[quote=www.hollywoodreporter.com] LA’s Battle for Venice Beach: Homeless Surge Puts Hollywood’s Progressive Ideals to the Test
…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.
…”There are actually [residents] advocating driving the homeless out of Venice — shipping them off somewhere, which is such a proto-fascist move,”
…Disagreements over the potential causes of the crimes have begun to factionalize Venice’s neighborhoods.
…The most common refrain heard when discussing the cause of L.A.’s homeless crisis is soaring housing costs. But there are other forces at play in Venice and throughout the city involving various laws and ballot measures that date back more than a decade. A 2006 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Jones v. City of Los Angeles required that law enforcement and city officials no longer enforce the ban on sleeping on sidewalks anywhere in the city until a sufficient amount of permanent supportive housing could be built. Further complicating matters were two state ballot measures that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2016 — Propositions 47 and 57 — which decriminalized certain felonies to misdemeanors in an effort to address the state’s overburdened prison system.
After multiple tire slashings, one resident built a homemade deterrent system
Others have put up unpermitted planters to eat up sidewalk space
