Rampant homelessness and the issues that come with it are everyday problems for people in California, with so-called leaders like Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and others frequently vowing to eradicate the problem but doing precious little about it when the cameras aren’t rolling.
It’s gotten so bad in the Sun Valley neighborhood in Los Angeles that the community’s business owners have banded together to get creative in light of the city’s failure to take consistent action on the homeless street encampments that continue to crop up, which brings along drug use, prostitution, public urination and defecation, and other serious problems.
What have they done? Brought in huge trash dumpsters and concrete blocks to line the streets, as Fox 11 reported:
One business owner even uploaded a video on YouTube, describing the enormity of the situation, showing entire sidewalks blocked by trash and encampments. Business owners and employees were terrified to go to work.”We got tired of begging the city to enforce no parking or camping ordinances,” said property owner John Fallon, who has seen tenant after tenant pack up and leave.In the past, LA city officials have forbidden businesses from blocking sidewalk access, as was the case in front of a Hollywood merchant who put up planters as a deterrent, only to see the city take them away.
As of this writing, though, the dumpsters and concrete blocks are still there.
Watch:
In an interview, new L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he sided with what the business owners were doing until the city could come up with “a permanent solution”:
Here’s what things typically look like on Randall Street. The man narrating the video mentions, among other things, how the city will put trash bins in front of the businesses for the homeless to put their trash – only to not come back for pick up until the sidewalks and streets are overflowing with trash to the point city workers have to put on Hazmat suits to clean it up.
He also notes that the county has a recycling center nearby where they’ve blocked off their entrances with concrete barriers and are now talking about “putting up a fence around their section only”:
News of the Randall Street business owners taking action follows another report that found a staggering 70 percent of rooms in LA County that were designated for the homeless under a Newsom-touted COVID-era plan are empty:
Project Homekey, California’s COVID era emergency housing program, was supposed to change all of that. Governor Gavin Newsom directed $3.5 billion in emergency federal COVID relief funds to help cities and counties purchase motels, hotels, and apartment buildings rapidly and make them available for homeless housing. The state distributed three rounds of Homekey funds in 2021, 2022, and 2023-24. L.A. County received a total of $550 million and used the funds to help purchase 32 buildings. Earlier this year, Newsom lauded the program as “a national model for rapidly creating affordable housing for Californians in need.”However, according to an exclusive, months-long investigation by the Westside Current, as an estimated 139,151 homeless people, both locals and newcomers, occupy streets, sidewalks, beaches, parks, playgrounds, and other public spaces throughout the County, at least 1,538 the total 2,157 Homekey rooms are vacant. This number accounts for more than 71% of all Homekey rooms. These revelations come on the heels of our previous reporting that discovered more than 1,200 vacant Homekey units owned by the City of Los Angeles.
If you’re wondering where the oversight and accountability are on this, you’re not the only one. Westside Current reporter Jamie Paige told Fox 11 that “the county and the state are still trying to figure some of that out.”
Watch:
But hey, Gavin Newsom is frustrated “as a taxpayer” with the lack of progress on an issue he’s been promising to solve for well over 20 years, so maybe something will finally get done about it – or not:
In August, while participating in yet another photo op clean-up of a homeless encampment in Mission Hills, Newsom said “People are done. If we don’t deal with this, we don’t deserve to be in office.”
You first, Guv.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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