This is Veterans Row. A homeless camp in West L.A. where homeless veterans live in.

Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by Sayl0
image showing This is Veterans Row. A homeless camp in West L.A. where homeless veterans live in.

grayboard1 on January 15th, 2022 at 18:08 UTC »

The vets who are willing to abide by the rules ie: no booze or drugs can go inside the VA compound. Many of the people in these tents are not vets but a group put up the flags to make people think that these are all vets when many are not. This was cleaned up a while back and many moved inside the fence. The real tragedy is why the VA is leasing land to UCLA for their sports teams to practice when it goes against the terms laid out when the land was donated to the VA.

Seri0usbusiness on January 15th, 2022 at 18:59 UTC »

Is this an old photo? The last time I biked by there, all the tents were at least moved inside the gates (back in early Dec 2021)

moose098 on January 15th, 2022 at 23:35 UTC »

I live in the area so maybe I can give some context. This encampment began forming soon after COVID hit when LA stopped enforcing its anti-camping laws. At first it was only a few people in small tents, but over time (a few months) it started to grow. At some point, an anonymous person donated those giant tents and the flags.

At first, a lot of people felt bad for them and would pull over to drop off food, money, and small pieces of furniture. However, the encampment started producing crime in the area, mostly petty crime, but also two separate murders (one via shooting, the other via a car).

After prodding from the neighbors, the VA opened up their giant lawn (it's a massive property) to any homeless vets who would accept services (especially for mental health problems and drug addiction). The idea was you'd enter the program on the lawn and then get assigned housing. This cleared out many of the homeless, but more just showed up. The people who remained tended to be resistant to services and preferred to live in their tents than enter a program, or they were dishonorably discharged or something and couldn't take advantage of VA services.

One of the major issues facing the removal of the encampment was that it's on LA County property. For those that don't know LA, there's LA County and LA City, LA City is just the largest city within LA County. The County Sheriff is the one with jurisdiction over that particular sidewalk. It took a lot of bureaucratic maneuvering to finally get some action.

A little while ago, after months of work, the Sheriff's departments and the VA were able to convince the last holdouts to enter the program. There was a major cleanup and now the area is clear.

I don't think homelessness is a problem LA can fix on its own. These are national problems which SF and LA get the brunt of because of their reputation and weather. Housing certainly plays a role, but a lot of these people can't hold a job due to drug addiction or mental health problems, so even if housing was a lot more affordable it probably wouldn't make much of a difference. It would certainly help out the working poor/recently homeless, but I don't think it would be as effective on longterm unsheltered homeless people (who make up the majority of the "visible" homeless). It has to be coupled with other programs.

Just two days ago a 24yo girl was randomly stabbed to death at a store she worked at, in a supposedly nice area. The assailant is described as a "transient" by the LAPD. Something really needs to be done, but all the solutions thus put forward are bandaids for a systemic problem that begins at a national level.