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Vol 4 February 2016 No. 2
Continued on p. 8
City Council and County Supervisors Approve
Ambitious Plans to End Homelessness
Continued on p. 7
City and County ocials on February 9
voted to adopt the most extensive plans to
date to end homelessness in Los Angeles.
This was an encouraging step, though there
is widespread skepticism that the fund-
ing to implement the plans can be found.The two plans are very different in
their scope. On the county side, an ac-
tual $150 million over two years is to be
added to the existing $965 million already
being spent on homeless issues. On the
city side a more long-term focus calls
for construction of some 15,000 beds in
units of Permanent Supportive Housing
over ten years at a cost of $1.85 billion.
The incentive for this new push more
than anything else has been the recent
spread of homeless tents westward out ofthe historic connes of Skid Row and into
neighborhoods shocked by camps springing
up on their blocks and in alleys behind peo-
ple’s homes. This has been in part a result of
downtown gentrication, where developers
have bought up the great majority of single-
room-occupancy hotels previously allocated
to homeless individuals, and in part the result
of a rapid growth in the total numbers living
on the streets. The Los Angeles HomelessServices Authority count in January 2015
found 44,000 homeless people countywide,
with 26,000 of those in the city limits.
Key drivers of the overall increase have
been stagnating wages, the loss of good
paying jobs in the 2008 Great Recession,
where large numbers of people were re-
hired at minimum wage in fast-food and
service jobs. This has been exacerbated by
underbuilding in new housing overall and
particularly in low-income aordable hous-
ing, which is all that the new minimum wageearners can aord. In these conditions loss
of a job, a serious illness, or a familial death
or breakup put people on the streets. These
factors are compounded by the decades-
long abandonment of the mentally ill, left to
wander the streets, eat out of garbage bins,
and sleep in cardboard boxes under bridges.
The most visible are the 8,000 chronic,
long-term street dwellers. About a third of
these are mentally ill. Many others are physi-
cally disabled, or drug or alcohol addicted.
A long nationwide experience has shown
that virtually all measures to rehabilitatethese people fail, with the exception of
Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH).
That is why construction of thousands of
units of this kind of housing is central to
City Administrator Miguel Santana’s 237-
page plan now adopted by the City Council.
For PSH to work, it requires not just a
room with a bed but case workers, mental
A long-demanded reform moved ahead
in the rst week of February when Coun
cil President Herb Wesson secured a votein the City Council to hire a full-time
Petroleum Administrator. Mayor Eric
Garcetti responded immediately that he
was already interviewing prospective
candidates, seeking persons with techni
cal expertise in oil and gas operations
Obviously the most immediate prod to
our city administrators was the three-and-a
half month methane gas leak in Porter Ranch
a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley
section of Los Angeles, that forced thou
sands of residents from their homes. But Por
ter Ranch was only the latest consequence odecisions made more than 150 years ago to
allow oil and gas wells to spread throughou
the residential neighborhoods of our city. I
was the inevitable consequence of decades
of missing oversight over an industry tha
normally operates far from people’s houses
Los Angeles is home to the largest urban
oil elds in the country with some 3,000
City Council President Herb Wesson
City Responds
to Calls to Hire
a Petroleum
Administrator
City Administrative Ocer Miguel
Santana, drafted plan to house Los
Angeles homeless adopted by the City
Council.
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Homeless and Problem Property Report
Distributed monthly by email by the Southwest LAPD Community Police Advisory Board (CPAB).
Community-Police Advisory Boards were created by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1993 to give community mem-
bers a vehicle to provide advice to and raise issues about crime and police-community relations with their local police stations.
Each of the 21 community police stations has its own CPAB chapter. Southwest CPAB is affiliated to
the Southwest Community Police Station, 1546 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90062.
Our aim is to identify homeless and problem property locations within Southwest LAPD’s area, roughly from
the 10 Freeway on the north to Vernon on the south, and from the Harbor Freeway on the east to La Cienega. Welog homeless camps, and locations such as blocked alleys, illegal businesses, and open junk storage. We accept
requests from residents to look into such problems. If there appears to be a denite violation we photograph it and
report it to the appropriate agency: Homeless outreach teams, Building and Safety, Housing, LAPD, Street Ser -
vices, etc. Determination of the validity of this judgment is always made by the professional stas of these city
agencies. We seek help for the homeless from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and other organiza-
tions. If you want to receive these emails (or if you want to unsubscribe) drop us an email at the address below.
Homeless and Problem Property Committee chair: Leslie Evans
[email protected] 323-574-5586 www.southwestcpab.org
Southwest CPAB meets on the rst Monday of each month, usually at 6:30 pm. Our meetings are open to the public and you are welcome to attend. The location changes, so drop us an email to get an announcement. Our next
meeting date and place are also listed on our website, www.southwestcpab.org.
Southwest CPAB is a member of the South Los Angeles Homeless Coalition. This covers the Los Angeles Home-
less Services Authority’s Service Planning Area 6 (SPA6), which runs roughly from the 10 Freeway to Compton and
Paramount, and from Baldwin Village to the borders of Huntington Park, Vernon, and South Gate. The SPA6 Home -
less Coalition is hosted by the Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System at 5715 S. Broadway.
Contents
Closed cases: p. 2-4
Current problem locations:
p. 9-10
Homeless locations/issues:
p. 11-18
Cases Closed — February 2016
We have gone back and forth over time on whether
to include RVs in this report. On the plus side many
homeless people live in RVs. But while we have tried
to include all the homeless camps we know of within
the boundaries of the Southwest LAPD station (10 fwy
to Vernon and Harbor fwy to La Cienega), it has never
been possible to include all known RVs, or to determine
with certainty how many are lived in. Also, they move
far more frequently than the camps. As we have very
limited time and resources we have nally concluded
that the RVs take up more of both than we can commit
to this project and as of this issue will not cover RVs.
1458 W 29th Street, LA 90007
This is a two-bedroom 1904 house. Because there is a second
small house on the property jurisdiction goes to the Housing Depart
ment. We led a complaint with Housing over the large pile of junk
in the front yard on January 21, case # 559955. We received a cal
from a Housing inspector Feb 12 saying the yard had been cleared.n
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The camps above grew substantially between November 2015 and January 2016, very likely due to
people seeking shel ter from the ra in under the freeway overpass . As of February 12 the camps in the
top photo have moved north of 20th Street out of our area and the two below that have disappeared.n
Hoover Street under the 10 Freeway
Two of the largest homeless
camp sites were mostly cleared
between mid-January and mid-
February. These were the camps
under the bridge of the 10 Free-
way over Hoover Street and
the majority of the extensive
camps in Leimert Plaza Park.
Leimert Plaza Park, LA 90008
Leimert Plaza Park, a central feature of the Leimert Park
neighborhood, has become overwhelmed by homeless campers.
The small park is bounded by 43rd Place on the north, Vernon
Avenue on the south, Crenshaw Blvd. on the west, and Leimert
Blvd. on the east. In early February the camps above were dis
mantled. One remains (see p. 18). On February 13 the park wa
crowded with homeless people but without their tents or shelters.n
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Adams Blvd. and Hoover Street
This camp was briefly under a construcion overhang
on Adams blvd. just west of Hoover Street as shelter from
the rain in mid-January but was gone a month later.n
42nd Street and Grand
Avenue, LA 90037
Camp and trash on east side of
Harbor Freeway at 42nd Street. 1-10
2016. Gone on visit of 2-13-2016.n
Flower Street north of
Vernon Avenue
There was a large camp here through
most of 2014. It was cleared in Sep-
tember 2014, but reappeared in March
2015 and grew up over the summer. It
was removed again in late December or
early January but had begun to rebuild
in this photo on January 10. The street
was clear in site visit on Feb 12, 2016.n
Jeerson Blvd east of 3rd
Avenue, LA 90018
These are the belongings of a home
less woman who lives mainly in the park to the left. For a long time she had
built ta ll stacks of clothing and other
materials covered with large clear plastic
tarps, one block to the west on Jeerson
In July there were 5 of the large plastic
wrapped stacks. On Sept 13 there were
2. On October 12 only 1, On November
16 there were none and she had moved
the materials to this location. On Feb 16
there was no sign of her or her camp.n
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City Seizes Three Tiny Houses from Homeless Occupants
On February 12, at the request of City
Councilmember Curren Price, city workers
seized three of the four tiny houses on wheels
for the homeless pictured above. They were
located on the 42nd Street bridge over the
Harbor Freeway and around the corner on
Flower Street. One escaped by being rolled
away by its owner. We telephoned Elvis
Summers on February 15. He built the little
structures and donated them to homeless
people. He said the residents were not per -
mitted to remove their belongings, includ-
ing medications, before the structures were
loaded on trucks and taken away. The houses
are stored on a city lot but slated for demoli-
tion. Seven more are scheduled to be seized.The little 4 x 6 foot wheeled structures
have become one focal point in the city’s
uneasy balancing act between trying to
nd other accommodations for people liv-
ing on the streets and simply dismantling
their camps and seizing their property.
West Adams resident Elvis Summers’
rst house, smaller than the ones above
(and denounced as a “dog house” by City
Councilmember Joe Biscaino), was for one
of my homeless neighbors, a 60-year-old
black woman called Smokie, who I have
known for a few years. Summers made a
video of the project. It was viewed on You
Tube by 6 million people. A GoFundMe
eort raised more than $100,000 and Sum
mers has gone full-time building more
and larger, versions. So far, he told me
Elvis Summers with Smokie, who got
his rst house, in April 2015.
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he has built and given away 37 of them.
Here is a v ideo about h is e f -
f o r t s b y T V ’ s I n s i d e E d i t i o n :
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=oq6yEjQoHp4.
Summers says his houses were inspired
by a similar project by Oakland artist and
contractor Gregory Kloehn. Here are a couple
of very favorable articles on Kloehn’s work:
http://www.treehugger.com/tiny-
houses/artist-transforms-trash-into-tiny-
homes-homeless-gregory-kloehn.html
and:
http://nationswell.com/gregory-
kloehn-homes-on-wheels-for-homeless/
Supporters of the homeless, and of
course, the recipients of the tiny houses,
think Summer’s project is great. The City
Council and the City Attorney’s oce have
been much more negative. At an August
meeting of the City Council, Senior As-
sistant City Attorney Valerie Flores advised
the body that the houses don’t qualify as
personal belongings but can be seized
and destroyed as mere “bulky items,” like
cast-o furniture. They are not street legal,
and not legal as living quarters on private
property because they lack electricity and
plumbing. Flores said the city could be
sued if someone living in one was injured.
Elvis Summers has retained attorneys
from the ACLU to defend the homeless
owners’ right to keep their little houses. So
far only the three at 42nd and Flower have
been conscated but more are set to go.If the law begins from the zoning code,
then these little structures don’t meet
standards either as vehicles to remain in
the street or as houses to be parked and
lived in on land. But it is a little bizarre
to use these codes for people that have
neither vehicles nor houses: 31,000 of
Gregory Kloehn’s tiny houses in Oakland, California. Highly praised, these are
made from random scrap and are literally about the size of dog houses. Elvis
Summers’ houses are much larger and made from new lumber.
the county’s 44,000 homeless live in the
streets. Many live in tents. RVs, while they
are vehicles, usually when owned by the
homeless do not have running water or
electricity and so do not meet code as habi
tations. And an endless variety of shelters
and shacks are built out of many materi
als. At least the tiny houses are portable
The counter law to the vehicle and
housing codes is the law protecting
pr ivate property, which applies to thehomeless as well as to the better o. The
wheeled tiny wooden houses are contain
ers for homeless property, not empty
“bulky items” such as sofas and chairs
Ninth Circuit Court ordered
protection for homeless
wheeled shelters
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in
2012 rendered a decision on city seizures
of homeless property. They ruled that unattended homeless personal property, much
less when the owner is standing right there
is protected from seizure under the Fourth
and Fourteenth Amendments to the Con
stitution. The court made a special point of
singling out as examples EDARs, which
they dened as “small, collapsible mobile
shelters provided to homeless persons by
Everyone Deserves a Roof, a nonprofi
organization.” The city had been seizing
and destroying EDARs. The court com
mented: “EDARs are intended to address
the chronic shortage of housing faced by
homeless persons in Los Angeles. Former
Los Angeles City Mayor Richard Riordan
spent the night of Saturday, November 6
2010, in an EDAR on Skid Row to dem
onstrate how the shelters could be used by
the homeless population residing there.”
The reason the EDAR got special atten
tion from the court, and why this deserves
comparison with Elvis Summers’ little hous
es on wheels, was that the EDAR is an entire
ly enclosed shelter on wheels, which makes
it possible to clearly identify what are thehomeless person’s private possessions, no
always evident in a homeless camp situation
and also makes it possible for the owner to
move the structure when needed or required
A Compromise Solution
Of course, no one wants the tiny houses
to fill up our streets, any more than we
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active wells branching out underground
from 70 drill sites, many in residential
neighborhoods, sometimes only a few
feet from residences or schools. Despite
the fact that this industry is based on a product that is itself dangerous and uses
large amounts of dangerous chemicals,
the city has for decades grandfathered
these operations in, paying little attention
to how they operate and lacking any sys-
tem of overall review and accountability.
City code has detailed rules on how to ap-
ply to drill an oil well, and prohibits fumes or
excessive noise from oil operations. It lacks
detailed rules on air quality, environmental
oversight, or access to records. It does not
provide for any periodic review on whether
its rules are being followed, or which agencyto complain to if they are not. Nominally
there is the State Division of Oil, Gas and
Geothermal Resources, but it has recently
admitted that it has not done serious inves-
tigations in years. In practice complaints go
to the South Coast Air Quality Management
District (AQMD), to Zoning Administrators
at the City Planning Department, or to Build-
ing and Safety. The LA Times in their Febru-
ary 4 report on the Petroleum Administrator
issue quoted South Los Angeles resident Ste-
ven Peckman, who said, “As a citizen, you
may call the agency that you think is respon-sible, they point their nger at some other
agency. Someone needs to mind the store.”
When between 2011 and 2013 some
250 complaints were made to AQMD about
nosebleeds and respiratory illnesses from
fumes at the Allen Co. oil drill site at 23rd
Street just west of Figueroa they issued
several citations but never enforced them.
City to Hire Petroleum Administrator
Continued from p. 1
are in favor of the proliferation of home-
less tents. But it is pointless to focus on
their deciencies compared to real houses
instead of their advantages as compared
to a blanket or a tent. No one is offer -
ing the 31,000 living on the street many
houses or apartments, so their real choice
is between the blanket and the tiny house.
The tiny house is waterproof with a
shingle roof. It has a solid wood door witha deadbolt lock to provide security to the
homeless person when inside and to protect
their possessions when they are out. They
have a window and door for ventilation, and
can have a real mattress on the oor to sleep
on. They have wheels, so can be moved when
needed, and keyed wheel locks to prevent theft.
The City Council and the Mayor have
been talking for months about finding
city-owned empty lots in which to set up
showers and portable toilets and allow
homeless citizens living in RVs to camp.
This is the obvious place to put the tiny
houses, and has been loudly advocated
by Elvis Summers. This would solve the
problem of having these struc tures on
sidewalks or in the streets, while providing
better shelter and privacy than the residents
had before, or that the city is prepared to
provide for many years to come, if at all.
Longtime skid row activis t Al -
ice Callaghan praised the houses be-
cause they offer the homeless privacy:
“Who wants to live their life in full
public view? Unless the city has an alter -
native, it seems to me simply immoral for
the city to tell people they have to move
their four walls if they have nowhere to
move them to.” (LA Times Aug 25, 2015)
The Times on Feb 25 said Mayor Garcetti
“is committed to getting homeless people
into permanent and not makeshift housing.”
The city did not oer any housing to the
people whose Tiny Houses they seized, their
housing plan has no funding, and if it did
would take 10 years to deliver. The Times
also spoke to Johnny Horton, a 60-year-old
diabetic whose legs are covered with ban-daged wounds. He was in tears when his
little house was seized and he has to go back
to sleeping on the sidewalk. “Laying on that
tent on the sidewak it’s impossible to keep
clean,” Horton told the reporter. — LEn
Zoning Administrators will hold a hearing
about a single drill site, but have no expertise
in oil issues and do not visit the actual site
Building and Safety says it is in charge o
dealing with violations but its leaders saythey lack the expertise to be able to do so
There was a city Petroleum Adminis
trator in the 1960s, Arthur Spaulding, a
geologist and former petroleum enginee
at Shell Oil Co. He was replaced in the
1970s and 1980s by Jeff Druyan, who
did not have those credentials and who
worked most of the time as a budge
analyst. The job, though still required by
city code, has not existed since the 1990s
In part this gross negligence was a resul
of lack of attention to changes in the oi
industry. By the 1990s most of the LA oiwells were running low and the majority
were plugged and shut down. This seemed
to confirm that an expensive Petroleum
Administrator was no longer needed
Then world conventional oil – the kind
you can just pump out of the ground – a
lined in 2005. Oil companies lled in with
much more expensive and dicult to obtain
unconventional oil: Canadian tar sands
fracked oil from Texas and North Dakota
deep sea oil, and heavy oil from Venezuela
Prices shot up, reaching $100 a barrel in
2011. New owners quickly bought up hundreds of the old LA wells, using new tech
niques to get at the remaining oil. Mainly
this was acidizing, pumping thousands o
gallons of acid into the wells to dissolve
blockages to small ssures, each holding
small amounts of oil. The risk, as the Allen
Co. site showed, was running all this acid
into wells that are almost all more than 50
Allen Company oil drill site at 814 W 23rd St, Los Angeles, CA 90007. Stil
closed in February 2016
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Los Angeles Homeless Plans
Continued from p. 1
health professionals, and drug and alcohol
rehabilitative treatment. These are consider -
able ongoing expenses over and above the
$1.85 billion in projected construction costs.
Last year Miguel Santana reported that
the city in 2014 had spent $100 million onthe homeless, 87% of which went to the po-
lice and re departments. Even though much
of the police work was to take homeless
people to hospitals or shelters, this seriously
exaggerated the proportion of spending on
law enforcement in their involvement with
the homeless. The LA Times in contrast re-
ports that of the county’s $965 million a year
to provide services to homeless residents,
“About 60% of that goes into health and
mental health treatment, including stays in
county emergency rooms and psychiatric fa-
cilities, with 30.5% going to welfare benetsincluding food stamps and cash payments,
and 9.5% to law enforcement, including
jails and probation.” (February 9, 2016)
The test of our ocialdom’s will to do
something real will come in the city’s next
budget, due to be approved in April and May.
Where the county is adding $75 million a
year for two years to its existing budget,
Los Angeles is currently budgeting only
$30 million to homeless programs in this
scal year. The housing in Santana’s plan
alone will, by its fth year of construction,
years old and often not in good condition.
A methane leak near the Beverly Center
in 1985 injured 23 people. A major fume
leak in the giant Inglewood Oil Field in
2006 forced the evacuation of 500 people.
There was a toxic fume blowout in Torrance
in March 2007; a 10,000-gallon spill in an
industrial section of Los Angeles in May
2014 from a pipeline running to Long Beach.
South L.A. Oil Sites
Closer to Homes
And then came the long community
battles over three South Los Angeles oil
sites: the worst being the Allen Co. drill site.
But there have been complaints of fumes
and construction noise at two sites owned
by the giant Freeport McMoRan Oil and Gas
Company: the Jeerson Drill Site at Bud-
long Avenue and Jeerson Blvd. and their
Murphy site at Adams Blvd. and Gramercy
Place. These three sites, along with some inWilmington, are closer to residential hous-
ing than sites in any other part of the city.
The Community Health Councils in
a January 2015 Issue Brief pointed out:
“Although oil and gas production occurs
citywide, the relative risk is signicantly
higher in lower-income communities of col-
or. Oil drilling occurs closer to homes, has
fewer protective features such as air monitor -
ing and enclosed operations, and is subject to
more regulatory violations and complaints.”
The LA Times ran a February 4 edito-
rial under the heading: “It’s past time forL.A. to seriously regulate its oil and gas
wells.” They wrote: “The massive gas leak
in Porter Ranch has forced city leaders to
confront the tremendous risks of having
oil and gas operations in urban areas.”
It is essential that there be at least one
central full-time person in the city admin-
istration with serious technical knowledge
of oil and gas operations, who can go to
problem sites and assess citizen com-
plaints. Even the California Independent
Petroleum Association, an industry group,
say they favor having someone with real
technical knowledge on the city payroll
who will know if citizen complaints are
valid. The second qualication for this job
beyond oil industry experience is that they
be committed to protect the safety of the
community. Given that, we all look for -
ward to the Mayor’s appointment. — LEn
be running about $267 million a year. Al
other costs, including case management
mental health treatment, and dealing with
those still on the streets, are on top of that
The city is considering new levies
on developers and possible ballot measures to raise taxes or issue new bonds
Some Help That May
Come Soon
There are smaller measures in the ocia
plans that can be taken sooner, at much lowe
costs, that can make an important dierence
These include setting up mobile showers and
public toilets throughout the city, and autho
rizing city-owned and private lots, including
church parking lots, where homeless people
living in cars or RVs can camp at nightWe will soon have new numbers to tel
us whether or not the rapid growth of the
homeless between 2013 and 2015 is continu
ing. The Los Angeles Homeless Services
Authority stepped up their point-in-time
homeless count from once every two years
to annually. Some 7,000 volunteers, includ
ing this writer, made a new survey of the
county’s homeless January 26-28. The tabu
lations should be complete and the numbers
released in late April or early May.—LEn
Volunteers ready to go out for the January 28 South Los Angeles (SPA6)
segment of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority county-wide
Homeless Count. Photo at the Homeless Outreach Program/Integrated Care
System at 57th Street and Broadway.
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This small house has for some years
collected junk, derelict motorcycles, and
inoperable vehicles around it. In 2009
Building and Safety had the owner remove
several inoperable vehicles. We filed a
complaint to Building and Safety, July 13,
2015, for storage of boxes of liquid on the
porch and on the north side of the house.
From recent photos we can now see that
they are 35 pound containers of canola oil
for commercial deep fryers. It was assigned
2509 S Raymond Ave, LA 90007
Current Problem Locations
2921 S La Salle
Avenue, LA 90018
This abandoned house has been on our
reports since January 2010, when we led
a Building and Safety complaint. It has
been vacant and a local nuisance far longe
than that. The owner, Doris Crader, moved
to Salinas, California, in 1975. She died in
2009 without a will, leaving the house on La
Salle Avenue ownerless. It has accumulated
trash and transients ever since. In February
2015 we succeeded in getting Building
and Safety to clean the yard and place a
to Inspector Antonio Monsisvais (323)
789-2786 (since transferred to the Electri-
cal Section). It remained listed as Under
Investigation as of Feb 17, 2016. Inspector
Monsisvais cited the property for “Excessive
or overgrown vegetation on the premises”
and “Open storage within the required
yards.” The order had a required compli-
ance date of 9/19/2015. Photo to the right
is of the stack of boxes on the front porch.n
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Long Vacant Burger Stand at 4319 S Hoover Street, LA 90037
This 720-square-foot food service stand,
built in 1950, at the corner of Hoover Street
and 43rd Place in South Los Angeles, has
stood vacant for many years, a blight mag-
net attracting illegal dumpers and homeless
campers. It has been on our reports since
October 2013 and it has been under an
abate order from Building and Safety since
August 2014. In this photo taken 2-12-2016
the usual dumping is there and illegal swap
meets are often held on the Hoover sideusing the fence to hang clothing for sale.
The place is owned by 82-year-old
retired attorney Harold W. Dickens. In ad-
dition to the abandoned food stand, online
agencies report that Mr. Dickens has 3 other
properties: an apartment at 1245 Martin Lu-
ther King Jr Blvd., #101, LA 90037, a two-
bedroom house at 3842 S Hobart Blvd., LA
90062, and a three-bedroom house at 14905
S. White Avenue in Compton. His son has
told us that he only keeps the burger stand as
a tax write-o, ignoring the perpetual grief
it inicts on the surrounding neighborhood.
The layout of the property would seem
to make it too dicult to open the food
stand. It is surrounded by a tall wrought
iron fence keeping customers away from
the service window, and if the fence
was removed the large empty lot would
make it even more attractive to transientsfor night camping. It would be most ef -
fectively used to build something new
that used the whole of the large space.
Mr. Dickens says he is unwilling to sell.
The Building and Safety website gives
the following code violation information:
“The building or premises is Substandard
due to inadequate sanitation caused by gen-
eral dilapidation or improper maintenance of
the building as required by Section 91.8104
“The premises are Substandard due
to an accumulation of weeds, vegeta
tion, junk, dead organic matter, debris
garbage, offal, rat harborages, stagnan
water, combustible materials and simila
materials or conditions.” The inspec
tor is Jeffrey Corpuz, 213-252-3946.n
construction fence around the property.
In April 2015 after a long search we lo-
cated Doris Crader’s son. Originally named
Brian Crader, he had adoped his mother’s
married name of Clayton and changed
the spelling of his first name to Brion.
Mr. Clayton informed Deputy City
Attorney Alvan Arzu that he intended
to open a probate case to gain title to
the vacant house. During the summer of
2015 Building and Safety agreed to give
Mr. Clayton keys to the city’s chain link
fence, and he has visited the property a
number of times since then, but online
records still list Doris Crader as the owner.
We were able to view the interior of the
house during a visit in January 2015 and
found all the downstairs rooms buried under
3-5 feet of trash, which neighbors said had
been left by the owners years ago. Brion
Clayton in November 2015 brought a dump
ster onto the property and began removing
the junk, but as of February 17, 2016, he has
not established ownership. Sixty-nine neigh
bors have signed a petition to City Counci
District 8 councilmember Marqueece
Harris-Dawson asking that the city take
some more decided action to see the house
not remain empty in its present condition.n
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Homeless Locations and Issues
This alley is just north of the 10 Freeway and runs east from Nor -
mandie to Mariposa. The camp in the photo on the left is at the west
end of the alley. We rst observed it in December 2013, and reported
it to LA Homeless Services Authority. The second camp (photo on
Alley between 10 Fwy and 20th St, east of Normandie
right) appeared in September 2014 at the east end of the alley. The
man at the east end says he has applications in for housing but they
have not come through. Both camps still there on 2-13-2016.n
Cal Trans Bunker, eastbound o-ramp of the 10 Freeway at Vermont Ave.
First noticed in March 2014. Until September 2015 one thin, gray-haired Caucasian man was living
here. Now it appears that a young Latino couple are using the bunker. We have seen them twice. These
photos were taken 2-13-2 016. The en larged photo on the righ t shows ta rps in the bunker ’s fa r corn er.n
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1655 W. Adams Blvd, LA 90007
In March 2014 one RV and two travel trailers were moved
onto this mostly empty lot (a small carriage house exists in
the back). The owner says they have been occupied by three
mentally ill veterans. In November 2015 it was raised to two
travel trailers and two RVs, plus a travel trailer in the far back
not visible in this photo that predates the current four vehicles.
Building and Safety has a case against the property for using it
as a place to live, but very reasonably is not pursuing it and wethink everyone concerned understands that it is better that these
men have their mobile homes than to be out on the streets.n
Harvard Blvd. just south of
Adams Blvd.
This man, named Chris, was living on the sidewalk next to
a strip mall just north of Adams Blvd. on Hobart Blvd. from
sometime in 2013 to July 2015, up against a barricade while a
new building was under construction. When the building wasnished he moved across Adams and one block to the east. We
have had one complaint about him from the Empowerment
Congress North Area Neighborhood Development Council. His
camp was much larger in November and was evidently cleared
and he is just beginning to rebuild it. This photo, Feb 12, 2016.n
We rst included this camp in our May 2015 report. The entrance from the dirt path running left from the freeway
is wedged between the wall of shrubbery, which stretches west along the freeway margin, and a wrought iron fence
covered with ivy that separates the Cal Trans property from Frank’s Auto Center at 2137 S. Western. We think there
are about three men living there, who panhandle cars as they exit the freeway. This photo from a visit of 2-14-2016.n
E a s t b o u n d o f f - r a m p o f t h e 1 0 F r e e w a y a t W e s t e r n A v e n u e
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This homeless camp was rst in our April 2015 report when
it was very small and on the sidewalk at the corner of Nor -
mandie Avenue and 35th Street. When we visited on May 13,
2015 we found the camp had moved o the sidewalk and into
the east-west alley between Normandie and Halldale Avenues
Alley west of Normandie Ave. between 37th Place and 37th Drive
and between 37th Place and 37th Drive. We have visited every
month and spoken to Earl, who is living there alone with his
three dogs. Earl is friendly, interested in nonction books, of
which he keeps a big box. His dogs are all in good condition. He
says he would like to get real housing. This photo 2-14-2016.n
Alley West of Menlo Ave.
between 43rd Street and 43rd Place
This half-block-long alley running west from Menlo
Ave. hides a homeless camp. The alley ends at the west
in a north south alley that blocks it from continuing to the
next street, Vermont Avenue. We rst noticed it on May
17, 2015. This photo is from a visit on Feb 12, 2016.n
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Homeless at the south end of the Crenshaw bridge over the 10 Freeway
While some of the homeless a t the nor th end o f the Crenshaw br idge over the 10 Free -
way left between mid-January and mid-February, there was an increase in camps at the south end of the
bridge around the east bound offramp. All four of the photos above are from the south end. Going clockwise(1) The old timer in the wheelchair is parked in front of the UHaul station. A few minutes later he rolled into
the car exit lane of the oramp where he set up panhandling while cars had to swerve around him. (2) This camp
is behind the chain link fence at the edge of the oramp, on the top of the slope that runs down to the freeway. It
was new in February. (3) This camp in on the north side of the exit. It began a few months ago as a single shop -
ping cart. (4) The long-standing camp at the south end under the Crenshaw bridge. Photos taken 2-14-2016.n
Vermont Ave at 40th Place
Camp just o sidewalk in block south of Martin Luther King
Jr Blvd., 2-12-2016. In our report rst in January 2016.n
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39th Street, just east of Flower Street, under Harbor Freeway Bridge
W e f i r s t s a w t h e s e c a m p s o n J u n e 1 6 , 2 0 1 5 . T h e s e p h o t o s a r e f r o m 2 - 1 2 - 2 0 1 6 .
The top photo is the south side of 39th Street, just east of Flower. The next below that is the same side
one block east, just after a freeway offramp. The bottom photo is the north side just at Flower Street.n
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40th Place at Flower Street, LA 90037
The tent in the photo was part of a long string of camps in a narrow
walkway running north from 40 Place and Flower street, between a
MacDonalds and the Harbor Freeway, All but this one were cleared
in December 2015. The other campers relocated to the west side ofFlower Street just south of 40th Place (see photos below on this page).n
Flower Street south of 40th Place
C a m p s o n s i d e w a l k j u s t s o u t h o f 4 0 t h P l a c e o n w e s t s i d e o f F l o w e r
Street, across from the 110 Freeway. In mid-January there was only the rough looking
one in the center. On February 12 it had been joined by the two tents on each side of it.
This is a short alley running westward from Flower Street just south of 40th Place. In
mid-January it was blocked at the sidewalk line by one large tent, at that time the only camp
there. On February 12 we found the alley filled with camps, and the barricade at the side-
walk line was more formal, with a large table braced on its side to limit entrance to the alley.n
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42nd Street Bridge over Harbor Freeway, south Side
February 12, 2016. In January there had been two tents and one of Elvis Summers’ Tiny Houses on the north side of the 42nd Street
overpass, while there had been two of Summer’s houses on the south side along with a number of tents. In February the three Tiny
Houses were gone and all the tents had consolidated on the south side, making this photo the largest collection of camps on that side-
walk in several years.n
Flower Street north of 43rd Street
There had been two tents here in June and July, but since Sep-
tember there has been just this one. This photo 2-12-2016.n
43rd Street Bridge over Harbor Freeway
North side. In November it was a blue tent. On 1-10-2016 it
was red on top over a white base with a black cloth front. This
seems to be yet a dierent tent. Photo: 2-12-2016.n
Alley running south from
Jeerson just east of
CrenshawThere had been four or ve homeless
men living in this alley in 2014, then one
died and the camp dispersed. One man
set up a camp in May 2015. In a July 14
site visit a man and a woman were camp-
ing in the alley but the camp remained
very small through January 2016. It has
doubled in size in this photo of 2-16-2016.n
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Bus stop on south side of Jeerson Blvd.,
just east of Crenshaw
After the homeless camp in the alley just east of this bus stop
broke up in 2014 (see last entry on previous page), homeless peo-
ple have tended to spend long periods or camp on this bus bench
in front of the ARCO gas station on the southeast corner of Jef -
ferson and Crenshaw Boulevards. This photo is from 2-13-2016.n
Leimert Plaza Park, LA 90008
Leimert Plaza Park, a central feature of the Leimert Park neighborhood, has become overwhelmed by homeless campers. The
small park is bounded by 43rd Place on the north, Vernon Avenue on the south, Crenshaw Blvd. on the west, and Leimert Blvd. on
the east. The homeless originally congregated at the northern end of the park, but by November 2015 had taken over virtually the
whole of the place with tents, sleeping bags, blankets, and cooking pots. In late January or early February there was a city clean-
up that seized all the many tents and home-made shelters. As of Feb 13, 2016 this photo at the west end of the park was the only
camp. However, the park was lled with homeless men and women, one of whom said they would begin to rebuild their camps.n
4501 W Martin Luther King Jr.
Blvd.This gear belongs to homeless man
David Odom. We visited the location rst
on March 19, 2015, but had been told abou
it by LAPD ocers some months earlier
Odom keeps his belongings on an island for
the MTA buses. We have visited this location
about 9 times and this is the rst time we have
seen Mr. Odom. Photo as of 2-14-2015. n
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