Sun Valley businessowners block homeless from sidewalks with dumpsters, concrete blocks
Sun Valley using dumpsters to block homeless
Business owners in Sun Valley say they've had enough with the local homeless population. After repeated city cleanups, locals say the encampments would pop right back up. Now business owners are using concrete blocks and dumpsters to stop the homeless from coming back.
LOS ANGELES - Business owners on Sun Valley's Randall Street say despite repeated cleanups of an extensive homeless encampment in the area, problems still persist. They say they are fed up with the local homeless population, and have taken matters into their own hands, putting up everything from huge cinder blocks to enormous trash bins on the street.
One business owner even uploaded a video on YouTube, describing the enormity of the situation, showing entire sidewalks blocked by trash and encampments. Business owners and employees were terrified to go to work.
"We got tired of begging the city to enforce no parking or camping ordinances," said property owner John Fallon, who has seen tenant after tenant pack up and leave.
In the past, LA city officials have forbidden businesses from blocking sidewalk access, as was the case in front of a Hollywood merchant who put up planters as a deterrent, only to see the city take them away.
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But so far, on Randall Street, the blockade of dumpsters and cement has remained.
The city has just expanded its RV storage capacity, with the City Council recently approving $50,000 in funding to support their RV safe parking program for unhoused residents in the West San Fernando Valley.
"It's been working for exactly a week," said John Fallon, a property owner. "We want it to work period. We want to be able to remove these bins, and so do [the city] and make sure that we're not going to have more homeless and encampments and people in tents."
"Too far away" say RV residents in Sun Valley, who have moved a few blocks away from Randall Street. Indeed, you can see the tents sprouting nearby, in what seems like a never-ending cat and mouse game in the difficult process of getting people into housing and not parked in front of someone's business or home.