Tag Archives: Lincoln Blvd

A Brief Discussion Of How Homeless Encampment Sweeps Are Scheduled In The City Of Los Angeles — Or At Least Part Of The Process — The Whole Thing Is Driven By Housedweller Complaints — Filtered Through Council Districts As Political Patronage — LAHSA Involvement — Every Kind Of Outreach — Is Basically A Cover For Relocation — The Only Actual Goal

A couple days ago it came out on Twitter that a lot of people in Los Angeles don’t understand how homeless encampment sweeps get scheduled and why, in particular how encampments to be swept are chosen. I promised to write a post about it, and here we are!1 Part of the reason for the delay is that the story is really complex, so I’m just going to talk qualitatively about how encampments end up being targeted by Council Districts and leave the rest for another post or two.2 For instance, the City has two kinds of sweep teams, which are CARE and CARE+, but I’m not going to talk about the differences,3 which are probably important, but not for this post.

Each Council Office has a staffer whose job is to work out their District’s sweep schedule with LA Sanitation. I think that ordinarily every request for a sweep in a given District goes through this San contact.4 The scheduling is done by email as well as by editing Google Docs, and the emails occasionally reveal the reason a given encampment is being targeted. Here are the sets of records this post is mostly5 based on. If you’re interested in the subject it’s really worth looking at these. There’s a lot more information there than I’m using here:

Some 2020 Emails Between CDs and LA San

Housedweller Complaints to Juan Fregoso About Echo Park Encampments — From 2019 and 2020

CD15 Emails With LA Sanitation — January through May 2020
Continue reading A Brief Discussion Of How Homeless Encampment Sweeps Are Scheduled In The City Of Los Angeles — Or At Least Part Of The Process — The Whole Thing Is Driven By Housedweller Complaints — Filtered Through Council Districts As Political Patronage — LAHSA Involvement — Every Kind Of Outreach — Is Basically A Cover For Relocation — The Only Actual Goal

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You Know Those Illegal Anti-Homeless Planters All Over Venice — And No One Knows Who Installed Them — Or Why The Cops Won’t Remove Them — Or Arrest Anyone — Well Here Is Proof That Venice Stakeholders Association Boss Mark Ryavec Worked With Mike Bonin Staffie Taylor Bazley — And LAPD Officers — And Bazley Worked With LA Sanitation — And Brian Freaking Buchner — To Coordinate Encampment Sweeps With Planter Installation — And Taylor Bazley Knew They Were Illegal — And Bazley Told Constituents That The Council Office Wasn’t Involved — And Taylor Bazley Is A Liar! — Of Course We Knew That But Now We Have Proof!

The anti-homeless planters placed all over Venice by hitherto unknown parties have received a great deal of media coverage in the last year, from the Hollywood Reporter to LA Magazine to Capital and Main to KFI radio to Venice Update. There’s no question that these planters are illegal. The Los Angeles Municipal Code at §62.118.2 requires revocable permits for any installations on public sidewalks. Los Angeles Magazine has reported that not only do these planters not have permits, but that the City’s Bureau of Engineering states that they would not issue permits for them.1

And although that Venice Update story names Venice Gauleiter Mark Ryavec as a funding source for the planters at Lincoln and Palms, the other stories are careful either to avoid saying who’s responsible for planter installation or else to state explicitly that no one knows who’s putting them in. It seems obvious that some factions in the City of Los Angeles have been involved in planter installation, though. LA Sanitation’s sweeps of encampments in places targeted for planters seem coordinated with installation, and the LAPD seems always to have representatives present when the sweeps are happening.

And if you’re familiar with the way the City of Los Angeles is run you know that it is actually not possible that projects like these can be implemented, that there could be any kind of coordination between departments, that illegal planters could persist, without at least the passive support of the local Councilmember. In the case of Venice, which is in CD11, that is Mike Bonin. And yet Bonin’s office has consistently denied that it is involved at all.

For instance, in November 2018, KFI reported that “A spokesman for Councilman Mike Bonin, who represents the area, said he was not aware of any city department’s involvement in the placing of the planter boxes.” In May 2018 Bonin staffie Taylor Bazley explicitly told a concerned resident, Adam Smith, that CD11 “certainly [is] not involved” in planter installation. Here you can watch Chief Michel Moore stating that the planters are not an area of LAPD responsibility.

However, an email conversation that I recently obtained from the City via the California Public Records Act shows conclusively that both Bonin’s unnamed spokesperson and his loyal staffie Taylor Bazley were lying when they said CD11 was not involved. Bazley was involved, Mark Ryavec was involved, and LAPD officers James Roberts, James Setzer, Javier Ramirez, and Kristan Delatori were involved.

Michel Moore may not have been lying when he said that LAPD wasn’t responsible for planters, but these emails show that he was at least misinformed or uninformed by his subordinates at Pacific Division. For instance, LAPD Captain James Roberts enlisted Mark Ryavec’s aid in asking Taylor Bazley to authorize LAPD to move homeless people away from an installation site.2 These emails are evidence, therefore, that multiple City offices are working together to violate the law in order to placate angry housedwellers and that at least Mike Bonin’s office is lying about it.

And there’s a lot of other important information here. For instance, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority is required by City protocol to participate in all encampment sweeps in the City. They’re widely touted as playing “a critical role in minimizing any negative health effects in our communities, while also offering our homeless neighbors access to a path out of homelessness.” Bazley, however, in an email to anti-homeless psychopath Mark Ryavec, describes their role quite differently: “LAHSA needs to attempt to demonstrate rendering of services by visiting the site 3 documented times”3 There’s a real contrast between “offering our homeless neighbors access to a path out of homelessness” and “attempt[ing] to demonstrate rendering of services.”

The emails also reveal the identities and email addresses of a number of NIMBY housedwellers from Venice besides Mark Ryavec who are involved in planter installations. Turn the page for a list of these haters as well as transcriptions of all the emails.
Continue reading You Know Those Illegal Anti-Homeless Planters All Over Venice — And No One Knows Who Installed Them — Or Why The Cops Won’t Remove Them — Or Arrest Anyone — Well Here Is Proof That Venice Stakeholders Association Boss Mark Ryavec Worked With Mike Bonin Staffie Taylor Bazley — And LAPD Officers — And Bazley Worked With LA Sanitation — And Brian Freaking Buchner — To Coordinate Encampment Sweeps With Planter Installation — And Taylor Bazley Knew They Were Illegal — And Bazley Told Constituents That The Council Office Wasn’t Involved — And Taylor Bazley Is A Liar! — Of Course We Knew That But Now We Have Proof!

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A Dark Day in Los Angeles: Venice Beach BID Ordinance Approved by Council on Friday. Final Hearing August 23 at 10 a.m. in Council.

The sun sets on a free Venice Beach for the last time as a new era of totalitarian private/public partnership threatens to ruin everything.
The sun sets on a free Venice Beach for the last time as a new era of totalitarian private/public partnership threatens to ruin everything.
On Friday, July 1, the Mayor of the City of Los Angeles signed an ordinance of intention to establish a Venice Beach BID. It seems that this isn’t final, and there will be a hearing on August 23, 2016 at 10 a.m. “to determine whether to establish the District.” Please mark it on your calendars and come put the integrity of our City Council to the test. After all, if 169 signatures below one of the most eloquent anti-BID statements I’ve ever had the good fortune to read didn’t sway them, I don’t imagine that a huge public outcry will do much. But that’s no reason for remaining silent.

You can read a description of the boundaries of the proposed BID in the ordinance, although it’s a little hard to follow even for someone who grew up out there. The District seems to be bounded roughly by the Boardwalk on the West, by North Venice Boulevard to the South, by Pacific Avenue to the East, and by Rose on the North. Now, I don’t know how much you know about the history of race relations in Venice, but it’s essential to an understanding of the deep politics of this BID1 to know that the area roughly bounded by Electric Avenue, North Venice Blvd., Lincoln Blvd, and (maybe) Brooks Avenue, known as Oakwood, was originally the only area of Venice that non-white people were allowed to own property in. Thus ownership of commercial property in the area encompassed by the proposed BID, like most such areas in Los Angeles, was restricted to white people only until sometime in the late 1960s, and then only as a matter of law. There is no question that the huge majority of that property is, even now, due to the way that commercial property is passed down in families, owned by white people.
Continue reading A Dark Day in Los Angeles: Venice Beach BID Ordinance Approved by Council on Friday. Final Hearing August 23 at 10 a.m. in Council.

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