Tent City Report
By C.V.
Beck
At Tent City, Squirrel Square Free
Speech area, Frederick/California, Venice, CA. Wednesdays/Saturdays, 10-5 we go
on...with our “mission impossible”?, preserving truly affordable,
rent stabilized housing for seniors/disabled/working class persons AND CHILDREN
in the now overly ripe, clearly rotten “choice” westside of Los
Angeles.
The pressure lately has been very intense
and is coming from all sides. Certain neighbors, apparently in some kind of
enchanted spell caused by their zeal in remodeling, driving an SUV, plate number
4 HYT 395, have continued their unlawful dumping at Lincoln Place and are caught
in the act by security and tenants more than once. Clearly, these barbarians
feel entitled.
We are bouncing off the
walls (I mean trees) and snarling and snapping at each other as we struggle to
understand the complex legal boilerplate of what is being done to us and for us
as the hourglass begins running out of sand one more time. Some of us seem to
expect to melt into a puddle on the floor as the magic witching hour of 12:00
midnight, August 31, 2006 turns into 12:01, September 1, 2006. At which time our
legal tenancies at Lincoln Place are terminated(?) by the Ellis Act and we are
posted; or we are NOT terminated by the Ellis Act and not posted on the 1st but
maybe -- AFTER the very symbolic Labor Day long holiday weekend is over; and
life returns to normalcy on September 5th. That is, the normalcy of evicting
seniors and disabled working class persons and relegating them to the “you
are so over!” heap of human discards now filling up the westside... (where
are all these homeless people coming from? Hint,
hint!)
We have filed the necessary
paperwork (Case number B193235) in the Second Appellate District court for a
stay or writ of supersedeas; in order to protect the remaining seniors/disabled
persons from having to leave their rent stabilized homes of many years, their
familiar communities and support networks for the unknown until after our other
cases are heard. We are also waiting, (as we have done for so many years now)
for our flaccid city officials (other than Bill Rosendahl, who has been a peach)
to also step up to the plate and do the right thing, to obey their own municipal
ordinances, public resource codes, etc., something so many of them are clearly
loathe to do, for reasons I can only guess at...(the green reason, the hegemony
reason, the old boy’s network reason, the old girl’s network, the
you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours reason, the
too-good-for-the-likes-of-you-now reason, the
change-the-entire-balance-of-the-political- climate-overnight reason and the
magically-fluff-up-the-rents-nearby-overnight
reason).
By the time you read this, we
will know “what up” for what has been referred to--by people who
should know better-- but don’t, as “the dregs” of Lincoln
Place, your neighbors, in East Venice.
Posted: Fri - September 1, 2006 at 06:21 PM