It was a year ago tomorrow that I learned his name: John McGraham. A homeless man who was a fixture in the neighborhood radiating out from 3rd Street and Berendo where he could often be found, McGraham, 55, was attacked and murdered there October 9th, 2008, reportedly doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire with a flare.

I biked by there this morning to find the above poster McGraham’s family mounted to the long-empty dentistry office outside of which he had lived and so brutally died.

Such unfathomable violence galvanized the community and after more than three months of intense investigations detectives from LAPD Robbery/Homicide Division arrested 30-year-old Benjamin Matthew Martin in Ranch Mirage, Riverside County on January 22. Though unemployed at the time of his arrest, Martin had reportedly worked as a barber in and around the area where McGraham was killed.

(more…)

Venice’s battle to prevent RVs from camping on its streets took a new turn this past week, when the Venice Stakeholders Association filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court against the California Coastal Commission for denying Venice’s bid to create overnight parking districts (”OPDs”). The OPD plan would have prohibited parking on certain Venice streets for several hours in the middle of the night.  The main goal was to prevent RVs from camping on these streets for days, weeks, and months on end.  Venice residents have complained for years that these RVs dump raw sewage and create other sanitary and safety problems in the neighborhoods.  However, the Coastal Commission, in what used to be termed a “cosmic wimpout,”  decided in June that it didn’t want to wade into the “social problem” of homelessness, but its decision voting down the Venice OPD plan had the effect of taking a side against Venice residents on the issue anyway.
(more…)

This is a bigger upset than if the Magic had beaten the Lakers: last Friday, the California Coastal Commission  ignored its own staff recommendation and the will of Venice voters by overwhelmingly denying the request by the City of Los Angeles to create “overnight parking districts” (”OPDs”) on several Venice streets that would have prohibited unpermitted vehicles during the wee hours.

Here is the video of the 4-hour Commission hearing (click on the June 11 link and forward to 40:00). Because the proposed OPDs are in the “coastal zone,” the City needed a Coastal Development Permit from the Commission to establish the OPDs.  However, the Commission was limited to considering whether the OPDs would hinder public beach access.  Nevertheless, the hearing, which featured scores of Venice residents speaking for a couple of minutes each, quickly turned into an emotional debate about homelessness, gentrification, and rich versus poor.

Park here for more

Its not uncommon for the homeless to take up shelter in abandoned homes and other structures, but it always leaves the question of whether or not property owners or the government should allow it if they’re not harming anyone else.

CNN.com posted  a video report showing a homeless encampment built in a cave beneath a Los Angeles freeway that apparently was home to more than a dozen transients.

A homeless woman says she visited often and claims the space, the size of half a football field, was carpeted, and furnished with sheeted beds and couches. In the report, Caltrans workers cleaning up the site found needles, graffitti, and pornography among piles of trash.

Regardless of how these people were living, is it right to evict them from a shelter nobody else is using, especially in an economy where existing services for homeless are being both overwhelmed while also being drastically cut back?