Los Angeles officials said they plan to close a homeless camp in Echo Park on Thursday after a night of protests as workers erected fences and authorities ordered the camp’s residents to withdraw.
More than 200 protesters gathered in the park on Wednesday night and Thursday morning in a tense confrontation with the police over the future of the camp, which has become a critical point in the city’s long-term homeless crisis.
The camp drew the ire of neighbors, and the city agreed to transfer the park’s residents to hotels. But some residents say they prefer to stay in the park and argue that they have the right to do so.
Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said on Wednesday night that homeless residents inside the park would be allowed to stay overnight, but no one else would be allowed in, and camp residents are expected to leave within 24 hours.
Urban Alchemy members help Jason Reynolds and his dog, Bubba, with their belongings, after they are expelled from Echo Park.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
There was a large police presence on Wednesday night, when authorities began the process of closing the park.
When skirmishes broke out, the police were seen pushing some protesters; bottles and other objects were thrown at the police. The protesters shouted: “Whose park? Our park! ”And,“ Why are you using riot gear? I don’t see any turmoil here! ”
Forest guards, flanked by LAPD policemen, began recording closure notices on trees and streetlights on the east side of the park, where homeless people camped during the COVID-19 pandemic. The signs said the park would close on Thursday and warned that all personal property must be removed, “including, but not limited to, tents, chairs, tables, backpacks, bags and personal items”.
A protester is sitting in a tent set up on the street next to Echo Park on Wednesday.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
City contractors protected by LAPD police unloaded truck fences. The spotlights helped guide his work while hitting the fence panels on the floor. Once lifted, workers unrolled a green cloth and hung it over the fence.
In a statement, the LAPD characterized the protest as “largely peaceful”.
“After expressing their rights under the first amendment, all protesters voluntarily left the area,” the statement said. The LAPD made only one arrest. Nicole Partori, 26, was summoned and released for failing to obey an order to disperse and turn on a light in the eyes of a police officer. In addition, two small uses of force have been reported, he said.
There were no reports of injuries to protesters or the public, and no police officers were injured, he said.
On Thursday morning, a small number of people woke up inside the fenced-in park, worried about what was to come.
“I feel like I’m being detained,” said David Busch-Lilly, who was among more than a dozen people who remained inside the fenced-in park at dawn on Thursday. “If I leave, I don’t think they’ll let me go back.”
Valerie Zeller compared this to “a hostage situation”.
The homeless woman said she was reluctant to go to the hotel rooms that had been offered to people who camped in the park, saying she had heard that residents would be searched and subjected to curfew.
Yellow tape surrounded the blocks around the park, where police cars prevented people from driving or entering the area. Inside the fenced park, the morning conversation of birds and geese mingled with the low whine of a helicopter above.
Ayman Ahmed, who lives in the park, said that when the police said they could stay until the following night, “we thought it was a victory”.
“Was it a victory?” he asked. “Twenty-four hours with a perimeter around us?”
Another homeless man in a gray cap, who declined to reveal his name, said camp residents hope to get some kind of legal permission to stay, based on the “shelters on site” guidelines for the COVID-19 pandemic.
He did not want to go to “no government-provided facilities”, saying, “I just don’t like receiving anything from the government.”
Still, the man said, “all of the hopes we have for intervention from above are sort of measures.”
“We are waiting to get busy to jump, if we have to jump,” he said.
Gustavo Otzoy, who said he lived by the lake seven months ago, said he had to go to work today, but he didn’t want to give up his tools – construction tools to install tile, drywall and wood floors – so as not to lose them.
“I need these things to work,” he said in Spanish. In addition to this concern, he said: “I want to be with my community”.
“At first I was scared when I got here. But no one stole from us. Everything was fine. “
As the sun rose in the sky on Wednesday, workers at Urban Alchemy dressed in black and green jackets approached the shrinking number of camp residents to ask if they wanted to go to a hotel.
“A lot of people who went, I heard they are buying the penthouse suite,” said one worker.
“We’ll see what’s going on,” replied a man in a zebra print mask. He said he had heard worrying things about the hotel’s program: doors being opened for “random checks” that deprived people of privacy; restrictive curfews; room keys are not allowed.
“It denies your right to freedom,” he said.
Later, workers approached Otzoy, who questioned them about whether he could get storage space for his construction tools.
An Urban Alchemy worker assured him that they could keep his things and said the room would be a step towards permanent housing.
“You go?” asked the worker.
Otzoy objected. “Not now,” he said to the worker.
“The truth is, I don’t trust that,” he said in Spanish as the workers moved forward. “And today I want to be here to support everyone.”
Others had already decided to leave before the crackdown began.
Late Wednesday, Edward Juarez dismantled a tent on the east side of the park as dozens of police officers flocked across the street. Juarez and others who live in the park must leave before 10:30 pm on Thursday, according to the signs.
Juarez, a professional photographer who has lived in the park since August, said the tent belonged to a friend who was allocated a hotel in downtown Los Angeles last week. Juarez said he lost his livelihood when the pandemic interrupted concerts and other evening events he worked on. He planned to spend the night somewhere else, perhaps on Rua Alvarado or at a friend’s house.
“I just want to get out of here, it’s going crazy,” he said, nodding at the officers wearing helmets and carrying truncheons across the street.
Juarez said the police went to the park last week and said the city plans to clean up the area, although he did not say when the sweep would take place.
“It is what it is,” he said. “What else are you going to do?”
As protests erupted on the west side of the park, senior officials from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority moved across the park’s poorly lit and quiet eastern shore, looking for the 30-50 homeless people they estimate to remain.
They met a couple who seized the opportunity to go to a hotel in the city center and quickly called them Lyft.
A homeless woman is sitting in a tent next to Echo Park Lake on Wednesday night.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
“We will meet at their tent. We have to find out what to do with their stuff, ”LAHSA executive director Heidi Marston told one of his colleagues while they were waiting for him to leave.
Marston was angry at the way the park closure had been implemented and communicated to the homeless. They needed time and ample notice before something like this could happen, she said.
“It’s about setting expectations, being clear and giving them options,” said Marston. That was not possible here, she said. The couple who arrived at a hotel was the only person who wanted to go on Wednesday night. She expected more to arrive on Thursday.
“If you are going to close the park, be clear. This does not mean that we need to take people by surprise, ”she said. “It eases fear, chaos and breaks the trust we have built. It doesn’t seem to have to happen that way. “
In the last year, the camp has grown to almost 200 tents and has covered almost half of the park, evolving to a communal society with shared pantry, garden, self-polishing varnish and tenuous mastery of basic sanitation. It divided the surrounding Echo Park community and became a case study of the conflicts that arise in Los Angeles neighborhoods over the rights to public spaces and the competing interests of people with and without a home.
Some residents of the neighboring slopes demanded that the city do something about trash intrusion, drug use and crime.
On Thursday morning, the police blocked the park and prevented anyone from entering.
An LAPD officer is on Glendale Avenue during Wednesday’s protest at Echo Park.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Community agents have registered as many people as possible living in the park and taking them to hotels rented by the city for homeless people.
“You define a sweep as taking someone into a safe and clean environment, where they will receive healthy and free meals, receive medical care and a path to well-being, so you can call it what you want”, the councilman Mitch O’Farrell said Wednesday. “Because that is what we are doing for everyone who has been there in the past few weeks or months.”
But the SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition on Wednesday night demanded that the closure be postponed so that residents “have the time necessary to connect meaningfully with service providers who are working tirelessly to serve them.”
When Moore announced that no one would be evicted on Wednesday night, protesters said they considered it a victory. But more protests are expected on Thursday.
Times staff writers James Queally and Kevin Rector contributed to this report.