A residential section of Hollywood is now homeless tent free after being plagued by encampments that brought trash, drugs and fires to the area. The I-Team’s Joel Grover reports for the NBC4 News at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sep. 19, 2024.
For years, one residential section of Hollywood had been plagued by homeless encampments that brought trash, drugs and fires to the area.
But now, the tents have been gone for five weeks with no signs of returning.
"It's so much safer without the tents. People can now use the sidewalks again," 70-year-old longtime resident Keith Johnson told the I-Team.
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As the I-Team reported in August, the city cleared away encampments on Hollywood Boulevard between Gower Street and Wilton Place, just days before it closed the street for thousands of bicyclists for the event called CicLAvia.
Often when the city clears an encampment, tents return sometimes within hours, but that's not the case on that stretch of Hollywood Boulevard.
"We are now enforcing two laws in the area that haven't really been enforced much in recent years," an LAPD officer who asked not to be named told the I-Team.
Those laws are LA Municipal Code 56.11 and 41.18, which prohibit tents on sidewalks between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m., and prohibit storing belongings on sidewalks in a way that prevents people from passing by.
Three officers told NBC4 that police had "educated" the unhoused in that part of Hollywood about the laws and told them if they tried to pitch their tents again in the area, they would be cited.
"The education efforts have worked and we haven't needed to cite or arrest," the officer said.
"I am absolutely in favor of the police enforcing these laws," said resident Keith Johnson.
Residents said they plan to keep the heat on the city to keep their neighborhood free of tents.
"I want the tents gone, for good," said realtor and resident Levi Freeman, who has told city officials his life had been threatened by people in the former encampments.
"If the tents come back, I'll post about it on Instagram, and I'll be calling and calling the LAPD," said Johnson.
Enforcing ordinances 56.11 and 41.18 has at times been opposed by some homeless advocates and politicians.
The I-Team reached out to the spokesperson for LA City Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, whose district includes that section of Hollywood Boulevard. We asked if Soto-Martinez agrees with the LAPD's enforcement of the ordinances, but did not receive a reply or comment.
