Residents in Pico Union and Koreatown say they are seeing more unhoused people in their neighborhoods as cleanups and law enforcement activity intensify around MacArthur Park.
The issue surfaced during a community meeting at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Olympic Station earlier this month. Senior Lead Officer Albert Vasquez said the division’s seeing an increase in unhoused people in the area.
He believes that unhoused people are coming over to his division from the Rampart Division, which oversees MacArthur Park, Vasquez said.
“Rampart (Division) is actively doing more cleanups than us,” Vasquez said during the June 3 Community Police Advisory Board meeting.
“I’m seeing a lot of people I don’t know, which is causing more problems,” Vasquez said about the recent activity.
Homeowners in the area have requested more cleanups and Vasquez said that a fire was set in an alley encampment that spread to a wall and damaged a car.
Asked whether people were being pushed out of MacArthur Park and into nearby neighborhoods, LAPD Capt. Benedict Fernandes with the Rampart Division said the department does not track that type of movement.
“Rampart is not aware of any encampment displacement to the surrounding areas,” Fernandes said. “It may be possible, but we are not tracking it.”
Jovita Carrillo, a longtime Pico Union resident and member of the Pico Union Neighborhood Council, has seen more unhoused people around Olympic Boulevard and Menlo Avenue.
There is more trash, Carrillo said, and she recently encountered a man carrying a machete while walking near Olympic Boulevard.
“It’s getting worse in this area and I don’t walk much because I feel afraid,” she said. “There’s no way I can walk around here anymore.”
Others said the movement of unhoused people into nearby neighborhoods is a predictable outcome when enforcement and cleanups occur without enough housing options.
“The reality is that this is not a new phenomena,” said Aurora Corona, a longtime Pico Union resident and community organizer.
Corona said she has heard from residents living near MacArthur Park who report seeing unhoused people move into surrounding blocks following recent activity in and around the park, including cleanups and law enforcement operations.
“So the homeless have to move somewhere if there’s no housing so what do they do?” Corona said. “They naturally move to adjacent areas where the cleanups are happening.”
While Corona said she believes drug activity remains the central issue in MacArthur Park and that recent efforts targeting dealers are necessary, she said the city needs to effectively address housing affordability.
“We have to deal with the homelessness until we can get the affordability,” Corona said. “It’s a multilayered problem.”
LAPD officials pushed back on the idea that city cleanups are sweeps intended to remove encampments.
Capt. Rachel Rodriguez, commanding officer of Olympic Division, said the operations are focused on sanitation and are conducted alongside city agencies and council offices.
“Clean-ups are not sweeps,” Rodriguez said. “They are literal clean-ups where excess trash and bulky items are thrown away and the sidewalks are cleaned.”
She said unhoused individuals are temporarily asked to leave the immediate area with their belongings while the work is completed and are offered services at the same time.
Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center and a longtime organizer in the MacArthur Park area, questioned whether laws that ban sleeping in public do more than move the problem elsewhere.
The law alone to move people is not a solution, he said.
“People then feel good about it, but you don’t make those homeless individuals disappear as they move to another location that’s in the new LAPD division,” Narro said.
It’s unclear if people are moving out of MacArthur Park over anti-camping enforcement rather than the recent drug enforcement raids. Narro believes that plays a part.
“What happens is that you’re targeting drug dealers, but the reality is that everybody gets caught up in the umbrella of the crackdown,” he said.
Los Angeles Documenter, Julania Marechal-Raymond, contributed reporting for this story from the June. 3 Community Police Advisory Board (Olympic) meeting. The LA Documenters program trains and pays community members to document proceedings at public meetings. Learn more about the program here.
