Craven LA officials just surrendered on homelessness
Only Los Angeles could spend billions fighting homelessness, watch tents swallow sidewalks and parks, and then decide the city has been too aggressive keeping people from camping.That is what the Los Angeles City Council did this week.By a 10-3 vote, council members stripped anti-camping protections from a dozen locations.Parks.
A senior center.Gone.This is not compassion.It is surrender.Councilman Hugo Soto-Martínez, the socialist who pushed the rollback, says enforcing the anti-camping law just moves homeless people from block to block instead of housing them.Fine.
Then where do they go?California Post News: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedInCalifornia Post Sports Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, XCalifornia Post Opinion California Post Newsletters: Sign up here!California Post App: Download here!Home delivery: Sign up here!Page Six Hollywood: Sign up here!Not wherever they want.Public parks belong to the public.Sidewalks belong to pedestrians.
Senior centers belong to seniors.Being homeless doesn’t grant a permanent claim on public property.Take Barnsdall Art Park, home to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House — Los Angeles’ only UNESCO World Heritage site. Before anti-camping restrictions went into effect there, the park battled fires, vandalism and blocked pedestrian access, according to the Barnsdall Art Park Foundation, which pushed for a carve-out from Tuesday’s vote. “This park needs to be treated differently than other public spaces in Los Angeles,” foundation president Daniel Gerwin told The Post.
One neighbor described years spent dousing fires, scrubbing waste and patching graffiti on Wright’s buildings.Ten council members voted to remove the protection.Residents near the Las Palmas Senior Citizen Center remember the pandemic-era encampments.
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