Citizens in Venice are claiming that Los Angeles officials are hiding homeless people within their neighborhood ahead of the Super Bowl.
Yolanda Gonzales, a local who lives across the street from the library, noticed that tents have begun popping up in front of the library across the street from her house.
“It started with one tent, and then, eventually, in less than three weeks, all of a sudden, all these tents went up,” Gonzales told Fox News.
Hiding homeless people, no face masks for elites; California really exposed its own hypocrisy last night https://t.co/IPPWfZ3MX8
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 14, 2022
The encampment around her neighborhood grew to about 40 tents in a matter of a few weeks. This comes after a tent city near Los Angeles airport was cleared, raising suspicions that city officials moved them to Venice.
“How many tourists come through here, and right now with the game’s coming, people walk up our streets,” Gonzalez continued. “What have we got to show for? This is embarrassing.”
“The city has always done this,” said Soledad Ursua, a member of the Venice Neighborhood Council. “They moved homeless encampments last April for the Oscars, and so that’s really their approach. They just want to hide it. They don’t want tourists to see this coming in.”
HAAVEN Shared Housing Founder Heidi Roberts also condemned the city’s efforts at solving the homeless crisis in Los Angeles.
“Like, you press here and it bumps up over here, press here, it bumps up over here,” Roberts said, according to Fox News. “So, it seems like they’re spending millions and millions of dollars just to shift people around to different neighborhoods when if they were smart about this, I mean, they could actually solve the problem.”
Meanwhile, Los Angeles councilman Mike Bonin is proposing more housing, shelter, and services for the homeless but says that his plans are consistently opposed by “obstructionists”.
“It is ironic that many of the people claiming encampments are moving from one neighborhood to another are the ones advocating for failed policies that do just that,” said Bonin, who represents Venice.
“The way to end homelessness is housing and services, which is why I oppose failed policies that criminalize homelessness and push encampments from one neighborhood to the next,” he continued.
