As the sun sets over MacArthur Park, Josefina Portillo sets up her shopping cart filled with water, soda and chips. Some locals approach her after their soccer pickup game. Others pass through after running a lap around a nearby track.
Portillo is in no rush.
There are no set hours for the street vendors. People come and go from the park at all hours, which has remained an open space since the 1880s. But since those early days, the park that was once described as an “open-air resort” has become synonymous with rampant drug use and unhoused people experiencing mental health issues.
On a typical afternoon, people experiencing homelessness sleep in and around the park, and some people use drugs openly. At the same time, MacArthur Park functions as a daily gathering place in one of the city’s most densely populated neighborhoods, an area largely home to immigrant and working-class families. Vendors like Portillo sell food and drinks, parents watch children at the playground and locals use the space for rest and recreation.
People who live and work near the park understand something needs to be done to address the area’s woes, which have turned it into a political punching bag. But as Los Angeles officials move forward with plans that could place a fence around MacArthur Park — closing it overnight and creating a permanent, physical barrier between the green space and the busy neighborhood around it — there’s little consensus among locals that this latest strategy will fix anything. For over three decades, Portillo has watched the city push out vendors like herself on Alvarado Street, while programming for children at the park has dwindled.
“I don’t think the fence is a good idea because a lot of people come to play soccer,” she said. “There are also people like me who come to sell, and I think that with a fence, we wouldn’t be able to get in.”
Gary Wolin has watched MacArthur Park evolve for more than six decades.
Wolin, the owner of McManus & Morgan Fine Art Paper, has worked out of the same Westlake building since 1964. His business, founded more than a century ago, sits just steps from the park.
From his storefront, he’s watched repeated attempts by the city to reclaim the public space that has long been associated with crime, open-air drug use and the unhoused.
In October 2021, the city closed a large swath of the park for 10 weeks for electrical repairs, lighting upgrades, landscaping and irrigation improvements, and the installation of park furniture. Encampments around the park were removed during that time.
That was a level of attention which Wolin said “wasn’t given to the area in all the years that we were here.”
“I saw it every day, the progress that was being made, and I was thrilled,” Wolin said. “They did absolutely everything. We’ve never seen anything like that happen.”
Wolin was skeptical when the temporary construction fence went up during the renovation several years ago; he thought the park would revert to its former self once the fence came down.
“And that is basically what happened,” he said.
Sitting behind his desk, surrounded by metal racks stacked with handmade paper, Wolin sees the appeal of a permanent fence, but understands it’s complicated.
“When they had the (temporary) fence that I saw, it was because work was being done,” he said. “To have a fenced-off public park is very awkward. So I can’t say that’s a great idea, but what else can you do?”
The proposal, led by the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks, would install perimeter fencing that allows the park to be closed overnight. City officials say the goal is not to block public access, but to create time for maintenance crews to clean, repair and protect park facilities before reopening each morning.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, whose district includes MacArthur Park, framed the fence as a maintenance tool, not a response to homelessness or drug use. In an interview with The LA Local, she said the intent is to allow cleanup crews to remove graffiti, hazardous waste and to allow overnight repairs to park facilities, work she said currently happens sporadically or not at all.
“Having an opportunity for the park to be able to rest and breathe and be maintained overnight is something that I found important because that means that every morning when this park opens up, it’s going to be brand spanking new again,” she said.
She added the park is for everyone, and the fence is not meant to push anyone out. It’s also part of a broader approach that includes peace ambassador teams, mobile overdose response units, street medicine teams and a planned health center in the surrounding area, she said.
“This is not one solution,” Hernandez said about the fence. “It’s going to take many solutions and programs to uplift what’s happening in MacArthur Park.”
The park has evolved into a fixture for political commentary, often invoked in broader debates over crime, homelessness and immigration. Last summer, MacArthur Park drew national attention when federal immigration agents entered the park in a high-profile enforcement operation that city leaders and immigrant advocates described as a show of force in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood.
Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center, whose office sits across the street from the park, has spent more than three decades working in the surrounding community.
To Narro, most of the conversations around the unhoused and people experiencing mental health issues overlook the immigrant communities who live in the neighborhood.
“It’s also been used as a political pawn. It’s used by the right wing to highlight what’s wrong with LA, it’s used by people like myself, to show the vibrancy, the diversity, and really the humanity of the city,” he said.
Supporting existing communities that use the park, like the informal soccer clinic on the field, is just one example of how the city could bring back some semblance of pride to the park, he said.
A fence would unravel the fabric of the community, Narro laments.
“The danger is that (the park) doesn’t become welcoming for all members of the community. And then there’s also the potential to target people who come in, who come out,” he said.
City officials agree the park needs more programming and that the proposed fence would help bring about those changes, and promise big changes are on their way to the park.
Recreation and Parks General Manager Jimmy Kim said the department plans to renovate grass areas, upgrade the synthetic field, and eventually activate the lake and surrounding space. Community engagement measures — including virtual and in-person town halls and surveys — are expected to roll out to gather community input on the design of the fence. The city has not set a date for those meetings.
“The fence is going to happen,” Kim said.
“I lived in LA all my life, and I remember going down to MacArthur Park for fireworks when I was young and walking around the lake and things, so there is opportunity there, and I think it’s just a matter of making people feel safe to be back in the park,” he added.
Brooks Ocon, co-owner of Aardvark Letterpress, said conditions around MacArthur Park have improved since his family business moved to the area decades ago, but drug activity and homelessness remain visible. He described the park as relatively safe during the daytime.
But at night, “you have to be careful,” Ocon said. A curfew might be more effective than a fence, but he supports any measure that brings more attention to the park.
“We still need police, we need security and law enforcement,” Ocon said. “But if they could help them with mental health, housing — because a lot of them, whether they’re on drugs or not, they’re unstable.”
Portillo, the street vendor, also agrees that the city needs to find a way to address the mental health challenges people face at the park.
“The police often come to remove people facing homelessness and drug addiction, but they still need more help,” she said. “There aren’t enough programs for them or bathrooms. They often use the bathrooms to shower.”
In repeated fashion, the city has made efforts to revitalize the park with summer concerts, temporary amenities such as portable showers and adequate lighting. But just as quickly as those services brought changes to the park, those improvements disappeared when those services ended.
Someone who depends on those services is Gurpreet Singh. He also spends time around the park every day helping others like him who rely on those services, alongside Christ-Centered Ministries, a nonprofit that offers social services to the unhoused and vulnerable communities. Singh responds to mental health crises and overdoses by administering Narcan or calling 911.
“I try to help, giving medicine or something,” Singh said. “I (also) try helping giving food for the homeless. My mama teach me help to each other, so I’m learning through my mama and papa.”