The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
How L.A moved homeless from a beach to housing
Seated under an umbrella, Teresa Robles and her friend, Dixie Moore, laughed at stories of each other’s adventures, including along the stretch of seaside they once called home.
Robles loved letting her dog, Notcho, roam as she made art in her tent and woke up with waves crashing against the shore. That dream ran up against a different reality last month when the city began to enforce rules against pitching tents on the grassy strip along Ocean Front Walk — in hopes of letting vendors return and reducing the chaos that had defined the oceanfront strip in recent months.
Robles and Moore had slept near where they were sitting and chatting. Not anymore.
After a month of intensive outreach, persuasion by police and park rangers, and painstaking separation of valuables from the jerry-built structures and furnishings, Robles and Moore were two of the roughly 200 campers who were removed from the famed half-mile stretch. All were offered someplace else to live — a few in apartments, many in private but temporary rooms in hotels and a few in congregate shelters. Most took up the offer.
The effort sought to balance the welfare of people living on the streets with the desires of business owners and residents who wanted there to be no tents on the boardwalk.
Robles and Moore landed at the Cadillac Hotel, just off the boardwalk — and despite her desire to return to the beach, Robles said she enjoys the queen-size bed, free TV and three meals a day.
“The hotel is nice,” Robles said. “I went to the shelter for a week when I first arrived, but Notcho and I didn’t like it. It wasn’t really private enough.”
Unlike Robles, who missed sleeping outdoors, Moore was eager for an apartment and some privacy. The hotel offered her that after she spent the better part of the last year surrounded not only by friends on the boardwalk but also by violence and chaos.
That’s a life she wants to leave behind. The hotel has a curfew of 10 p.m., which makes her feel as if it’s a prison, but she
sees the bigger picture. In the next few weeks, once her housing subsidy comes through, she’ll start apartment hunting.
“I want permanent housing for myself,” said Moore, 47. “She needs something permanent too.”
Behind them, Los Angeles Police Department officers and outreach workers trawled the sand looking for the people who had chosen instead to take what they could gather a few yards away and pitch their tents on the beach.
A few days later, even as merchants and community activists were welcoming the dramatic change on the narrow strip of earth bordering the concrete walkway, about 50 tents were pitched where none had previously been on the wide stretch of sand between the boardwalk and the sea.
Their appearance was a worrisome development for the program launched by City Councilman Mike Bonin to relocate more than 200 homeless people with a minimum of law enforcement and a maximum of aid.
Community groups that pressed for the cleanup were reserving judgment on its success until they see how the city deals with the tents in the sand, and how well it does at keeping new camps from being established.
Michael Freeman, 19, hummed quietly as he packed up his tent and belongings. Originally from New Orleans, he’d been living homeless in California for six years and for the past few months had been bedding down in Venice.
“Venice Beach had been one of the craziest times I’ve lived,” he said as he left the beach, a skateboard over his shoulder. He was heading to a hotel room in Inglewood that had been arranged for him and two friends by St. Joseph Center, the nonprofit organizing the outreach on the beach, and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
He was relieved to finally be getting off the street — even if it was temporary.
For Matias Moreno, 31, the clearing of tents on the boardwalk has been a welcome change for his restaurant, the Fig Tree. He spent summers working at the
Venice mainstay since his family bought the place in 2005. Last year, he took over management alongside a high school friend, chef Dashiell Nathanson, who re-imagined the menu.
Moreno said he was constantly contending with fights outside the restaurant and employees and patrons who felt unsafe. At least one staff member had been harassed on the boardwalk, and he worried the situation would drive away customers.
He sent emails to elected officials explaining the situation and pleading for change. Now that it’s finally
come, he’s glad politicians found a way to do right by the people who had been camping alongside the boardwalk by finding them a place to stay, while also clearing the area of tents.
Bonin, who was the public face of the effort to get people out of tents and into some form of housing, said he had every expectation that rules prohibiting camping in parks and on beaches would be enforced. Bonin pushed for this encampment-to-home model, in which outreach workers would come in and make offers of shelter or housing before the municipal code was enforced again.
For Bonin, the people who went indoors over the past six weeks disproved the trope that homeless people just want to stay homeless. While pleased with the effort, he said it can truly be judged as a success only if and when people are permanently housed.
“A lot of people are judging this program by how the boardwalk looks. That’s a metric that’s visible,” Bonin said. “But the metric that matters is how many people are housed. Helping people move off the streets permanently is the primary goal and the measure of success.”
Va Lecia Adams Kellum, president and chief executive of St. Joseph Center, said that would probably take six months. She said 116 of the 211 people have been matched to housing subsidies but still
have to find apartments.