Los Angeles City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield wants more eyes on the Los Angeles River to crack down on people living along the waterway.
Last week, he submitted a proposal to the council to allow rangers with the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority to take on the job, via a pilot program in his district, which covers portions of the San Fernando Valley.
In his district, Blumenfield says the river is hardly an asset. Instead, there are “significant problem areas,” where “drug use, camping, obstructions of the bike path, hazardous waste, and—in the absence of restroom facilities—unsanitary conditions” prevail, he says in the motion.
Addressing these issues quickly is complicated, due to the multiple agencies that have abutting and overlapping authority over the area around the waterway, Blumenfield says.
“The status quo around how we handle issues along the LA River is broken,” said Blumenfield in a statement from the MRCA announcing his proposal. “I’m tired of the finger pointing around who is responsible for what and the time is now to bring in the MRCA... to help resolve the complex, multi-jurisdictional problems we are facing.”
If the pilot is approved, the MRCA would be responsible for patrolling the river in the third council district, roughly between between Canoga Park and Reseda.
Rangers would “enforce relevant ordinances, ensure safety, assist with maintenance and operations, reduce hazards, offer interpretation and educational resources to the public, provide outreach to unsheltered individuals in the area, and ensure that the river is an amenity for the local community,” the announcement says.
The MRCA is already responsible for watching a lot of urban parkland along the LA River, and Dash Stolarz, director of public affairs for the MRCA says they’re doing a fine job of managing the homeless population there. Given the city’s exploding number of homeless residents, “you would think [that parkland] would be full of homeless people, but it’s not,” she says.
Stolarz says that the rangers—who are both sworn peace officers and are certified in a number of capacities including Emergency Medical Technician training—have “a humane way” of interacting with the homeless and helping them get connected to services. Rangers use a “light touch” to relocate homeless residents, Stolarz says.
But some homeless advocates are skeptical.
“We do not believe police or law enforcement should ever be first responders to homelessness,” Jed Parriott of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and Street Watch LA, an affiliated community watch group that monitors interactions between the police and homeless residents, says in a statement.
“Across Los Angeles, thousands of people have been forced to live outside,” Parriott says. “If the city is going to remove people from the [river] basin, they should be offering them permanent housing.”
Comments
There are no solutions that will work that you can get the majority to accept. So expect to live with what we have now – it won’t change in any significant way. This issue has been around for years and nothing dramatic has happened to change it. Just try not to step in poop.
By LAoneWay on 08.19.19 3:55pm
"There are no solutions that will work that you can get the majority to accept." Couldn’t agree more. You are never going to get bleeding-heart progressives to accept that tent structures and cots outside of the city limits are the only way to build a sufficient amount of housing to enable the city to legally enforce anti-vagrancy laws.
By LADude on 08.19.19 5:06pm
The question you never answer: why would another city agree to take our homeless population?
By LosFeliz$ean on 08.19.19 6:21pm
So why did take them in?
By Nacho2403 on 08.19.19 7:00pm
try again.
By LosFeliz$ean on 08.19.19 7:08pm
Right plan, wrong location… we should do this in the neighborhoods where these people are currently located (no shortage of empty parking lots throughout LA County.)
I think we also need to look at hospitalizing a lot of the more off-the-rails people (even if they object.) A great many seem like they need around the clock help with mental issues and hardcore drug addiction, which I doubt a voluntary homeless shelter can handle.
By corner soul on 08.20.19 7:24am
Why should these individuals get to stay in the neighborhood in which they are currently located? Not only is there no reason for doing that, it is actually inequitable to the homeless who happen to be in worse locations in the city. So an "unhoused resident" gets to live in Venice Beach simply because they took a bus there when we decided to put up tents for the homeless?
By LADude on 08.20.19 12:53pm
Create Slab City 2.0. On the other side of the Salton Sea. Bus them there.
By funntimer3 on 08.20.19 5:36pm
Ah, the old "concentration camp in the desert" solution. Still as stupid (and cruel!) as the first time I heard it.
By LosFeliz$ean on 08.20.19 6:07pm
Stay away from downtown and make sure to have your residence rat-proofed!
By LATEACHER1X on 08.19.19 4:27pm
Unfortunately, the problem extends way beyond downtown, as the article lays out.
By metro1 on 08.19.19 4:57pm
Why quote someone from the Democratic Socialists of America as if they are someone whose opinion we should care about? What’s next, are you going to start quoting Proud Boys, Antifa, or other assorted wingnuts?
By MyrnaMinkoff on 08.19.19 5:24pm
bought-out clock-watching two-faced duopoly lifetime politicians, now that’s the road to the future!
By Danny Beta on 08.19.19 5:58pm
Well, there is a democratic socialist running for president (and beating the incumbent in the polls) so it’s not exactly a fringe movement like antifa or proud boys.
By corner soul on 08.20.19 7:35am
Well Trump won a Presidential election too. So being able to win an election doesn’t really say much about your policies or who supports you.
By LADude on 08.20.19 10:56am
It says you have enough support to effect change (good or bad) so we all need to take your ideas seriously (especially if we disagree with them, no?)
By corner soul on 08.20.19 11:05am
Definitely no, for two reasons in combination with each other. Misinformation and straight-up lies are taken for truth and the mob mentality plus things going viral on social media lead to large groups of people supporting policies based on misinformation or false information. Just because a large group of people believe something, especially when those people are mostly self-interested, does not mean that you should take their opinions or proposed policies seriously.
Looking at the proposals from Trump and the Democrat Socialists is a great example. Trump supporters somehow believed that he was going to bring back jobs in the fossil fuel industry and manufacturing back from China. That is not feasible or sustainable long term. The Democrat Socialists are offering nationwide social welfare benefits that will literally bankrupt the country, and people go along with it because they are self-interested and are either ignorant of or willfully ignoring the fact that the policies are not sustainable in the long-term.
By LADude on 08.20.19 1:02pm
In the news today, "Projected per-unit cost of apartments for homeless ($700K) is greater than the county’s median sales price for a home ($618K)" Wow, just wow. Sounds like building apartments for the homeless in Los Angeles isn’t a solution. We need to start looking at building housing in less expensive locations.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/20/homeless-people-los-angeles-la-builds-pricey-koreatown-apartments/1984064001/
By LADude on 08.20.19 2:39pm
You can run but you can’t hide: which "less expensive location" and how are we gonna convince them to take our homeless population?
By LosFeliz$ean on 08.20.19 3:11pm
Most of your homeless buddies are not from around here
By Millennials Are Useless on 08.20.19 8:32pm
progressives complain that housing is too expensive… well homeless housing built on public land is even more expensive per unit. Yet more free permanent housing in our neighborhoods is their only solution. Decades of failed policy. When will the voters of LA realize it and vote differently?
Our economy is doing great… and there’s tons of money available to waste. What’s going to happen when it goes into a recession? At the state level, Newsom is already chipping away at the rainy day fund. One of the good things Brown did.
By Constituents on 08.21.19 1:33am
"Homeless" is just a word coined by advocates to bunch together a variety of subgroups for the purpose of filing these big lawsuits that chip away at traditional social order. I imagine that’s why the DSA, who want to take over the economy for their downtrodden, is all in for the homeless.
The "homeless" are adults, with civil rights (that the legal advocates are suing to expand all the time). Their lifestyle of drugs and theft are all but legalized. Therefore, "we" cannot fix "them". We are not allowed to, by law.
So until we decriminalize hard drugs and theft, until the City Attorneys start appealing the Ninth Circuit opinions, nothing will change. Seems pretty clear to me that the US Constitution does not require us to destroy our public safety and sanitation so that a special class of people can live as they please, on the streets. So far the City of Boise is the only place to step up and fight. So my hat’s off to them.
By Another PJ on 08.21.19 9:09am
…I mean, re-criminalize hard drugs.
By Another PJ on 08.22.19 11:45am