![]() “If you’re polite and respectful to them, they’ll be the same way to you,” Reynaldo said. The idea that we can push people around and criminalize them doesn’t cut it Becky Dennison, Venice Community Housing He appreciated the free showers and noticed a far more conciliatory attitude from police, who ride down 3rd Street every couple of hours during the day to make sure tents are packed away and not being used for drug-dealing or prostitution, but no longer conduct large-scale sweeps as they used to. Reynaldo, a 59-year-old man who sleeps in a tent on 3rd Street, said he had friends who were being moved into housing and offered help by teams of social workers, mental health consultants and addiction specialists. In Venice, homeless residents certainly feel the difference. The signs look promising, too, for a countywide measure on tomorrow’s ballot that would increase the sales tax by half a percentage point and raise more than $3.5bn for homeless programs over the next decade. An impressive 76% of Los Angeles voters approved a bond measure last November to build 10,000 affordable housing units on 12 parcels of public land around the city, including one in Venice. Up to now, the electorate has been fully on board. ![]() Michael Munsterman from Oklahoma has been homeless in Venice, California, for six years. After decades of doing little more than moving homeless people around and offering services so they don’t starve or freeze to death, the political class is making the case that ending homelessness is both a moral and an economic imperative. It is this stark contrast of extreme wealth and growing poverty that has pushed city and county leaders to take unprecedented action. Meanwhile, the homeless population keeps rising – it’s close to 1,000 people, by some estimates, and almost 30,000 across the city of LA as a whole. Abbot Kinney Boulevard, once a relative backwater where local restaurants struggled to obtain liquor licenses, has become one of the trendiest streets in the country, where coffee shops offer $6 lattes and tables at the hottest dinner spots are booked out weeks in advance. Industrial warehouses have been transformed into luxury condos and shabby-chic restaurants. The future certainly seems to belong to a new wave of highly paid tech workers, many of them working for Google or Snap, who have flooded into Venice – now often nicknamed Silicon Beach – and pushed rents and house prices through the roof. “I want to provide a bus fare to send them home, because there’s no future for these people here.” ![]() “We see snowbirds in their RVs and young people from all over treat Venice as the campground of America,” Ryavec charged. Local elections being held tomorrow pit a popular incumbent city councilman, Mike Bonin, who has championed efforts to build new low-income housing and provide services to homeless people including showers, bathroom and storage space, against an energetic underdog, Mark Ryavec, who thinks the situation is spiraling out of control. But it is also ground zero in a battle in which an unprecedented official effort to fight homelessness across Los Angeles is being met with growing skepticism, impatience, and, at times, outright hostility.Īt public meetings, people are openly calling homeless residents “lepers” and likening Venice to Baghdad. The fires merged into the CZU Lightning Complex Fire, which burned through more than 86,000 acres, destroyed 1,490 structures and killed one person.Venice is the quintessential southern Calfornia beach community, an edgy, artsy pocket of the city of Los Angeles where industry, poverty and creativity have always found a way to coexist. 16 ignited fires that spread quickly into forested areas in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties. Officials said the cause of the fire was under investigation. CAL FIRE, Bonny Doon Fire & Santa Cruz County responding. It was reported just before 3pm, and is within #CZULightningComplex burn. UPDATE: The #HihnFire is an estimated 4 acres, burning off Gazos Creek & N Escape Rds. Officials reported that the fire was 50 percent contained by 6 p.m., with a helicopter making aerial drops.Īs of Tuesday morning, Cal Fire reported the containment at 90%. Escape roads, near the park’s headquarters. Officials said the fire was not connected to the Grade Fire and was initially reported as burning two acres of heavy timber.īy 4:45 p.m., the fire has grown to an estimated four acres and was burning off Gazos Creek and N. No injuries were reported, and the cause was under investigation.įirefighters received a report of the second fire, called the Hihn Fire, just before 3 p.m., near the Hihn Hammond Truck Trail, in Big Basin State Park.
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