Residents of an upscale Los Angeles enclave are complaining after a homeless camp has mushroomed on the Beverly Hills border in recent days — with one of the tent dwellers saying police ordered them to move there.
The tents and people arrived on San Vicente Boulevard in Beverly Grove and set up camp to the anger of the locals.
They fight at all hours of the day. They use drugs. They sell drugs. It’s getting out of hand,” said a Beverly Grove resident, in conversation with KTLA.
“We pay so much property tax and so much income tax, it’s not fair for us to live like this.”
Still, James Boss, who has been homeless for more than a decade, told the network that he and others had been instructed to move there.
“They told us to come here,” he said. “The (Sheriff’s Department) and the police told us to come this way because they were going to offer us housing.”
James Boss, who is homeless, told KTLA he was ordered by the LAPD to move to the area
A homeless camp has sprung up in the Beverly Grove neighborhood of Los Angeles (pictured last week)
Those living in the temporary camp say if they try to set up shelters across the road, in Beverly Hills, they will be moved
LAPD would not comment on whether they asked the homeless population to move to that spot.
Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, has launched a program, Inside Safe, which aims to evacuate homeless camps. It is designed to move homeless people who are currently homeless into permanent housing.
The most recent survey, conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, found that by 2022, approximately 69,000 people will be homeless in LA County and 41,000 in the city.
About half of the city’s homeless population struggles with drug or alcohol addiction, and about a third has serious mental illness. Homeless deaths average five a day.
A woman who owns a beauty salon nearby said her customers were intimidated by the scene.
“I have a nice clientele, but now my clientele is getting to the point where they just don’t feel comfortable,” she shared Eyewitness news.
A photo taken Tuesday shows a naked woman lounging on a bench in the camp.
Homeless camps in Beverly Hills’ Hollywood stamping grounds have taken a turn for the worse, as a local business owner says naked people are now scaring off customers
At the center of the intersection in Beverly Grove, near Beverly Hills, tents and tarps have been set up by some of LA’s homeless population
A homeless person sleeps on a patch of grass in a park on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd. and crescent Dr.
“One day I saw the bench out there and I thought, ‘Oh my God,'” she said.
“The next day I came back and saw she was all on the couch and she’s just naked. She was crying.
“I felt sorry for her, you know? I wanted to give her something to cover up, but I felt like if I did the little things, everyone would come to me and ask for help.”
Some locals point out that while Beverly Hills strictly enforces rules against camping, LA was more relaxed about the tents.
Boss, the homeless man, said that if he tried to set up his tent across the road in Beverly Hills, the police would immediately turn him away.
“There’s nothing in Beverly Hills,” said business owner Mike Terani.
He told Eyewitness news: “When you get to LA, that’s where nobody can do anything and nobody cares.”
Dr. Kenneth Wright, owner of a nearby medical practice, said the LAPD told him there was nothing they could do about the situation.
“I’ve talked to the officer — he’s a great guy — he says, ‘Look, they’re telling me from the mayor’s office, they’re telling me from my chief, to leave them here,'” he said.
Bass, who was elected in November after promising to tackle the city’s spiraling homeless crisis, announced Monday that she would recommend spending what she says is a record $1.3 billion next year to help people without getting home in shelter and treatment programs.
Some residents of wealthy Beverly Hills told the city council they were considering leaving because they didn’t feel safe letting their children play outside.
A homeless person sits on a public bench in Beverly Grove, near Beverly Hills, on April 11, 2023
The funding that will be included in the mayor’s upcoming budget could be used in part to buy hotels or motels that can be converted into housing, while the city searches its inventory of properties for properties that could be used to shelter the homeless.
The former congressman’s remarks, in an annual address to the city council about the state of the city, came about four months into her first term.
Bass added that the budget would also include funds for substance abuse treatment beds for the unhoused, but she did not specify how much.
Governor Gavin Newsom has pledged to provide 500 temporary housing units to the city, while the Biden administration has sent the city and county more than $200 million for homeless programs, she added.
“After years of frustration… we see a clearer path to a new Los Angeles,” Bass said, speaking in the ornate city council chambers.
“We finally busted the myth that people don’t want to go in. They do.’
However, Bass added that there was still a lot of work to be done.
“I can’t state that the state of our city is where it should be,” she said.
For years, the city has expanded spending on homeless programs — then-mayor Eric Garcetti signed a budget in 2021 that includes nearly $1 billion in homeless spending — but the homeless population has continued to grow.
Bass’s challenge is evident in just about every neighborhood: homeless people living in trash-strewn encampments or rusty RVs lining streets, under underpasses, and clustered around freeway exits.
Bass, the first black woman to serve as mayor of LA and on President Joe Biden’s shortlist for vice president, defeated billionaire businessman Rick Caruso in the November election.
She anchored her campaign to get the homeless off the streets and into shelters, reverse rising crime rates, and develop housing that working-class families can afford.