Homeless Vacate Venice but the Problem Remains

Paul Salazar stood on the sand at Venice Beach one morning and squinted as he searched the shimmering coastline for the next place he will call home.

“I’m going to go that-a-way,” he decided, pointing toward the rugged terrain of Malibu. “I’m gonna pick me a spot where ain’t nobody ever been.”

Salazar, a 21-year-old Texan, knows his days in Venice Beach are numbered. The homeless who established a bustling tent city on the sand over the summer have been gradually departing in response to mounting community pressure and increased law enforcement efforts.

Authorities say their numbers have dwindled from a summertime high of more than 250 to less than 50 today. Some of them have taken advantage of general relief programs, according to officials, but most have apparently just moved on to other places.

“We’re talking about a huge decline,” said Rhonda Meister, the director of a homeless help group called St. Joseph Center. “It’s difficult to get a sense of where all of the people are, but there has been a real dispersion.”

At the corner of Ocean Front Walk and Rose Avenue, where the largest number of homeless converged on the beach, the cramped rows of makeshift dwellings that were sarcastically called “sando-miniums” in some circles have given way to a few dozen tents. And, as winter approaches, Venice’s fabled roller skaters and joggers appear to once again outnumber its panhandlers.

Residents who complained most vociferously about the homeless on the beach say they can finally see signs of progress. “At least there are fewer structures on the sand,” said Jo Giese, who has played a leading role in efforts to disband the tent city.

But Giese and others also know that Venice’s long-range problems are far from over. The community-wide transient population is still among the highest in Los Angeles County, at upwards of 2,000, and a civil war of sorts has erupted between residents who want all of the homeless driven away and those who believe that they should be treated with more compassion since Venice has always been known as a freewheeling, Bohemian kind of a place anyway.

The more liberal residents of the 40,000-member beach community say that police have been overstepping their authority in their zeal to drive transients away from the oceanfront, where they are most obvious to tourists and most troublesome for business.

Treatment Criticized

Carolyn Fershtman, an attorney with the Tenant Action Center, said police indiscriminately hauled away people’s belongings during a sweep of the beachside homeless encampment last week. She charged that the tent city residents were treated like criminals.

“People were running up and claiming their stuff,” said Fershtman, who happened to be in the area at the time. “One person had to beg the police not to take somebody’s crutches. They justified what they were doing by saying that the stuff they threw away was obviously trash.”

Capt. John Wilbanks of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Pacific Division defended the police action, saying officers simply cleared away rubbish that had collected on the beach. Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter said she accepted Wilbanks explanation.

The Venice-area councilwoman has sponsored an ordinance that would strengthen the law against camping on the beach. She also helped establish a homeless processing station on the beach last month for those interested in jobs or social services. Galanter said that her main concern now is finding ways to calm community concerns over the homeless.

“I am hoping we are close to finding a way to deal with the problem in a way that reduces tension, because the level of tension now is unacceptably high,” Galanter said. “I am really concerned about the safety of the people at the beach as well as those in the community.”

As the beach population disperses, residents say that the focal point of the homeless dispute will probably shift further along Rose Avenue, where a host of homeless services, such as a feeding program, a counseling office and an overnight shelter, are being considered.

“It is a terribly volatile issue,” Giese said. “Moving the problem from the beach to Rose Avenue is not a solution.”

Paul Salazar said he will not wait around to see what happens. The unemployed technician said he is tired of worrying about angry residents and police. “We’re just people trying to survive day to day like anybody else,” Salazar said. “We came to Venice to be free. But we ended up feeling trapped.”