The Brief

Some tents have disappeared from Venice streets and beaches, but that doesn’t mean there are fewer people experiencing homelessness in the coastal neighborhood.

A recent LAist survey asked people to share what they were seeing in their neighborhood when it came to homelessness. Some respondents said they'd seen fewer encampments in Venice over the past year and a half, but that homelessness was still a serious problem in their community.

“I see far fewer camps, I feel a bit safer,” said Jen McGowan, a Venice resident. “I hope people have been given safe housing.”

April Motola, who has lived in the Venice area for 25 years, said there appear to be fewer encampments along Rose Avenue, Hampton Drive and Flower Avenue, but she guessed that unhoused people may have just moved to other parts of Los Angeles.

“Even though it has improved in my neighborhood, [it] doesn’t mean the whack-a-mole approach is really making a difference,” Motola said.

Mary-Jane Wagle said it appeared that encampments had been cleared in Venice through Inside Safe, the mayor’s motel shelter program, but it’s not a permanent solution.

“Some unhoused people slowly come back but it feels as if in smaller numbers,” said Wagle, who is a member of LAist's board. "I fear that unhoused individuals and families from this area are being forced to move elsewhere, rather than making an effort to create affordable supportive housing in this area."

A study released last month by the RAND Corporation seems to support those observations. The study found that after city authorities cleared encampments last year, there was a temporary drop in homelessness in Venice, Skid Row, and Hollywood that lasted two to three months.

The study also noted that the number of people living in Venice without any shelter, like a tent or a car, jumped to 46% of the total population in 2023. That’s up from an average of 20% in 2021-2022.

“Around Venice, we saw those numbers [of unhoused people] rebound,” said Jason Ward, co-director of the RAND Center on Housing and Homelessness. “And we saw that a lot more people seem to be just finding someplace to lay down at night and go to sleep without a tent.”

City clears encampments in Venice

A walk along the Venice Beach boardwalk this week revealed there were many unhoused people seeking out shade or pushing carts along with their belongings, but only a few tents and no large encampments.

A drive through the neighborhood showed a similar situation. Plenty of RVs were parked along city streets and a few tents were pitched down back alleys. Signs reading “special enforcement and cleaning zone” were posted on lampposts across the neighborhood, warning that the city would remove any tents put up during daylight hours.

Four major encampment clearings took place in Venice during the course of the RAND study. One was an Inside Safe operation run by the Mayor’s Office in 2023 that moved 106 people to motels and provided 26 people with interim housing, according to data provided to the L.A. City Council in April.

Other clearings in Venice have been “ad hoc” events organized by a councilmember, Ward said. Last June, for example, Councilmember Traci Park worked with a local service provider, city homeless services, and city mental health teams to bring 40 people off the street during a “beautification project,” according to a news release from Park’s office.

Several more clearings have taken place in Venice since the RAND study, including one last Friday that focused on a beach encampment near the intersection of Navy Street and Ocean Front Walk.

Homelessness by the numbers

The RAND Corporation, a Santa Monica-based think tank, conducts surveys of unhoused people each year in Venice, Skid Row, and Hollywood. Researchers found that in 2023, the total number of unhoused people in Venice increased only about 5%, compared to a 17% increase from 2021 to 2022.

The study also found that the number of unhoused people without any form of shelter, like a tent, more than doubled last year in Venice. An average of 46% of unhoused survey respondents said they had no shelter in 2023, up from 20% in 2021-2022.

That means that around 400 people are “living at night on the streets unsheltered in every sense of the word,” Ward said.

The increase in unsheltered homelessness may be because local law enforcement has taken a stronger stance against tents, after a pause during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Ward. The RAND study found that 57% of unhoused survey respondents in Venice said law enforcement had forced them to move last year.

Anti-camping laws in L.A.

Local police and park staff are enforcing at least two city laws that limit where unhoused people are allowed to sit, sleep, or camp in L.A.

The first law prohibits sitting or sleeping on the sidewalk within 500 feet of certain areas like schools, day care centers, and libraries. Councilmember Traci Park, who represents Venice, led a 2023 expansion of that law to include the Venice boardwalk, Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library, and Linnie Canal Park.

People in Venice received 36 citations for violating the law in 2023. There were seven citations issued in 2022, according to a report recently presented to City Council.

The second city law bans tents on public beaches and parks. Rose, a long-time Venice resident sleeping in her car by one of those parks, said that people who try to camp in her area are asked to leave within half a day by park rangers. Rose declined to give her full name because she feared backlash from local residents.

Supporters of L.A.’s anti-camping laws say they help keep public spaces open and prevent unsafe encampments from forming.

The LAPD said that the city's anti-camping ordinance has had “an overwhelming positive impact on public safety,” in part because it led to a substantial reduction in crimes committed against unhoused people, according to the report presented to City Council.

Opponents say those laws unfairly punish people for not having a home and fail to address the underlying causes of homelessness.

“People who are living outside — they are the ones experiencing the public health and safety threat,” said Eve Garrow, homelessness policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “They are not the public health and safety threat.”

Unofficial laws against camping

Police officers also cite other laws, like those against drinking or smoking outside, when making people take down their tents, said Peggy Lee Kennedy of the Venice Justice Committee, an organization that helps unhoused people fight tickets they’ve received for blocking a sidewalk, smoking in public, or similar infractions.

“I don't believe they were created to target unhoused people, but they are used to target unhoused people,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said she hasn’t seen an increase in the number of tickets issued to people experiencing homelessness since Park took office. But she said she’s seen more police officers in the area threatening to give out tickets if unhoused people don’t move on.

“They tell people, ‘If you don't take your tent down, that we're going to give you a ticket. I'll be back in a half an hour,’” Kennedy said.

Recent policy changes

Cities gained more power to enforce laws against camping after the Supreme Court’s decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson in June.

In a landmark case, the Court ruled that cities can cite, fine, and arrest people for sleeping in public spaces whether or not shelter is available.

A month after the ruling, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered state agencies and asked cities to start clearing encampments.

Some L.A. leaders have pushed back against the pressure to clear encampments. Mayor Karen Bass said “strategies that just move people along from one neighborhood to the next or give citations instead of housing do not work,” in a statement after Newsom’s policy directive was announced.

Other city leaders have shown they’re willing to change L.A.’s approach.

Hours after the court’s decision in Grants Pass, Park requested a city analysis of L.A.’s anti-camping law and a comparison to similar laws in surrounding cities.

“For too long, Los Angeles has shouldered our region’s response to homelessness,” Park said in a video update on Grants Pass posted to Facebook on Saturday. She mentioned several motions she has introduced to the council to change L.A.’s homelessness policy, like regulating where RVs can park.

Park’s office did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment for this story. A staffer said the council member may be unavailable because of her trip to Paris for the Olympics.

A shrinking number of shelter beds 

People sleeping on the streets in Venice don't have any alternative, said Becky Dennison, co-executive director of Venice Community Housing, a non-profit that provides housing services.

The neighborhood's only large shelter, A Bridge Home, which opened in 2020, is set to close at the end of this year, according to a city spokesperson. That means 154 fewer beds for people experiencing homelessness in Venice.

“If you're unhoused in Venice right now… your options for any kind of shelter or housing are slim to none,” said Dennison.

Efforts to provide more shelter in Venice have come up empty handed so far. The 140 unit Venice Dell housing project, which includes 68 units for individuals and families experiencing homelessness, has stalled — over two years after it was approved by the City Council.

Earlier this month, advocacy group L.A. Forward and three Venice residents sued Park and City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto over their alleged efforts to delay the Venice Dell project.

“The idea that they're shutting down 140 shelter beds and preventing 140 permanent housing units from coming into the neighborhood,” said Dennison, “I don't think would be accepted, quite frankly, in most neighborhoods in Los Angeles.”

The Venice Neighborhood Council recently passed a motion asking the city to create an adverse weather shelter, but it's unclear if or when that shelter would open.

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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Laura Hertfeldz

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”