the mega white elephant and bottomless bureaucratic pit of wasted tax dollars that can’t seem to get out of its own way! I reached out to her office twice and of course never received a call back, typical of detached elected officials who seem to see themselves above such mundane complexities as actually getting the homeless addiction fixed and solved as it becomes very apparent the unhoused crisis is not a national one, but a California manufactured mess with Los Angeles at ground zero and Venice in particular force-fed to accept these conditions as somehow normal, while rhetoric remains flowered, the stench of the streets is as strong as ever before.
Nick Antonicello is a thirty-year resident who covers the issue of homelessness here in Venice. Have an encampment cropping up on your street or neighborhood? Contact the author via email at nantoni@mindspring.com
