The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a panel made up of President Donald Trump’s appointees, on Thursday approved his proposal to build a ballroom larger than the White House itself where the East Wing once stood.The meeting was supposed to be on the design, with a final vote expected at next month’s session. But the chairman, Rodney Mims Cook Jr., made a motion to also vote on final approval, and six of the seven commissioners who were all installed by the Republican president since the start of the year voted in favor twice. One commissioner, James McCrery, did not vote because he was the initial architect on the project.“Our sitting president has actually designed a very beautiful structure,” Cook said before the voting. “The United States just should not be entertaining the world in tents.”Cook echoed one of Trump’s arguments for adding a ballroom to the White House: It would end the long-standing practice of erecting temporary structures that Trump calls tents on the South Lawn to host visiting dignitaries for state dinners and other functions.Cook said no other president had taken steps to correct that “until President Trump.”The project will be the subject of additional discussion by the National Capital Planning Commission in March.At the fine art’s commission’s January meeting, some commissioners questioned the lead architect about the “immense” design and scale of the project even as they broadly endorsed Trump’s vision for a ballroom roughly twice the size of the White House itself.Some changes suggested at that meeting were made and were welcomed by the commissioners on Thursday.Trump’s decision in October to demolish the East Wing prompted a public outcry when it began without the independent reviews, congressional approval and public comment that are typical even for relatively minor modifications to historic buildings in Washington.The National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued in federal court to halt construction of the ballroom. A court decision in the case is pending.The project is scheduled for additional discussion at a March 5 meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission, which is led by one of Trump’s top White House aides. The commission has jurisdiction over construction and major renovations to government buildings in the region.___This story has been corrected to reflect that the ballroom was approved by six of the seven commissioners and that one commissioner did not vote because he was the initial architect on the project.
WASHINGTON —
The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a panel made up of President Donald Trump’s appointees, on Thursday approved his proposal to build a ballroom larger than the White House itself where the East Wing once stood.
The meeting was supposed to be on the design, with a final vote expected at next month’s session. But the chairman, Rodney Mims Cook Jr., made a motion to also vote on final approval, and six of the seven commissioners who were all installed by the Republican president since the start of the year voted in favor twice. One commissioner, James McCrery, did not vote because he was the initial architect on the project.
“Our sitting president has actually designed a very beautiful structure,” Cook said before the voting. “The United States just should not be entertaining the world in tents.”
Cook echoed one of Trump’s arguments for adding a ballroom to the White House: It would end the long-standing practice of erecting temporary structures that Trump calls tents on the South Lawn to host visiting dignitaries for state dinners and other functions.
Cook said no other president had taken steps to correct that “until President Trump.”
The project will be the subject of additional discussion by the National Capital Planning Commission in March.
At the fine art’s commission’s January meeting, some commissioners questioned the lead architect about the “immense” design and scale of the project even as they broadly endorsed Trump’s vision for a ballroom roughly twice the size of the White House itself.
Some changes suggested at that meeting were made and were welcomed by the commissioners on Thursday.
Trump’s decision in October to demolish the East Wing prompted a public outcry when it began without the independent reviews, congressional approval and public comment that are typical even for relatively minor modifications to historic buildings in Washington.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has sued in federal court to halt construction of the ballroom. A court decision in the case is pending.
The project is scheduled for additional discussion at a March 5 meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission, which is led by one of Trump’s top White House aides. The commission has jurisdiction over construction and major renovations to government buildings in the region.
___
This story has been corrected to reflect that the ballroom was approved by six of the seven commissioners and that one commissioner did not vote because he was the initial architect on the project.
We’re holding *** few activities for the children to help with their mental health. We just want to relieve the children from the shock that they have experienced in the last two years of war and the conditions that completely swallowed them. They couldn’t control it, but those were our conditions. They have suffered *** lot, so we’re trying *** different touch this holiday season, different activities, so that they can feel some amount of joy. It is true that we always have hoped that it will get better and Gaza will become better, that we go back to our homes, celebrate, go back to the same way we were before the war, go to pray and celebrate, that we would reunited again as *** family around the table tomorrow or at dinner on Christmas Day, and we would talk, relax, and laugh. Every time I remember those moments, I feel sad of what our lives have become.
During his first Christmas Day message Thursday, Pope Leo XIV urged the faithful to shed indifference in the face of those who have lost everything, like in Gaza, those who are in impoverished, like in Yemen, and the many migrants who cross the Mediterranean Sea and the American continent for a better future.Related video above: Gaza’s tiny Christian community tries to revive holiday spirit during ceasefireThe first U.S. pontiff addressed some 26,000 people from the loggia overlooking St. Peter’s Square for the traditional papal “Urbi et Orbi” address, Latin for “To the City and to the World,” which serves as a summary of the woes facing the world.While the crowd gathered under a steady downpour during the papal Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica, the rain had subsided by the time Leo took a brief tour of the square in the popemobile, then spoke to the crowd from the loggia.Leo revived the tradition of offering Christmas greetings in multiple languages that was abandoned by his predecessor, Pope Francis. He received especially warm cheers when he made his greetings in his native English and Spanish, the language of his adopted country of Peru, where he served first as a missionary and then as archbishop.Someone in the crowd shouted out, “Viva il papa!” or “Long live the pope!” before he retreated into the basilica. Leo took off his glasses for a final wave.Leo surveys the world’s distressDuring the traditional address, the pope emphasized that everyone can contribute to peace by acting with humility and responsibility.“If he would truly enter into the suffering of others and stand in solidarity with the weak and the oppressed, then the world would change,” the pope said.Leo called for “justice, peace and stability” in Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Syria, prayers for “the tormented people of Ukraine,” and “peace and consolation” for victims of wars, injustice, political stability, religious persecution and terrorism, citing Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso and Congo.The pope also urged dialogue to address “numerous challenges” in Latin America, reconciliation in Myanmar, the restoration of “the ancient friendship between Thailand and Cambodia,” and assistance for the suffering of those hit by natural disasters in South Asia and Oceania.“In becoming man, Jesus took upon himself our fragility, identifying with each one of us: with those who have nothing left and have lost everything, like the inhabitants of Gaza; with those who are prey to hunger and poverty, like the Yemeni people; with those who are fleeing their homeland to seek a future elsewhere, like the many refugees and migrants who cross the Mediterranean or traverse the American continent,” the pontiff said.He also remembered those who have lost their jobs or are seeking work, especially young people, underpaid workers and those in prison.Peace through dialogueEarlier, Leo led the Christmas Day Mass from the central altar beneath the balustrade of St. Peter’s Basilica, adorned with floral garlands and clusters of red poinsettias. White flowers were set at the feet of a statue of Mary, mother of Jesus, whose birth is celebrated on Christmas Day.In his homily, Leo underlined that peace can emerge only through dialogue.“There will be peace when our monologues are interrupted and, enriched by listening, we fall to our knees before the humanity of the other,” he said.He remembered the people of Gaza, “exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold” and the fragility of “defenseless populations, tried by so many wars,’’ and of “young people forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them, and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths.’’Thousands of people packed the basilica for the pope’s first Christmas Day Mass, holding their smartphones aloft to capture images of the opening procession.This Christmas season marks the winding down of the Holy Year celebrations, which will close on Jan. 6, the Catholic Epiphany holiday marking the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem.___Barry reported from Milan.
VATICAN CITY —
During his first Christmas Day message Thursday, Pope Leo XIV urged the faithful to shed indifference in the face of those who have lost everything, like in Gaza, those who are in impoverished, like in Yemen, and the many migrants who cross the Mediterranean Sea and the American continent for a better future.
Related video above: Gaza’s tiny Christian community tries to revive holiday spirit during ceasefire
The first U.S. pontiff addressed some 26,000 people from the loggia overlooking St. Peter’s Square for the traditional papal “Urbi et Orbi” address, Latin for “To the City and to the World,” which serves as a summary of the woes facing the world.
While the crowd gathered under a steady downpour during the papal Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica, the rain had subsided by the time Leo took a brief tour of the square in the popemobile, then spoke to the crowd from the loggia.
Leo revived the tradition of offering Christmas greetings in multiple languages that was abandoned by his predecessor, Pope Francis. He received especially warm cheers when he made his greetings in his native English and Spanish, the language of his adopted country of Peru, where he served first as a missionary and then as archbishop.
Someone in the crowd shouted out, “Viva il papa!” or “Long live the pope!” before he retreated into the basilica. Leo took off his glasses for a final wave.
Leo surveys the world’s distress
During the traditional address, the pope emphasized that everyone can contribute to peace by acting with humility and responsibility.
“If he would truly enter into the suffering of others and stand in solidarity with the weak and the oppressed, then the world would change,” the pope said.
Leo called for “justice, peace and stability” in Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Syria, prayers for “the tormented people of Ukraine,” and “peace and consolation” for victims of wars, injustice, political stability, religious persecution and terrorism, citing Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso and Congo.
The pope also urged dialogue to address “numerous challenges” in Latin America, reconciliation in Myanmar, the restoration of “the ancient friendship between Thailand and Cambodia,” and assistance for the suffering of those hit by natural disasters in South Asia and Oceania.
“In becoming man, Jesus took upon himself our fragility, identifying with each one of us: with those who have nothing left and have lost everything, like the inhabitants of Gaza; with those who are prey to hunger and poverty, like the Yemeni people; with those who are fleeing their homeland to seek a future elsewhere, like the many refugees and migrants who cross the Mediterranean or traverse the American continent,” the pontiff said.
He also remembered those who have lost their jobs or are seeking work, especially young people, underpaid workers and those in prison.
Peace through dialogue
Earlier, Leo led the Christmas Day Mass from the central altar beneath the balustrade of St. Peter’s Basilica, adorned with floral garlands and clusters of red poinsettias. White flowers were set at the feet of a statue of Mary, mother of Jesus, whose birth is celebrated on Christmas Day.
In his homily, Leo underlined that peace can emerge only through dialogue.
“There will be peace when our monologues are interrupted and, enriched by listening, we fall to our knees before the humanity of the other,” he said.
He remembered the people of Gaza, “exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold” and the fragility of “defenseless populations, tried by so many wars,’’ and of “young people forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them, and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths.’’
Thousands of people packed the basilica for the pope’s first Christmas Day Mass, holding their smartphones aloft to capture images of the opening procession.
This Christmas season marks the winding down of the Holy Year celebrations, which will close on Jan. 6, the Catholic Epiphany holiday marking the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem.
One person was arrested at UCLA on Monday night on suspicion of failing to disperse after the university’s Police Department ordered around 40 protesters to leave Dickson Court North, where they had established a “Gaza solidarity Sukkah” and a handful of tents, authorities said.
Student protesters erected the sukkah Monday morning to observe the Jewish holiday of Sukkot and demand the university divest from companies that do business with Israel and call for an end to the war in Palestine. By Monday evening, students had also set up a small number of tents.
At 3:20 p.m., UCPD issued a statement saying that students were assembling in an area not designated for public expression, using unauthorized structures and amplified sound — all of which violate the protest policies enacted in September in response to the massive pro-Palestinian protests that rattled campus in April.
According to reporting from the Daily Bruin, a group of pro-Israel counterprotesters arrived in Dickson Court North around 8 p.m., and pro-Palestinian protesters began dismantling their tents around 8:20 p.m.
The department issued an order to disperse about 10 minutes later, after which most of the protesters left the area, according to UCPD. Hired security guards then removed the sukkah, according to the Bruin.
Sukkot is a weeklong Jewish holiday that celebrates the fall harvest and commemorates the biblical story of the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years after escaping slavery in Egypt. During this time, Jews eat, dwell and pray in outdoor structures known as sukkahs to remember the fragile structures their ancestors lived in after fleeing Egypt.
Student protest organizers said they were using the holiday to call attention to the displacement and death inflicted on Palestinians and Lebanese people by Israel.
“I refuse to observe Sukkot as normal when university investments continue to fund the genocide of Palestinians,” said protest organizer Leah Jacobson in a statement. “The principle of pikuach nefesh, or saving a soul, demands we put other laws aside in order to preserve human life. I am here aligning my Jewish practice with my support for Palestinian liberation.”
Protesters are demanding the university divest from weapons and surveillance system manufacturers that do business with Israel such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Boeing.
The UC system has repeatedly opposed calls for divestment saying it impinges on the academic freedom of the university community. The UC system also states that tuition and fees are the primary funding sources for the University’s core operations and that none of these funds are used for investment purposes.
A week into what Mayor London Breed has called a “very aggressive” effort to clear homeless encampments across San Francisco, a key question looms: Where will the people living in those tents go?
Outreach workers, backed by law enforcement officers, have fanned out in recent days in targeted efforts to clear some of San Francisco’s most visible encampments, confiscating personal belongings and telling the owners it’s time to pack up and go.
They’ve cleared unsanctioned tent cities under freeways and a stretch of sidewalk in the drug-plagued Tenderloin with the aim of forcing people off the streets. On Monday, city workers visited a longtime encampment lining the sidewalks outside San Francisco’s only DMV office that had been cleared more than a dozen times this year only to resurrect days later.
By Monday night, the sidewalks were clean.
Breed’s efforts are buoyed by a pivotal June 28 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that authorized local communities to more forcefully restrict homeless encampments on sidewalks and other public property.
In response, Breed said that San Francisco, a city that’s become a favorite right-wing punching bag for its sprawling homelessness crisis, would launch a more determined initiative to clear encampments. The time had come, she said, to address “this issue differently than we have before.”
Despite a years-long effort to move people into shelter or housing, street encampments remain a visible problem in San Francisco.
(Tayfun Coskun / Getty Images)
An estimated 8,300 people are living homeless in San Francisco, about half of them sleeping in parks and on sidewalks in makeshift shelters. Despite a years-long effort to move people into temporary shelter or permanent housing, tent encampments remain a glaring problem, often accompanied by trash, theft and open drug use.
For years, Breed and other city officials said their hands were tied by decisions issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that deemed it cruel and unusual punishment to penalize someone for sleeping on the streets if no legal shelter was available. Now, bolstered by the Supreme Court ruling, city personnel can take a tougher stance if people refuse help.
But San Francisco, along with many other West Coast cities looking to crack down on encampments, still hasn’t figured out where people are supposed to go once their tents are dismantled: The city’s shelters — with roughly 3,600 beds — are at 94% of capacity, according to the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing.
“Unfortunately, San Francisco does not have enough shelter or housing for every person experiencing homelessness, but we do have some beds available each day to support the work of the outreach teams, and we continue to grow our system,” Emily Cohen, the department’s spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Jeff Cretan, the mayor’s spokesperson, said the city doesn’t necessarily expect a huge influx of new people in shelters. After years of attempts to move people inside, those still living on the streets tend to be the most resistant to accepting offers of shelter, often because they’re struggling with mental illness and substance-use disorders.
In the first three days of this week’s encampment sweeps, only about 10% of the people offered shelter have accepted it, Cretan said.
Instead, Breed — in the thick of a difficult reelection bid — is turning to strategies other than more shelter beds. She said the city may issue criminal penalties for people who repeatedly refuse shelter. But the prospect of local jails processing hundreds more homeless people also raises capacity issues.
On Thursday, Breed put weight behind another approach. She issued an executive directive requiring outreach workers to offer homeless people who aren’t from San Francisco free transportation out of town — to cities where they have family, friends or other connections. Cretan said the city would cover the cost of bus, plane or train fares.
The city has had a similar program in effect for years, but it lost traction during the pandemic. Under the new directive, workers are to press the relocation option before offering any other city services, including housing and shelter.
According to the city’s 2024 annual point-in-time homeless survey, about 40% of people living on the streets said they were not from San Francisco.
“This directive will ensure that relocation services will be the first response to our homelessness and substance-use crises, allowing individuals the choice to reunite with support networks before accessing other city services or facing the consequences of refusing care,” Breed wrote in the directive.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed faces a difficult reelection bid, with homeless numbers a burning issue. Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, right, is among her challengers.
(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)
Breed’s hard-line approach has drawn sharp criticism from homeless advocates, who argue that clearing tents does not address the poverty and addiction that cause homelessness — and who say her efforts are politically motivated.
“Policies to address homelessness must be humane, lawful and effective — not implemented just because someone’s job is on the line,” said Aaron Peskin, president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and one of Breed’s mayoral challengers.
Peskin instead called for bolstering rent control and protections against eviction, and for the city to expand shelter and affordable housing options.
Since Breed took office, the city has increased shelter capacity from about 2,500 beds to nearly 4,000, the mayor’s office said, and permanent supportive housing slots to about 14,000. Cohen, with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, cited those efforts as the reason the number of people living on city streets is at “the lowest level in at least 10 years.”
Cretan said the relocation offers and threat of criminal penalties are just a starting point as the city figures out what strategies will work.
“The mayor really wants to make clear [that] you have to accept shelter. But, clearly, it’s not going to be everyone says yes,” Cretan said. “It’s not like you snap your fingers and everything changes overnight.”
The bodies were recovered south of the city of Ensenada, according to a statement from the state prosecutor’s office. The statement did not confirm the identity of the dead, but said authorities discovered the bodies while searching for the missing men.
Three people who were being questioned in the case have been arrested and charged with kidnapping, the statement said.
The disappearance of Callum Robinson, 33, his brother Jake, 30, and friend Carter Rhoad, 30, triggered a massive search involving local authorities, the FBI and the Mexican marines.
The men were outdoor enthusiasts who crossed from the United States into Mexico last month to explore Baja California’s renowned surf breaks.
Callum Robinson, a high-level lacrosse player, documented the trip on social media, showing himself, and his brother, a doctor, and their friend sipping coffee on the beach, befriending street dogs and relaxing in a hot tub. Rhoad, from Atlanta, founded an online apparel company in San Diego, according to his Facebook profile.
According to a social media post made by the Robinsons’ mother, Debra Robinson, the group was supposed to check into an Airbnb in Rosarito Beach last weekend after camping for several days on a remote stretch of beach south of Ensenada. But they never checked in. The last time their relatives heard from the men was on April 27.
Authorities searched near the town of Santo Tomás, where the men had been camping. They first located their tents and the burned-out remains of the white Chevrolet pickup the men were traveling in. Authorities did not provide information about where exactly they located the bodies.
Baja California’s rugged coastline has long drawn surfers and other tourists from north of the border. But in recent years, the state has contended with some of the highest rates of violence in Mexico. In 2023, authorities recorded 2,116 homicides in the state, many of them connected to the drug trade.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador vowed to reduce violence in Mexico. But while homicides have fallen slightly during his six-year term, they continue to hover near record highs.
Pro-Palestinian protests grew Thursday at California colleges and universities, including a new encampment at UCLA and demonstrations at UC Santa Barbara, a day after police in riot gear arrested 93 protesters at USC.
Fallout over the Israel-Hamas war grew Thursday as USC announced that it would cancel its main stage commencement ceremony after more than a week of national controversy over its decision to pull a pro-Palestinian valedictorian’s speaking slot from the May event that was expected to draw 65,000 attendees.
The university cited new safety measures, saying that the “time needed to process the large number of guests coming to campus will increase substantially.”
Dozens of smaller graduation ceremonies and celebrations at USC will continue under a new ticket policy and security checks.
At Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, the campus remained closed and classes shifted online, with pro-Palestinian students occupying multiple buildings since Monday night.
And at UC Berkeley, 50 tents remained up by Sproul Hall, the historic home of the campus’ free speech movement. On their fourth day of a “Free Palestine Camp,” students called for the university to divest its endowment from weapons manufacturers tied to Israel.
Tensions were high at USC, where the campus was rocked at the end of the semester by President Carol Folt’s decision to cancel the valedictorian’s speech and then a commencement address by film director Jon M. Chu, before calling off the main commencement altogether.
An encampment that launched before sunrise Wednesday morning at Alumni Park grew to about 200 protesters — students, faculty and outsiders — before the late-night arrests by the LAPD. By Thursday morning, the encampment had been cleared, with campus security picking up the remaining tents and signs.
On Thursday, the university fenced off the park — the site of the called-off commencement — to set up a brunch for 2024 graduates scheduled for Friday morning. There were no protesters and few signs of Wednesday’s unrest, besides chalk messages on nearby sidewalks in support of Palestinians.
The campus remains closed to the public through weekend, and professors have moved classes online.
“This is a series of poor decisions by USC, from banning the valedictorian to calling in police to arrest peaceful students,” said Luke, a USC sophomore who was arrested Wednesday night and released early Thursday morning. “I don’t know what this university thinks it’s doing, because none of it makes sense.”
Luke did not share his last name because he said he was worried about his safety and repercussions to his enrollment at USC, where campus safety officers on Wednesday told students that they could face discipline for violating rules over camping and use of amplified sound.
Amelia Jones, a professor at the Roski School of Art and Design who joined faculty in protesting on Wednesday, said there was a growing “lack of trust” at USC between the administration, faculty and students.
“They just massively escalated by calling in LAPD,” she said.
A Jewish community group condemned the USC protests, while a Muslim civil rights group condemned the arrests.
“While students have a right to protest, they do not have the right to intimidate or threaten Jewish students,” said a statement from USC’s Hillel. “Today’s events on campus included a protest action that again employed antisemitic chants including ‘there is only one solution, intifada revolution’ and ‘long live the intifada.’ These actions reflect a disturbing and quickly escalating situation nationally and on our own campus at USC.”
In another statement, the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations spoke out against the arrests of peaceful protesters.
“It is deeply concerning that USC’s response to students demonstrating peacefully in solidarity with Palestine is forcible suppression of free speech and assembly,” said CAIR-LA legal director Amr Shabaik. “This mirrors a nationwide trend of colleges and universities attempting to censor pro-Palestine advocacy on campuses.”
At UCLA, about 100 students, faculty, staff and alumni occupied the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on Thursday with more than 20 tents surrounded by wooden pallets and protest signs.
The effort was organized by UC Divest Coalition, which was made up of several student groups.
Outside Royce Hall, students and others stood in line to check in before entering the encampment.
Participants said they had seen minimal police presence — mostly officers passing by in squad cars.
Marie Salem, 28, a graduate student studying public health, said the encampment is a community of people demanding a change from UC administrators.
“It’s about our community realizing that we no longer can go to a university that is complicit in genocide, and we no longer can go to a university that is invested in this genocide of the Gazans,” Salem said.
George Dutton, a professor of Asian language and cultures, said he and others wanted to observe the protest to ensure that students can safely practice their 1st Amendment rights.
Dutton said it was “deeply disturbing” to see a large police presence on campuses across America this past week as students protest the war in Gaza.
At UC Santa Barbara, hundreds occupied the student resources building Thursday for a daylong series of workshops, art projects and other actions to express solidarity with Palestinians, call for a cease-fire and demand an end to Israel-related investments.
A few tents were set up inside the building, but no encampment is planned, said Bisnupriya Ghosh, a professor of English and global studies and member of Academics for Justice in Palestine. She added that no police were present, and the event was proceeding peacefully.
“It’s centered around education about Israel-Palestine, as well as antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of racism and hate,” Ghosh said.
Times staff writers Melissa Gomez, Jenny Jarvie and Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report.
For as long as people have watched tents take over sidewalks and RVs deteriorate under freeways, politicians have been making promises about solving homelessness in Los Angeles.
And for just as long, those same politicians have been breaking them.
This is undoubtedly why, back in March, as Mayor Karen Bass was approaching her first 100 days in office, only 17% of Angelenos believed her administration would make “a lot of progress” getting people off the streets, according to a Suffolk University/Los Angeles Times poll. Far more — 45% — predicted just “a little progress” would be made.
I was thinking about this deep well of public skepticism while listening to Bass, all smiles in a bright green suit on Wednesday morning, enthusiastically explain why the progress she has actually made is a reason for renewed optimism.
Flanked by members of the L.A. City Council outside a school in Hollywood, she announced that her administration had, in its first year, moved more than 21,694 people out of encampments and into interim housing. That’s an increase of 28% over the final year of former Mayor Eric Garcetti’s administration, taking into account the work of various government programs, including Bass’ signature one, Inside Safe.
In addition, the majority of those directed to motel and hotel rooms, congregate shelters and tiny homes have decided to stay, rather than head back out onto the streets.
“We have tried to set a new tone in the city. This is an example of that new tone. Forty-one people used to sleep here, and now it’s clear,” Bass said Wednesday over the shrieks of schoolchildren. “Students and parents don’t need to walk around tents on their way to school, and the Angelenos who were living here do not need to die on our streets.”
It was a convincing message, backed up by a thick packet of numbers distributed to reporters at City Hall a few hours later.
But numbers are funny. They can be crunched in many ways and interpreted to mean many different things.
As my Times colleague David Zahniser pointed out, all of the people who now live in interim housing are still considered homeless by the federal government. And while Bass had originally thought most of them would be there for only three to six months, it’s now looking more like 18 months to two years. Permanent housing is that scarce.
So, numbers-wise, don’t expect a decline in the next annual homelessness count, which is scheduled for January. There might even be an increase, thanks to the expiration of pandemic-era tenant protections. As of the last count, there were more than 46,000 unhoused people living in the city, mostly in encampments.
But again, numbers are funny. They tend not to mean half as much as what people see and experience for themselves, just like the disconnect between public perceptions of crime and actual crime data.
So, when Bass declares at a news conference that “we have proved this year that we will make change,” and she talks about the encampment that used to be where she’s standing, and all the encampments that her administration has cleared, even if a few more tents have popped up down the street, skeptical Angelenos just might believe her.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s not such a bad thing.
“What I see most powerfully is increased hope,” Va Lecia Adams Kellum, chief executive of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, told reporters on Wednesday. “Hope among the folks who are living in those encampments who had given up and [thought] they’ll always live in that level of despair. Hope that the community now believes that we could possibly get out of this terrible crisis.”
Kellie Waldon, 54, cries near what’s left of her encampment, left, as Skid Row West is dismantled under the 405 Freeway along Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles in October. Waldon was hoping to receive housing through the city’s Inside Safe program, like others in the encampment had. “You get your hopes up and you don’t know what to believe,” Waldon said.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Hope is a thing difficult to quantify, especially among people who have been homeless for years, and have suffered so much and have been let down so often by government.
I’ve talked to some who took a chance and decided to leave their tents and RVs, and are now thrilled to be in a motel room with a door, running water and air conditioning. Others have had it with curfews and jail-like rules, and are getting tired of waiting on promised permanent housing.
I’ve also talked to those who have been booted out of interim housing for one reason or another, and are back on the streets. They are feeling hopeless, like many cash-strapped Angelenos who are on the verge of an eviction.
But peak hopelessness? That’s what we saw on the first days of December.
At a hastily called news conference, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore announced that officers were searching for a man who had fatally shot three homeless people — one sleeping on a couch in an alley and another while pushing a shopping cart.
“This is a killer preying on the unhoused,” Bass said.
Moore and Bass didn’t know then, but their suspect, Jerrid Joseph Powell, had already been arrested by Beverly Hills police after a traffic stop in which his $60,000 BMW was linked to a deadly follow-home robbery.
Police have yet to elaborate on Powell’s alleged motive, but Bass brought up the horrific case several times on Wednesday — and with good reason. Violence and acts of cruelty against people living on the streets are increasingly common not just locally, but nationally.
Advocates blame this trend of nastiness on the pandemic-era surge in homelessness, particularly in unsheltered homelessness, and the subsequent spike in interactions between housed and unhoused residents. Fear and frustration can lead to dehumanization and that, in turn, can lead to violence, said Dr. Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.
“I do really worry that it’s become normalized in public discourse to speak about people experiencing homelessness as, like, a problem for those who are not homeless — as opposed to fundamentally a massive societal failure that’s left usually older, vulnerable people terrified and totally unprotected,” she told me. “And I do think that there is a connection, like the more we dehumanize people, the less protected they are.”
Stephanie Klasky-Gamer has watched this happen in real-time as president and CEO of L.A. Family Housing. The seeming permanency of encampments, and the trash, fires and unsanitary conditions they often generate, have led to what she describes as widespread impatience.
“I don’t mean big, systemic impatience, like ‘I wish we could end homelessness faster,’” she said. “It’s the ‘I’m just sick of seeing you in front of me’ kind of impatience.”
On some level, she gets it, though. As does Kushel. As do I.
“It has to be OK to say, ‘Yeah, this sucks that I’m walking my kids to school and I’m walking over people in tents,’” Kushel told me. “But there has to be a way to hold that with being able to recognize how we got to this position and also how we’re going to get out. And to sort of restore [our] collective humanity.”
For Klasky-Gamer, this has meant focusing on what has changed since Bass became mayor.
“I know how much good is getting done,” she told me. “The frustration I may feel at seeing the tent every day I turn the corner, at least I can temper it knowing that 10 people yesterday moved into an apartment. These three people haven’t. But these 10 did.”
RVs in an encampment along West Jefferson Boulevard near the Ballona Wetlands in Playa del Rey in 2021.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
The mayor has told me many times that getting people off the streets isn’t just a humanitarian imperative — and, as a serial killer reminded us, a safety imperative. It’s also a demonstration to a fed up public that progress is possible.
“What distresses Angelenos the most are encampments. That’s where people were dying on the street,” Bass told reporters. “And to me, what was clear, was that we come up with a way to get people out of the tents.”
Some will dismiss that. They’ll insist that all her administration is doing is reducing visible homelessness to score easy political points. And that instead of doing the hard work of actually helping L.A.’s most vulnerable residents get back on their feet, the mayor is hiding them so that they’ll be forgotten and abandoned in interim housing.
In this city, defined by its haves and have nots, I understand the cynicism and skepticism. But that’s why what Bass does next, namely expanding and stabilizing the city’s crumbling supply of permanent housing, will matter even more than what she has done thus far.
“We’ve got to somehow make people believe again that this is solvable,” Kushel told me, “and it is solvable.”
Hope can be elusive. But Annelisa Stephan was looking for it anyway when she came to the Ballona Wetlands on a recent Saturday morning.
She and more than 100 other volunteers — many of them from the nearby neighborhoods of Playa Vista and Playa del Rey — had descended on the Westside ecological reserve to dig holes, spread soil, and put in plants and trees.
Just a few months ago, RVs had been parked here along Jefferson Boulevard, bumper to bumper in a sprawling encampment that dozens of unhoused people had come to call home.
They built a close-knit community, looking out for one another and mourning one another after deadly fires. But they also decimated the Ballona Wetlands’ freshwater marsh with everything from battery acid to trash to human waste, and scared off nearby residents who once walked the trails.
And then one day, after almost three years, the encampment was gone, replaced by concrete barricades and metal fencing. The residents were mostly sent to interim housing and the RVs were mostly towed away.
“It’s like, hard to know what to think or feel,” Stephan told me. “I’m happy that the land is being stewarded, but just sad about the suffering that so many people face.”
She lamented the “fervent, anti-homeless mania” that she has heard from some of her neighbors.
“It’s just been really a painful time,” Stephan said.
Not far away, L.A. City Councilmember Traci Park, whose Westside district includes the Ballona Wetlands and got elected on promises to aggressively crack down on homeless encampments, was more circumspect.
“At the end of the day, everybody wants the same thing, which is to get folks off the streets and into safe settings and connected to the help that they need,” she said. “There’s a lot of different points of view about how we get there. And I think that’s where a lot of the conflict and the division lie.”
She paused, as traffic whizzed by on Jefferson Boulevard.
SALT LAKE CITY, June 21, 2021 (Newswire.com)
– Just like everyone else, the Kings Peak founders added a puppy to their family during the 2020 pandemic. Even before they got Ollie, backpacking was a big part of their lives, and they wanted their pup to be a part of that too. Taking dogs to the mountains is like taking kids to Disneyland, they obviously belong there. But they quickly found there was no easy way to accommodate Ollie sleeping at night without either making a mess of the gear or making him sleep outside. After contemplating a DIY solution, they decided that they should spend a lot more time and effort towards this project to make the perfect solution and see if others were interested in the same idea. So, they created the Kings Peak tent, which has a separate section in the tent for a dog. It features an interior removable mesh wall and a separate exterior doggy door.
If a dog is crate trained or love their personal space/area at night, they will thrive with this tent set-up. Ollie slept more than he ever has backpacking, which is important because dogs need their rest just as much as humans do. He was never anxious, because he could see that his owners were right next to him all night, and even his owners slept better knowing he was safe and comfortable in his own area. The well-known American Kennel Club said that “For thousands of years dogs have sought out small, enclosed spaces for shelter and security. Crating your dog can give him that feeling of safety, like he has his own room to go to.” The Kings Peak family stands behind this statement 100% and believes that this tent set-up will change how one backpacks with their dog, for both the owner and their dog.
An inspired designer introduces her newest product for outdoor enthusiasts via the ‘HARDWIN – Instant Fishing Tent’ project on Indiegogo. The team is crowdfunding to raise the funds needed to bring the HARDWIN Fishing Tent to market.
Xiamen, China, October 19, 2016 (Newswire.com)
– Jingjing Lu, the founder of China based start-up HARDWIN, has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. This campaign has a funding goal of $20,000, which needs to be raised in order to bring their flagship product, the HARDWIN Fishing Tent, to market. The HARDWIN Fishing Tent was created for outdoor enthusiasts everywhere, and is designed to be both simple and convenient, with a one touch lift-up system for quick and easy set up. The HARDWIN Fishing Tent promises to make all outdoor activities more relaxing and enjoyable. It was designed to bring the comfort of indoors to the beautiful serenity of outdoors, so nature lovers no longer need to skip that fishing trip because of the weather.
The HARDWIN Fishing Tent comes in 2 sizes: single or duo, and is both wind and water resistant. It is made with lightweight, but sturdy aluminum poles, and oxford cloth with a polyurethane coating for increased wind and water resistance. The tent features a simple locking mechanism to hold it in place after the quick and easy set-up, and has adjustable leg-poles for use on uneven terrain, which means a user will no longer have to look for a flat area to set up the tent. The tent offers 4 different shapes for added convenience and comfort: all flaps open for improved air circulation throughout the tent, only the front flap open, a top sheet for extra protection against the rain and sun, or attach the flysheet for ultimate protection against wind and rain. It is currently only available in standard jungle green, but the team plans to introduce extra color options if enough funding is raised with their campaign.
“Do you ever enjoy a Sunday fishing trip? It is a fascinating life experience, especially taking a finishing tent like this with you.”
Jingjing Lu, Founder of HARDWIN
The team at HARDWIN has been working very diligently on all of the essential groundwork for their Instant Fishing Tent. They are now ready to begin the process of bringing the tent to market which is why they have launched their Indiegogo campaign, and hired a team of crowdfunding specialists to help them spread the word. All supporters of this campaign have the opportunity to pre-order the tent at a substantial savings off of regular retail pricing. The HARDWIN Fishing Tent can be pre-ordered in either size, with an expected delivery date of December 2016. Full details can be found on their Indiegogo campaign page.
HARDWIN was founded by Jingjing Lu and is based in Xiamen, China. The team consist of a large group of outdoor fans, designers, engineers, and liberal artists. They work together to design and create innovative new products for outdoor use, as well as innovative design elements for home decorations.
To learn more about the HARDWIN Fishing Tent crowdfunding project Click Here
To contact via email write to Jingjing Lu at: ljwdada@163.com
To learn more about the team of specialists at Smart Crowdfunding Click Here
