Evicting the Homeless Youths of Hollywood

There is a building at Yucca and Wilcox, in the heart of Hollywood, that once was a decrepit squat for dozens of runaway teens. But with its red-brick facade and spacious interiors handsomely restored, it now is a sought-after apartment house.

Down the street on Hollywood Boulevard, a homeless girl used to sleep under a dusty wall that is now part of the stylish courtyard of the remodeled Egyptian Theatre headquarters of the American Cinematheque.

All along the boulevard and around the avenues that are its veins, the onetime haunts of Hollywood’s street youth are disappearing under the bulldozers and paint jobs of renovation.

For decades, young runaways fleeing problematic home lives or seeking some ideal of glamour flocked to the sidewalks and abandoned buildings of Hollywood. But the district’s latest make-over, with its new construction and reclamation of dozens of properties, is pushing them out.

Some are moving to other cities, such as Santa Monica and Pasadena, and even out of the state. There are indications that, with fewer squats, more young people are sleeping on sidewalks, in alleyways and under freeway overpasses.

Scores of abandoned buildings used by homeless youths as squats are being boarded up, fenced off and turned into offices, apartments, hip restaurants and funky clubs. And there are more police and private security guards patrolling the streets and cracking down on panhandling, loitering, drug dealing and prostitution.

Although the changes are welcomed by area businesses and many residents, runaways complain of being unfairly hassled and say they are being cut off from the social, medical and counseling services that have blossomed in Hollywood to help them.

“A year ago the scene here was pretty chill, and not so hard on people,” said one boy, sitting on the patio of a Hollywood youth center.

He is 17, wears a yellow and blond Mohawk and says his nickname is Chains, which is unsurprising. He has several around his arms and two silver ones around his neck, one of them dangling a small brown-tinted ivory skull.

“We’ve had a lot of hangouts that have disappeared and we’ve had to move. You find another place, and they say it’s loitering. But we don’t have any other place to sit and talk to our friends.”

Hollywood business and property owners say the heavier police presence has created a safer environment for themselves and their customers.

The street scene today is in stark contrast to that of four years ago, when entrepreneur David Gajda opened his Hollywood Software company in the old Wolfman Jack recording studio at Cahuenga Boulevard and Selma Avenue that was being used as a squat.

“The first thing we had to do was secure the building and start renovating, and it was a little scary” said Gajda, who has since bought several other Hollywood properties, including the original Schwabs Clothing Haberdashery at Hollywood Boulevard and Ivar Avenue.

Now, says Gajda, nightspots like Deep and the Burgundy Room draw crowds late into the night.

But some youth counselors worry that the trend is distancing runaways from services and leaving them vulnerable to greater health risks and chronic homelessness.

“What we have seen is youth being pushed further underground and more reluctant to seek out services and shelters--and this is linked to an increased presence of law enforcement in the community,” said Susan Rabinovitz, associate director of the division of Adolescent Medicine at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles.

Thousands of Youths on Area’s Streets in ’97

A 1997 Childrens Hospital study estimated that as many as 8,000 youths lived on Hollywood streets over the course of a year. Law enforcement officials say they believe that number has decreased substantially.

Los Angeles Police Capt. Michael Downing says only about five commercial buildings in Hollywood remain as squats, a significant reduction from previous years.

Downing, commander of the LAPD Hollywood Division, has handpicked and specially trained a team to periodically perform what he calls homeless outreach--but what some youth agencies call sweeps. A few weeks ago his officers went through a grimy, trash-strewn squat at Selma and Vine that housed dozens of transients, young and old. Five of them were wanted on felony warrants; the building is now more tightly secured.

Runaways might have felt safe inside the squat and off the street, but dangers--a tossed cigarette, dangerous sex, concealed drug use--lurk inside such buildings, Downing insists.

During another recent operation in Hollywood, officers made 30 social service referrals and 18 misdemeanor arrests, cleared out three squat encampments and returned 100 shopping carts to owners.

“Our philosophy is not to jail the homeless because they are homeless, but to obtain a balance between freedom and social order,” Downing said. “If they need help, get them help. If they are criminals, put them in jail.”

A committee of the Hollywood Community Police Advisory Board meets regularly to discuss redevelopment and other issues affecting the homeless. Besides youth agencies, law enforcement, and city departments, the committee includes representatives of the two Business Improvement Districts in Hollywood and private security hired by property owners.

“We don’t want kids run out of Hollywood, where most of the services are, just to make it a prettier place for the tourists,” said Lori Malingagio,director of youth services for the Teen Canteen, a Hollywood drop-in center run by the Travelers Aid Society.

Feeling Targeted

But many teens do feel as if they are being pushed off the map and into a void.

Bobby is 23 and has hung out on the streets of Hollywood for three years, most recently under the Hollywood Freeway. Big and gregarious, with longish blue- and purple-streaked hair, he attends Los Angeles City College. To him, it’s all about image.

“You can see that they’re starting to push what they consider the undesirables out of the area,” he said. “Somebody said they were trying to get rid of the T-shirt shops and tattoo parlors. It’s not fair, but the truth is, people who own businesses pay taxes. It’s hard, if you don’t have any money, to fight against that.”

A few blocks away, Chains said he has been in 10 or 12 different Hollywood squats in the last few months, four of them cleared out by police. He quit his last squat, the same building at Selma and Vine that later was entered by Downing’s officers, after discovering it was riddled with asbestos. It was good timing. Someone started a fire, causing extensive damage.

Chains wants to stay in a youth shelter now and maybe get his high school diploma.

“The cops have tried to send me home, but they know I’ll come right back,” he said with the kind of grin that is at once innocent and mischievous.

More than half of the youths surveyed in the Childrens Hospital study reported having lived in an abandoned building at some point. Others had stayed with friends on and off, or found quiet side streets, abandoned cars or buses or patches of green next to park benches.

They were a diverse group: punks, gang members, loners, gays and lesbians, hustlers, drag queens, druggies. There were more boys than girls and they ranged in age from 12 to 24 years, with one-third being minors.

Three quarters reported they drank booze or smoked pot, and large majorities said they had tried methamphetamine LSD and cocaine.

Leahnetta Presley, 18, is one of those remaining in Hollywood. She has lived on and off the streets for four years, running away from two group homes for foster children in that time. She is seven months’ pregnant.

She’s standing near the renovated storefront of the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project with her friend Andrea Blackburn, 19, a runaway from Boston who has been in town for a year.

Inside the brightly lit nonprofit agency, Leahnetta and Andrea attend tutoring sessions to improve their reading. Leahnetta knows the building well because, nearly five years earlier, when it was an abandoned lingerie store, it was one of the first places she squatted.

“A friend led me there because we could get into the back rooms,” Leahnetta says. “Where the little study room is now, there used to be a couch.”

She is a small girl, even with her bulging stomach, cautious with strangers but outgoing with her friends. She’s on her way to do laundry at one of the teen centers and points to an abandoned two-story house just off Cahuenga Boulevard, where she squatted as recently as three months ago.

She and seven or eight of her friends used to be able to climb over a ragged fence and up to a rear room on the second floor, where they could sleep at night and store their personal gear. There’s a sturdier fence around the boarded-up building now, and workers are busy restoring the facade. Leahnetta has seen many such changes and says she and her friends have been hassled more frequently by the “green shirts,” the green-clad private security guards hired by property owners.

But like many of the runaways, she has an almost defiant attitude about her right to be where she wants to be.

“To me the street kids are a part of the scene.”

Nick Taylor, director of community services for the Los Angeles Youth Network, a Hollywood teen shelter, said police and private security are cooperating more now by referring runaways to services, rather than hauling them off to jail or reporting them to county authorities.

“While we may disagree with some of their specific tactics, at least now they are listening,” said Taylor, who sits on the Hollywood Community Police Advisory Board.

Kerry Morrison, executive director of the Hollywood Entertainment District, represents more than 210 property owners in an 18-block area along Hollywood Boulevard between La Brea Avenue and Gower Street.

Hollywood, says Morrison, is finding a new future, with a new face. But she believes the patrons of the latest glam restaurant, the tourists from Toledo and the grunge street kids can coexist. For trendy proprietors and tourists alike, the area’s gritty edge remains one of its lures.

“What makes Hollywood Boulevard different from CityWalk or the Third Street Promenade is that no one person or entity or company owns it. It’s a place of disparate stakeholders,” Morrison said. “Hollywood has been a mecca for runaway youth in the past and present. But it is a mecca for so many people in search of different things; it’s a congregational pot and always will be.”