Is It a Cleanup or a Coverup?
Homeless people lose vital belongings during encampment cleanups, also known as sweeps. While sweeps are frequently presented to the public as making the street corners clean, records indicate that some officials are playing pretty dirty. Not only are they illegally removing homeless encampment residents’ possessions while tearing down their tents, but then they are altering records in a failed attempt to hide their dishonesty. Here’s a look at how it all goes down.
Sweeps: A Brief Overview of Dismantling Homeless Encampments
Homeless encampments are daunting evidence of America’s growing housing crisis and of the failing system that fuels it from behind the scenes. Here, in the shadows of some of the seemingly most glamorous cities in the world, the harsh truth unfolds. Or rather, it unzips.
Tattered tarps and makeshift shelters crowd the sidewalks. They get torn down by city officials, and within days, similar structures reappear, proving beyond doubt that the problem never went away, even if some city officials claimed to have cleaned things up.
In truth, the encampment was merely swept to another side of the street. This is why we call them sweeps.
Homeless Encampment Residents Lose Essential Items During Sweeps
In LA and many other major metropolitan areas, homeless encampment sweeps are far too familiar. Data suggests they cost about $100 million to conduct and end up housing an average of 3 out of every 2,308 people. Imagine spending $100 million to house three people and then presenting this method to the public as a fiscally responsible or even sane approach to reducing homelessness.
Recently, Invisible People reporters documented a before-and-after scenario showing how a dismantled encampment had already sprung anew within two days. While most of the encampment residents were still in a state of unsheltered homelessness, there was one glaring difference: Many of their belongings were gone.
“Not the same tent. Unfortunately, they took the one I had, which was a little better,” said Koreatown resident Louis, who had reemerged shortly after the destruction.
“How many times have you lost all your stuff?” asked Invisible People reporters.
Louis looked down and paused.
“A couple of times,” he shrugged. “The stuff, I don’t want to recall right now because it’s kinda painful, you know?”
The experience of losing everything you own over and over for as long as you’re living on the streets is undeniably painful. For some encampment residents, it can even become a fatal blow. For example, if prescription medication is confiscated, this can lead to adverse health effects and subsequent death. Several scenarios like that have been recorded. They are not merely hypothetical. Some of the most commonly confiscated items include:
- Photo Identification, which unsheltered people need to access aid, housing, and employment
- Life-saving medication or scripts for future medication
- Contact lenses or prescription eyeglasses
- Canes
- Wheelchairs
- Tents
- Blankets
- Clothing
- Food and much more
“If they’re in a bad mood, they just say, ‘Okay, we’re going to throw your stuff away.’ They don’t even give us the chance to move our stuff at all,” said Anthony, another LA-based encampment resident.
To hear affected homeless people tell the tale, their belongings are being wrongfully ripped away from them without warning, a process that is very much against the law. However, since homeless people are rarely regarded as experts on the crisis they’re enduring, the general public trusted the city of LA to be transparent about their so-called “cleanup” process. According to the latest court decree, the trusted city leaders lied.
More Than 100 Revisions Were Found in Sweep Documents Submitted to the Judge
U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer ruled that the City of LA made at least 100 revisions to documents delivered to the court as part of an ongoing 2018/2019 case against the city, which was initially filed on behalf of seven homeless encampment residents as well as the popular advocacy group Ktown for All.
The case alleges the city illegally confiscated items during sweeps in 2018 and 2019. The plaintiffs claim the following items were seized:
- Photo IDs
- Prescription medications
- A dog kennel
- Tents
- Chairs
- Office Supplies
- A laptop
- Clothing
- Hygiene products and more
According to the court, when the city was asked to provide proof that they did not illegally confiscate these items, they delivered severely altered documents that had been significantly modified and, in some cases, fabricated from thin air. Some of the most common alterations were:
- Removal of time and date stamps from government documents
- Changing words and phrases. For example, the word “bulky” was frequently changed to “ADA violation,” while the phrase “Property left behind by encampment” was changed to “Contaminated Items Surrendered or Left Behind by Resident.”
In an interview quoted by the LA Times, Attorney Shayla R. Myers, who is representing the plaintiffs, explained the broader ramifications of these altered texts.
“In our view, this isn’t just about altering or creating evidence; it’s about misleading the court and the public about the existence of safeguards to ensure the city isn’t illegally throwing away unhoused people’s belongings,” she explained.
In an exclusive discussion with Invisible People, The National Homelessness Law Center’s Senior Policy Director Eric Tars elaborated.
“In Los Angeles, we’ve kind of got a tale of two contrasting approaches to homelessness,” Tars said. On the one hand, Mayor Bass has committed to not using a criminal justice approach. And the city has reduced homelessness by 10%, even under the Martin vs. Boise and Johnson vs. Grant Pass precedents that were holding in the ninth Circuit.”
“This shows evidence that communities can reduce homelessness without turning to law enforcement,” Tars continued. “On the other hand, the police department and several city counselors are pushing a criminalization approach and hiding evidence from the courts and the public. There was a long overdue report that was just recently issued that they hid for a year, which proves the ineffectiveness of homeless encampment sweeps.”
“It’s shameful that these public officials are hiding the evidence that these criminalization policies don’t work and not letting the public understand that there are better ways to address homelessness,” Tars said. “They are trying to doctor the evidence, so it seems like criminalization might be a reasonable approach. In truth, it’s not reasonable, it’s not needed, it’s not useful, and it’s counterproductive to the intended outcome of ending homelessness. The fact that they are trying to hide that from the public should have all local voters outraged and voting them out of office.”
Tell Your Local Representatives That Dishonesty Will Not Win Your Vote
Now is the time to make it clear that you will not tolerate dishonesty from city leaders and government officials. No matter how many doctored documents emerge, the accurate data still shows that criminalizing homelessness is an ineffective method that wastes hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and doesn’t resolve the issue.
Tell your local representatives to take the only humane and honest approach to homelessness by making housing a human right.
