City removes Venice street parking


By Peggy Lee Kennedy

On Sept. 4, a yellow city truck came unannounced to install permanent “No Parking” signs on Washington Blvd. (from Palawan to Mildred and then down Mildred past Wilson). These Venice “No Parking” signs specifically state that a vehicle can be towed away if parked on these streets between 10 PM and 6 AM nightly. How can the city take nighttime parking away when residents are already fighting for street parking?


The city worker in the yellow truck said that it was because of the campers. In fact, a little Washington Blvd. war has been being waged against the campers and vans for some time. This war has included cars parked with “For Sale” signs on them, too. Evidently someone does not like campers or cars with “For Sale” signs parked by the wild bird reserve (four street lanes and a center turn lane) across from their condo. Evidently they have complained and have taken upon themselves to put their own signs on vehicles parked on this public street.

The City Parking Officer issuing 72-hour notices discriminately to campers and ticketing cars with ‘For Sale” signs a few days earlier said that he was merely responding to a call. I asked him why he didn’t put the 72-hour notices on all the cars. Some of the cars have been there longer than the campers. He told me that he was doing what he was told.

Now the “No Parking” signs have taken care of the problem and homelessness is cured in Venice! That poor Parking Officer no longer has to issue the 72-hour notices discriminately to vans and campers upon command.

No so fast, because a bunch of Venice residents got hurt here. Renters use street parking and this removal of nightly street parking affected two considerable rental complexes in Venice. These Washington Blvd. apartments are older and have some long-term Venice residents living in them. One Venice resident, who rents and lives on the five hundred block of Washington Blvd., said, “Those homeless people weren’t hurting anyone, but now we are getting hurt.” This resident says that s/he is now walking blocks and forced to park in other neighborhoods at night.

Many working-class renters are one or two paychecks from homelessness and it is a statistical fact that most of the homeless are simply low-income people that cannot afford to pay rent, food, utilities, and medical costs. Even with a regular social security check, how does one live on less than eight hundred dollars a month? We have Venice residents living in vehicles that are not “transients” and are elderly people. Often they are disabled and are veterans. Sadly, some just die alone in their vehicles with no real support system.

The discriminatory use of rules or laws being applied to these homeless folk (72-hour parking & living in vehicles) are reinforced by portraying them as non-citizens who are somehow less than human or “service resistant” people that do not deserve civil or human rights. And after the mean folk manage to “abate” them from our streets; the bothersome working-class Venice renters are just next on the list. Gentrification complete!

Posted: Wed - October 1, 2003 at 07:02 PM          

©