You cannot leave belongs on a public street. It's not a storage unit, it's not their property. Why is this so hard for you to understand? It you leave something in a public area, it's considered trash at worse or abandoment at best. Why should the city have to warn people not to litter or leave belongings unattended? The sidewalks are for people to walk on not store their possessions.

rickgarvey said

Long_time_resident said

It may be the case that L.A. is the most unfriendly city for the homeless but this clean up was not evidence of unfriendliness towards homeless people. The living conditions on sidewalks for people with no facilities for cooking, cleaning, and shelter are always going to result in the conditions that make it difficult for communities to maintain minimum sanitation standards. So the clean up was a reasonable act. Since the owners of the materials did not bother to secure them but left them unattended on the sidewalk it is not unreasonable for the City to presume the material abandoned. 

I completely disagree with your premise here.  Although I'll give you that "The living conditions on sidewalks for people with no facilities for cooking, cleaning, and shelter are always going to result in the conditions that make it difficult for communities to maintain minimum sanitation standards" I feel that the clean-up was NOT a reasonable act, insofar that there was no notice, not even the posting of signs, which would have required very little effort on the City's part.  One big problem with being homeless is that you have nowhere to put your stuff.  You can steal a shopping cart I suppose (which I don't support) but mostly you need to find a place to stash your stuff during the day.  As has been mentioned many times recently on this forum and also on this thread, it is no secret that there has been an encampment of sorts at this location for a while, and it has only gotten larger since the curfew enforcement on OFW, so why is it "reasonable" for the City to just throw it all away with no warning?

Long_time_resident said

A 2009 report by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty This happened on March 7th and Arturo Pina had reported earlier that the shelter(s) were not filled -- I think he said 75% filled. It's safe to say that some great or lesser proportion of the people living on these sidewalks have rejected the City's shelter. When so many beds go unused, it's a pretty thinly based assertion that the City is so much to blame for people living on sidewalks that it should not remove materials left unattended and possibly abandoned on those sidewalks by those who brought them there.

 

It's hard not to suspect that Clare and Donovan are misrepresenting the situation to create some kind of controversy that they think will help them advance whatever cause that motivates them.

Great point! It really comes down to a root cause debate that needs to happen at some point. As per law and custom, People have a right to exist, but not wherever they choose to do so.

From reading the BH and listening to statements made at VNC meetings, apparently some of these so called "activists" believe that people have a right to exist wherever the choose to, and on their own terms, irregardless of laws and even private property rights. They are under the delusion that this amounts to "justice". I have never seen such an interpretation anywhere I have traveled to, ever.

We need to thank the LAPD, Dept of Saniitation, and Billl for doing the right thing.  We need to encourage this group to continue this course of action and to clean up Venice.  The residents want the campers to move on.