Laborer Hiring Center to Close After Complaints

A hiring center for day laborers at Malibu’s Zuma Beach, which has been opposed by neighbors, will shut down Saturday, its sponsors said.

“We did everything we knew how to do to stay open, and it’s sad that it wasn’t enough,” said Honey Coatsworth, who heads the Artifac Tree, a nonprofit thrift shop that led the effort to set up the center.

Located on county property at the entrance to the beach, the center opened last May at a time when Malibu merchants and others complained that day laborers were harassing their customers and passersby on street corners and parking lots.

But it quickly ran afoul of Zuma Beach residents, who claimed it was a magnet for men with no place else to go, and that fires lit by laborers camping overnight in the nearby brush posed a threat to the area’s expensive homes.