Context: The Venice Justice Committee and the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy recently released their study of 99 people who live in their vehicles in West LA. Their findings are damning, the majority of vehicle residents have been unhoused for more than five years, and the majority of them lived in LA County before becoming vehicle residents. These are people who are often struggling with disabilities and with a median income of $801 a month, not enough to afford an apartment anywhere in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Traci Park has built her term on criminalizing and dehumanizing vehicle dwellers, celebrating the clearing of RVs while blocking all forms of shelter and housing in her district. You can read the full report for yourself here.
SUBJECT: Stop Targeting Vehicle Dwellers
TO: councilmember.park@lacity.org, star.parsamyan@lacity.org, jacob.burman@lacity.org, juan.fregoso@lacity.org, sean.silva@lacity.org, dave.cano@lacity.org
Feel free to personalize the email however you see fit. Please include your name and zip code at the bottom if possible.
Councilmember Park,
I recently reviewed this report from the Venice Justice Committee and the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy which exposed some very troubling trends in regards to your policy of ticketing and towing RVs and other vehicle dwellings. In face-to-face surveys with 99 people who live in their vehicles, they found that the majority of people had received absolutely no offers of housing over the past three months. Many of the people who did receive offers only received vague promises or offers of very temporary housing. Vehicle dwelling is a reality for many people when the rent is astronomically unaffordable throughout LA. Using ticketing debt, towing, move-along orders and enabling vigilante harassment only further pushes people into totally unsheltered homelessness. Services and housing are the only solutions for getting people off the street. The report’s findings reiterate Human Rights Watch’s findings from last August which similarly demonstrated how cruel and ineffective criminalizing unhoused people is.
You have consistently dehumanized unhoused people during your time in office. You have tried to spin a narrative that unhoused people in our district are coming from outside Los Angeles and are largely criminals. This report demonstrated that the majority of people surveyed had lived in LA county before becoming unhoused, and only 6% of them were on parole. Your cruel policies primarily target people whose median income is $800 a month and 41% of them have a disability. These are people who need consistent outreach and identification of the resources they need to stay. The sweeps your office deploys are not only a violation of unhoused people’s human rights, but also grossly ineffective and expensive. I will be bringing up your bad position on these policies to my neighbors during your re-election campaign.
As a constituent, I expect at the very minimum for you to engage with this study and publicly respond. I agree with the report’s recommendations for establishing safe and stable parking sites, supportive services and pathways to permanent housing. I would strongly support all of these being established in my neighborhood.
Thank you,
[Your Name]
[Zip Code]
