Hidden Camp Along Freeway Removed : Homeless: Dozens of squatters lived in makeshift structures behind dense foliage. Neighbors say the village bred crime and filth.

They were invisible to the 260,000 travelers who passed a few feet south of them day after day.

They were insufferable to the 100 residents who lived just north of them year after year.

They were indifferent to the handful of highway workers who pleaded with them to leave month after month.

So dozens of squatters living in a makeshift village hidden among bushes next to the Hollywood Freeway near downtown Los Angeles were evicted the hard way Tuesday.

Officials began ripping out roadside landscaping that concealed their tents, huts and makeshift houses.

Ten-foot-tall oleander plants and acacia bushes planted eight years ago near the northbound freeway’s Glendale Boulevard off-ramp will be replaced with ground cover, state Department of Transportation officials said.

“Men, women, children, pets. They were all living here. It was a sad sight,” said Al Washington, a Caltrans maintenance chief in charge of the cleanup.

Transients living in the encampment were warned of the cleanup and urged to leave Monday. But a dozen were still in a four-room, plastic-wrapped “house” built from scrap lumber, tree branches and cardboard when Caltrans workers started uprooting thick bushes around it.

The structure was partially carpeted, furnished with chairs, tables, beds, framed pictures and mirrors and enclosed by interior walls fashioned from wooden shutters and old Venetian blinds.

“They finished their breakfast and left. They took whatever they wanted with them,” road worker Richard Ross said.

Residents of nearby Bellvue Avenue were happy to seem them go. Their homes face the freeway’s densely planted right of way.

Some of them blamed the transients for car break-ins and occasional residential burglaries. They also complained of a lack of sanitation facilities in the encampment.

“We are very tired of them,” said Jose Salas, who has lived on the street for 25 years. “They’d start fires and it would send the rats and mice over to our side of the street. Drug dealers would stop in fancy cars and hand things through the fence to them.

“Some of them were nice, but some were bad. The problem was, there were too many of them.”

Another resident, sixth-grader Tony Flores, said he was worried that the transients’ campfires would get out of control. And he said he was concerned about children living in the encampment.

“They didn’t go to school. I think that’s too bad,” the 10-year-old said.

Others in the area were stunned when Caltrans skip-loader operator Linda Contreras cleared away enough bushes Tuesday to expose the four-room structure.

“I’ve never seen that until right now,” said Linda Davis, park director at a nearby recreation center.

If the squatters had come in and asked for help, her staff could have steered them toward homeless shelters and such services as food stamps and medical care, Davis said.

Caltrans spokesman Russ Snyder said highway workers constantly try to keep squatters away from the sides of freeways. Bushes are often trimmed to dissuade them from setting up camp. But the removal of landscaping is a last resort, he said.

“We know that every night people are out there sleeping, though,” he said.

Caltrans workers said as many as 1,000 transients bunk down nightly alongside the Hollywood Freeway between downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood.

A group of 40 teen-agers lived until about a year ago beneath the freeway’s Hollywood Boulevard bridge, said Ross. Several years ago, a Vietnam veteran built a trilevel hut that tapped into water and electric lines. “He had a color TV set in there,” Ross said.

At Echo Park, freeway landscape irrigation lines had been used for drinking water by transients. Sprinkler heads and electric timers had been ripped out and sold for scrap value.

By day’s end, Caltrans workers had removed about 10 tons of bushes and debris. But the four-room structure remained. It will be removed this morning.

Highway workers predicted that the squatters would return Tuesday evening for one last night next to the fast lane.