“Some are in the streets now, some with friends”

The beach lot at Rose Avenue in now all but free of RVs.

Hand-painted with slogans like “The Spirit of Venice” and “Jesus Was Homeless”, Abraham and Diane’s RV has for years been a symbol of the beach parking lot at the end of Rose Avenue where dozens of RVs parked every day.

But now it’s the only RV in the lot (far right in picture). And they’re not just gone from the lot: dozens, maybe hundreds of RVs are gone from Venice.

A little more than a month after signs went up banning large vehicles from the Rose lot, the ranks of Venice’s vehicle-dwellers have thinned dramatically.

Around Sunset Avenue and 4th Avenue, for so long an epicenter of RVs where dozens of vehicles parked each night, there’s hardly an oversized vehicle to be found. The only RVs in the area are behind the Public Storage and Gold’s Gym on 3rd Avenue, the skid row of RVs where many of Venice’s other vehicle-dwellers won’t go. Even there, numbers have dwindled to a dozen or so vehicles.

So, where have they gone?

Some have started spending their days in the beach parking lots in Santa Monica, just a stone’s throw north of the Rose lot, across the city line. The lots are more expensive—and don’t allow vehicles with handicapped placards in for free—but at least they’re still allowed in.

Others have lost their vehicles. Vehicle-dwellers complain of an LAPD crackdown—with vehicles ticketed and towed for minor infractions—and, once the vehicle is impounded, many of them lack the financial resources to get it out.

“Some are in the streets now, some with friends,” Abraham said.

Diane and Abraham on the boardwalk across from Venice Bistro.

“Some in jail,” Diane said. She told the story of a friend, D, whose van was impounded, with her three dogs inside; D was taken to jail. She’s out now, staying in a friend’s van, but the dogs are van and the dogs are gone.

Others have simply moved on from Venice. Antonio and Tina are gone—Tommy said Tina is back in Palmdale where they met; Antonio is in Highland park with the RV, trying to get the money to go back to join her there.

Tommy is trying to leave as well. He had a deal to sell his van lined up, and planned to move to an apartment in Hollywood or $200 a month, but the housing fell through right before the first of November. Now, he’s hoping his family in Rhode Island can find the money to fly back east, where he could stay in a cousin’s basement for a while.

All his friends who used to live here and work on the boardwalk are gone, he said.

“I’m getting air lifted out of here,” Tommy said. “I’m like the last one left.”

A few RVs still line 3rd Ave.

Even those still trying to work on the boardwalk, like Tommy and Abraham and Diane, face a new, longer commute. While Abraham and Diane have an RV small enough that it’s still allowed into the Rose lot, most RVs are too big, which means their owners have to cart all the supplies for their livelihoods to the beach—an arduous process that Tommy was forced to undertake for almost a year, after his van broke down last fall. Some vendors can’t do it themselves, and pay someone else to help them. Some now find it yet another reason to leave Venice.

(Post forthcoming on carting his stand to the beach.)

Abraham and Diane, though, are staying. Abraham said a year from now, he expects to be right where he has been for year, painting on sacks on across from Venice Bistro.

“I think there’ll be an even bigger community of RVs here in a year,” Abraham said. “Because of the economy. There’s two wars going on. That’s the reality.”

Check out my story on RVs in Venice on the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/us/04rv.html?_r=1&hpw

“when you stay in the rose lot, you’re part of the tribe, whether you want to be or not.”

Last week, a furor erupted in Venice after RV-dwellers were caught dumping sewage into the street at Pacific and Fleet. A resident who, for fear of reprisal, goes only by “Boston Dawna”, took down the RV’s plate number as it drove away, and called the police, who caught up with the vehicle at Sunset and 3rd. Officers arrested the owner of the vehicle, and also found more evidence of sewage dumping around Sunset and 3rd, the skid row of Venice’s RV community, where many of the Rose lot regulars won’t go. Hazmat teams were brought in, videos of the sewage made it to YouTube, and every news outlet from the LA Times to KTLA ran stories.

Selwyn, the illegal dumper, is a regular at the Rose lot, where he camps out at the north end with his wife, Lindsey, and their 15-year-old daughter. Even before the incident, he cut something of a notorious figure. As Antonio pointed out, his gray water tank leaked constantly, leaving a trail from his van down to the sand as the west side of the lot.

The gray water trickles slowly from the van to the beach.

I took these photos of Selwyn's RV several weeks before the sewage dumping incident, after Antonio pointed out that his gray water tank always leaked. You can actually see the pipe dripping.

After two days in jail, Lindsey, under whose name the vehicle is registered, was released, with no charges yet filed, though City Attorney Carmen Trutanich has said his office still plans to charge her. In the wake of the incident, as other Rose lot regulars have gone into damage-control mode, they’ve warned Selwyn to stay away. They’ve since been parking at the Santa Monica lot, a stone’s throw from the Venice lot, just north of the city line. But RVs can’t park on the street in Santa Monica. So at night, the Rose lot community suspects he has been coming back to Venice.

Selwyn is unrepentant, however. When Antonio called him, several days after the incident, he called Boston Dawna a “jackass”. And this week, he exchanged the following texts with Antonio:
Selwyn: Just to put to rest any misinformation, the city attorney rejected the case and also called it a bullshit charge.

Antonio: Bullshit? Clearly you have no idea will affect the big picture. This will be used as an example against all RV-dwellers for years.

S: Bullshit was the word the supervising city attorney used. Apparently prosecutors don’t take it very seriously. You’ve been reading too much inflammatory shit on the net. We’re good. Lindsay is much better now, love to the gang.

A: What you did was wrong, and you’re not taking responsibility. You made the homeowner look like a big champion to the public and media and she’s the jackaass?

S: what are you, ace? The rose lot moral authority? You going to come over here and kick the shit out of us with your dogs and sticks? You’re some variety of junky, yes? You and your buddies are selling and using drugs 60mph, yes? We don’t have any money. None. You want to lend us money to dump?

A: No, I have never sold drugs. I’ve been holding my sewage for two weeks now because I don’t have the money to dump. You can’t justify what you did. Be a man, admit.

From there, Selwyn began threatening to have Antonio prosecuted if he didn’t stay away, and calling the Rose lot community a “tribe”. Finally, Antonio replied, “You best stay away from Venice. We don’t want shit-dumping trash around here.”

“When you stay in the rose lot, you’re part of the tribe, whether you want to be or not,” said Ian, a 20-something, rainbow-haired local who lives in a house on San Juan.

On Thursday night, a week after the incident, Antonio sat in his RV watching TV with Tina and Tommy. Suddenly, Raven screeches to a halt outside on his bike, shouting, “He’s on Rose! He’s on Rose!” Immediately, ten people are outside.

“We have to do it now,” said Ian. “We have to show him he can’t come here anymore.”

The plan was this: the group would go confront him, demanding that he stay away from Venice. Ian would videotape, so as to have evidence that the RV community doesn’t like illegal dumping any more than the residents do.

Raven biked ahead, while the rest of the group walked up Rose Ave towards 6th, where Raven had seen the RV. “I have a bad feeling about this,” Antonio said. “Everyone is too excited.”

But as soon as Selwyn saw Raven, he bolting, driving south down 6th, and Raven couldn’t keep up. By the time the rest of the group arrived, he was gone. They walked around in circles for the next half-hour, looking for the vehicle on Sunset and on 3rd, but found nothing.

The situation has the Rose lot crew spooked, afraid that any infraction, however small, will be used to drive them out. Antonio said he doesn’t want to dump his gray water down the storm drain like he usually does. He’s even afraid someone might pull the valve and open his black water tank, just to sabotage the RV community. “All it would take would be for someone to pull the lever, and it’d be all over.”

"heaven rocks"

At the Rose lot, locals set up a memorial for Patrick, a longtime resident who died of cancer yesterday inside an RV.

"she's probably dehydrated"

Fire truck on the boardwalk. Everyone’s attending to a woman on a bench. She’s breathing from an oxygen mask. Someone says “I.V.” The woman is calm—in her 40’s maybe, a bit heavy set, with a warm face and dyed-red hair. She takes the mask off for a second to ask someone to hand her her purse. Beside her, several others are sitting on the bench, also very calm, paying only intermittent attention to the commotion right next to them.

“It’s Jan,” Tommy says. “She’s probably dehydrated.”

“What’s Jan do down here?”

“Not a lot. Just lives out here. Trolls for young guys, sometimes.”

For the tourists, this is a landmark moment—something exciting they will remember from their trips to California, along with the guy on rollerblades playing electric guitar, and the well-oiled man in the Speedo. They form a ring around the truck on the east side of the boardwalk, snapping pictures and pointing, keeping a safe distance.

For the regulars, the ones that live and work here, the trucks are hardly worth note There are fire trucks on the boardwalk every week, at least. They're just part of the basic health care system here--the ones who respond when someone's deydrated, or gets tired of sitting outside in the sun. The musicians don’t even stop playing for the sirens.

At the pagoda beside the trucks, a young man is playing a keyboard on his lap. His fingers whip about the keys, playing frantic snippets of melody. An upturned top hat sits on the sidewalk a few feet in front of him, a blond young woman on the step behind him.

“His girlfriend needs a shaker,” Tommy says. “His rhythm’s all over the place.”

Tommy grabs an empty juice bottle from off the bamboo mat in his stand and starts picking around the edge of the sand, looking for pebbles. He stuffs a handful of them inside the bottle, using the handle of his pocketknife to push through one that gets stuck at the mouth of the bottle. He caps it, and shakes it a couple times. The rocks make dull thudding sounds against the

The next break in the music, Tommy approaches the keyboardist.

“Here,” he says. “For your girlfriend. So she can play with you.” He shakes the bottle again, to make sure the guy gets the idea.

The firemen have Jan on a gurney now. A couple of them wheel her towards the ambulance, while the others chat with Jan’s friends, or pose for tourists’ pictures. Jan sits upright on the bed, looking comfortable, no oxygen mask now.

“Oooh, you look good, Jan,” Tommy says.

She smiles at him. She’s fine.

“Take good care of our girl,” Tommy says to the paramedics.

The firemen shut the doors, and the ambulance pulls away, no sirens, with the truck close behind. The tourists snapped their final pictures. The keyboardist picks up his top hat and flipa it onto his head before he and his girlfriend moved on.

The plastic bottle full of rocks remains on the steps of the pagoda.

“Oh well,” Tommy says. “Guess she didn’t wanna play.”

"i'm recycling right now, but what i really wanna do is direct"

My story from the Beverly Press this week about people who recycle bottles and cans for a living in West Hollywood, and the city's plans to stop the practice.  Different part of the city, same issues as Venice.

Since he lost his job working security in Las Vegas last year, Lansing Beard, a 53-year-old army veteran, has slept on a mattress on the side of the road near the corner of Genesee Avenue and Sunset Boulevard.

Starting at 6 a.m. every morning, Beard pulls his cart through the streets of West Hollywood, salvaging bottles and cans from trash and recycling bins. By noon, when the cart weighs 300 pounds, he redeems his bounty, then starts all over again in the afternoon. When the redemption center closes at 5 p.m., he might have $60 to show for 11 hours of work.

“I never thought I’d be doing this this long,” Beard said. “When I left Vegas, I thought I’d be here six months tops. That’s the thing about being homeless — time just slips away from you so easily, you don’t even notice it. One minute, you’ve been on the streets a month, the next minute, it’s been a year.”

Beard supported himself the same way from 1998 to 2004, when he was last homeless. Back then, he said maybe 20 people supported themselves recycling in West Hollywood. Now, at least 50 people make a living scavenging just in the area of the city that Beard works — between Crescent Heights Boulevard and La Brea Avenue.

But after years of resident complaints, the City of West Hollywood is drafting an ordinance that would make it easier to cite, arrest and prosecute people who go through city trash and recycling bins.

Lauren Meister, president of the West Hollywood West Residents Association, outlined the concerns many residents have voiced about scavenging.

“First of all, it’s a little scary, because sometimes people come at five-thirty in the morning,” Meister said. “There’s the possibility of identity theft. Then, it’s a mess. I’ve gotten complaints of people going through the regular trash, not just the recycling, and opening up the bags, so trash ends up all over the street. I’ve seen people going up driveways and behind people’s gates to get trash. What’s to stop them from breaking into somebody’s house? It’s a good ordinance for public safety and public health.”

Beard is sympathetic to residents’ concerns.

“I can see her perspective,” Beard said. “You’re back there, you’re making all this noise, leaving a mess. A lot of people do that. But for the person who’s doing it, it’s like, ‘Hey, I don’t have any money. I’m just doing this to survive.’”

Last Thursday morning, he tried to keep quiet, as he went through bins in the early morning.

“I like this cart because it’s one of the quieter ones, sometimes you hear them and they’re all rickety,” Beard said. “I try to be quiet, especially at this place. A couple times, one of the women who lives here has asked me to come back later. But if you come back later, everything is gone.”

Beard pulled his cart up a driveway, setting it beside the dumpster in the parking lot behind an apartment complex. One by one, he opened the lids of the recycling bins, reached in to retrieve any plastic bottles or cans, deposited them in his cart, and shut the lids again, careful to leave everything how he found it.

He propped opened the lid to the dumpster with a long stick, then used another stick with a hook on the end to retrieve a trash bag. He untied the bag, removed a few cans, and retied it when he was done.

“Some people just climb into the dumpsters, I don’t know how they do it,” he said. “A lot of them rip the bags open and leave a mess, too. I try to retie them, but sometimes I need the bags, so I have to empty them and take them.”

As he turned the cart back onto the road, a man on the far side of the street pointed to a small pile of cans at the bottom of a driveway for Beard to collect.

“A lot of stuff we do depends on compassion of people, people giving you stuff,” Beard said. “At the same time, yesterday I had a woman screaming at me, saying she was going to call the police, even though it wasn’t her property. I got angry for a second, but then I just walked away. She’s a resident, it’s her right.”

Currently, scavenging exists in a kind of legal gray area. Although it is illegal to go through city trash and recycling containers, it’s unclear what authority the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department has to enforce that law. Lt. Lujuanda Haselrig explained that unless there is a victim, deputies cannot cite people they see scavenging for misdemeanors. They simply warn them verbally and send them on their way.

City Councilmember Jeffrey Prang, who sponsored a motion in May to ban scavenging, would like to change that enforcement policy.

“This is a quality-of-life issue,” Prang said. “It’s important to prevent identity theft, as well as for public health and public safety. We asked the city attorney to see what authority we currently have to combat scavenging. The Sheriff’s Department has a couple of specific enforcement teams whose whole job is to address quality-of-life issues, so if we want to focus on jaywalking or pooper scoopers one week, they can do that. Before we tell them to focus on scavenging, we want to make sure we have all the legal authority we need to take appropriate action.”

Cities around California have taken similar measures to curb scavenging. The City of Redondo Beach, for example, has a full-time city employee who drives around looking for people going through recycling bins and issuing citations.

Twice, Beard has been issued citations for having a shopping cart on the street, both of which turned into warrants when he was unable to pay the fines, which in turn led to nights in jail. But in both cases, when he was released, he resumed scavenging for recyclables.

“When I first got on the streets, I made a vow to God that I would not drink alcohol until I was off the streets, and I’ve pretty much kept that,” he said. “If you drink, you’re trapped. I try not to spend more than five dollars a day, just for food.”

Beard acknowledges the prevalence of alcoholism and crystal meth addiction among people who scavenge. He was once robbed by a man named Shaw, who was an alcoholic. Shaw was later killed, and Beard keeps a knife on himself for protection.

Still, Beard doesn’t like the idea of going to a homeless shelter. He went once, but only stayed several days. He said he thinks he can make more recycling than getting general relief, and he prefers to support himself.

“I’ve always been an independent person,” he said. “I joined the service when I was eighteen. It’s not in my character to ask anyone for help. I’ve never been one to panhandle. I would much rather do this, but I don’t want to do it very much longer. I want to get myself a real job as soon as possible, but of course we’ve got the worst economy in years.”

Kerry Morrison, director of the Hollywood Business Improvement District, conducted a registry of all the homeless people in Hollywood several months ago. She said Beard’s attitude is common among people who support themselves recycling.

“I was struck that 30 percent of the people we surveyed said they recycled for a living,” Morrison said. “They were proud that they were doing that and not just panhandling.”

Still, Rodolfo Salinas, director of community outreach for People Assisting The Homeless (PATH), which contracts with the City of West Hollywood to provide services for the homeless, said it’s important that local governments not allow people to use recycling to feed alcohol and drug addictions.

“I hope to see some groups and elected officials truly assume some level of responsibility for homelessness, which is one of the worst things going on in L.A. County,” Salinas said. “The fact is that in this economic climate, people apply themselves to recycling with the same effort you do at work. But the city has a responsibility to police itself carefully, so people aren’t using recycling to advance their addictions. We see patterns where recycling centers are located within a quarter-mile of liquor stores, and people are recycling just enough to get themselves a pint of vodka.”

Beard doesn’t want to recycle for a living. For the time being, he doesn’t know what else to do, though. He said he’s trying to save up money, spending no more than $5 to $10 per day.

Besides food, Beard’s main expenses are movies — he goes up to a theatre in North Hollywood. He’s also written several screenplays.

“It’s Hollywood, everyone has a screenplay,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Well, I’m recycling right now, but what I really want to do is direct.’”

Realistically, though, his goal is to find another security job. Every few weeks, he takes the bus back to Las Vegas to look for work, but so far he hasn’t been able to find anything. His real dream, he said, is to buy a house for his ex-girlfriend, who kicked him out when he lost his job.

“In five years, I hope I’m going to be back in Vegas, working two jobs, hopefully paying off a mortgage,” Beard said. “Hopefully living with my girlfriend. I’m still in love with her, even though she was kind of my undoing. I should probably let her go, but I just can’t.”

"i don't need that kind of help"

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council approved a plan to establish a "safe overnight parking program" for people living  in RVs in Venice.

City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl secured more than $700,000 from city coffers to fund the "Streets to Homes" program, which will be modeled on similar efforts in Santa Barbara and Eugene, Oregon.

In the new "save overnight parking" program, outdoor cooking would not be allowed

Participants would be offered a safe, legal place to park overnight, along with various other amenities like restrooms, a place to dispose of garbage,  and a drain for septic tanks. These amenities, however, will come with a set of conditions: no drugs or alcohol, no outdoor grilling, and mandatory case management, with the goal of moving RV-dwellers into permanent housing.

Rosendal's office hopes the program will begin by the end of the year, around when the new ordinance against over-sized vehicles would take effect and police will be more easily able to remove RVs that park on residential streets. Participation is voluntary, and open to any Council District 11 residents living in their vehicles.

"Participants will benefit from case management, social services, housing assistants," reads one slide in a PowerPoint presentation Arturo Piña, Rosendahl's deputy for Venice, sent out about the program. "Non-participants will be subject to law enforcement action."

However, many of Venice's RV-dwellers express no interest in participating in the program.

"I don't need that kind of help," Antonio said, while sitting in his RV in the Rose lot. "I really dig this lifestyle. I'd like to be doing it a little better than I'm doing it right now. But the reason why I'm living here is not to be a working stiff. The idea of having to go to case management and try to move into an apartment doesn't sound appealing at all. If I wanted to live in an apartment, I'd be trying to do that already. Right now, Tina and I's goal is to get a converted bus."

Antonio mentioned Peter, who lives with his wife in an RV in the Rose lot, as an example of someone who's doing very well living in an RV. He makes buttons, which he sells on the boardwalk, and makes enough money to hire someone to sell the for him, so he can stay in the van and keep making them.

Tommy wasn't  inclined to participate in the program, either.

"I don't want to have to check in with somebody on how I'm doing," he said. "I'm busy, I work in the henna stand. It's like an outdoor shelter, and I think for a lot of people, it would be a good thing for them, but not for me. If it's an option for people, that's great, but not if it's forced. Then it's more like an internment camp, trying to round us all up in the same place."

One slide on the Council District 11 PowerPoint presentation reads, "Ultimate evaluation criteria will be reduction of vehicle on residential streets." It remains to be seen what will happen to the locals who continue to park their RVs on the streets.