I’m Ruth and I’ve been living in public in the City of Los Angeles for around eight years. I’m one of Ava’s many advocates (including Ava herself!) trying to facilitate her transition into sustainable, dignified housing.

For those who participate in the 2025 Greater Los Angeles Count, which has been delayed for one month because of the #LAfires, Ava V. may be a mark on a tally sheet or a tap in an app. But to others in Venice Beach, she’s a longtime neighbor, friend and empowered tenant.

Ava has rented at her building near Muscle Beach for the past 20 years.

She has already been evicted.

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Her days in her apartment are numbered. Despite the existence of many vacant affordable units on the Westside, Ava doesn’t have a place lined up and will be falling onto the street for the first time. She, like many, have found the process of accessing deeply affordable housing prohibitively convoluted.

Ava spends most of her time enrolling in services, pursuing assistance, and seeking applications for affordable housing units, especially those targeted at older, low-income tenants with disabilities. She has done dozens of “intakes”, hoping each would be able to help.

Over the past year, Ava has called 211, which only had help for families with minor children, LA’s Homeless Services Authority “LAHSA”, and the City’s Housing Rights Center, who said:

“Try 211.”

Neighbors supporting neighbors

Ava’s athletic neighbor in Venice Beach, Danny Slant extended a hand and made her story a feature on his YouTube channel, a slight deviation from his usual content. He had an open-hearted conversation with Ava and set her up with a GoFundMe. It did little to put a dent in her rent debt but warmed her heart, fed her over the holidays and made her feel seen. Danny calls Ava “a unicorn” because she’s such an upstanding neighbor who never causes commotion. He doesn’t want to see her on the streets or forced out of the neighborhood.

Even if Ava’s fundraiser had raised enough to purchase an RV for several thousand dollars, she’d still have nowhere on the Westside where she’d be allowed to park. Slant’s other videos show vehicle dwellers being displaced and threatened with parking violations and poverty tows. Police enforcement makes downsizing into a vehicle seem impossible, but high costs make maintaining a life indoors prohibitively expensive, too.

How did an incumbent tenant find herself in this untenable situation?

Ava saw her financial hardship coming from a mile away after she went through a breakup and downsized from a “1BR” into a “0BR” unit in her rent-controlled building. She made the opposite move many years prior to accommodate her partner, occupying three different units at the same address over the past two decades.

Ava applied for General Relief, Medi-Cal and CalFresh from Los Angeles County’s Department of Public Social Services “DPSS” and was quickly approved for their full suite of benefits. It adds up to <$2,000 cash/year, if she does all of their assignments, appointments and paperwork on time, buying her less than a month. And to make things worse, this month, her benefits were scammed out of her account, which is a common glitch for which there appears to be no real fix.

Last year, Ava had sought Social Security for long-documented health struggles (she has over 200 pages of records) that make it hard for her to maintain employment and income. Her 3-day notice to “pay or quit” and SSI denial came in last year on top of more bills: bad news on top of bad news. She is appealing the disability denial with the help of an advocate and a lawyer who will eventually pay himself out of the proceeds of her approval, whenever that finally happens. If she could make a similar deal with her landlord, she’d be okay.

According to the overdue Sheriff’s notice to vacate on her door, Ava was to vacate her unit with her things before Monday November 11th, Veteran’s Day. She’d have been more than willing to leave, if only she knew where she was going.

Solidarity in struggle

Before dawn on Tuesday, November 12th, peer advocate Vera C. took a bus to Santa Monica wearing a red jacket to identify herself when meeting Ava for the first time and as a show of solidarity with the tenant struggle. The same morning, activists were packing a downtown courtroom in support of a Filipina Housing for Juanita tenant who was facing her landlord. In October, Mohawk Tenants packed City Hall and got City Council to close an abusive “renoviction” loophole.

Requesting a Stay

Dressed in red, both Mohawk and Juanita supporters were successful in securing their immediate demands. Ava and Vera hoped they would be, too. At the self-help area of the Courthouse, Ava and Vera requested a 30-day stay of execution on the Sheriff’s notice to vacate, which had been posted the prior Wednesday, November 6th.

As it turns out, Sheriffs seem to be at least several months behind on eviction enforcement, basically granting an automatic “30+-day stay” for everyone. Indeed, Ava’s eviction is just one instance in a huge system that has limits. One limit is LASD’s physical ability to carry out long lists of removals on behalf of landlords. The “eviction machine” presents quite a logistical challenge, like Santa making it to all of the “nice” households in one evening. This sad fact morphed into a silver lining because the removals ahead of hers kept Ava inside over the holidays. It also reminded that no matter how lonely her situation felt, she was not alone in her struggle.

Not homeless enough

A staffer in City councilwoman Traci Park’s Westside (CD11) office was one of several people to say Ava’s not “homeless enough” for assistance, despite her having already been evicted. The U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department “HUD” defines four categories of homeless and considers Ava to be either literally homeless (Category 1) or imminently homeless (Category 2).

For the record, I consider Ava to be homeless, and I am what they consider “chronic” and “unsheltered”. As fond as I have become of Ava, I don’t want her outside with me, if we can help it. It is really frustrating when I get told there is assistance for people like her but not for people like me, and she gets told that there is assistance for people like me but not for people like her. It feels like there isn’t actually assistance for anyone.

Sheltered homelessness is increasing because of evictions.

At the same time sheltered homelessness is on the rise, the number of makeshift dwellings and tents is slowly going down. This is a consequence of “sweeps”, not an effective re-housing system, which would produce similar results without depriving people of their means to survive on the streets.

You can’t resist shelters that don’t exist!

Calling homeless people “shelter resistant” requires there to be an open shelter for them to resist, and on the Westside, there are none. When I was speaking to CD11’s homeless deputy, she made remarks about Ava’s perceived “shelter resistance”. But Ava is not wrong in her impression that congregate shelter will expose her to infectious disease, violence, and theft. Sleeping in a row of bunkbeds in a shelter with dozens of others does not get Ava any closer to securing affordable housing versus what she can access on the street through outreach.

Venice’s 154-bed, $8.6M Garcetti-era “A Bridge Home” (ABH) shelter shut down after operating for three years, and there was no plan in place to replace the beds before it closed. In this sense, CD11’s office staff seemed more resistant to maintaining shelter than Ava was in trying it.

Temporary accommodations

* Ramada Inn at 3130 Washington Blvd has 33 units that were supposed to be converted into housing by December 2024, according to Circle the News. However, the opening has been delayed indefinitely and it has actually been vacant since 2022. With nearly $20M spent so far on the acquisition and conversion, a new motel could have been developed for the cost.

* Cadillac Hotel at 8 Dudley Ave was operating as a County-funded Project Roomkey, but it has since returned to use as a regular hotel. The City and County may still be owed around $150M from FEMA under the Biden administration, but administered by the State, for Project Roomkey reimbursement.

* Marina 7 at 2435 Lincoln Blvd is an Inside Safe location which has open beds that are only accessible by targeted sanitation operations at encampments. Marina 7 also happens to be a residential hotel protected by a 2008 ordinance, LAMC § 47.70. It is supposed to ensure affordable rates for long-term tenants, but protections and programs mean little when the rooms are inaccessible to those in need.

Mayor Karen Bass was supposed to get a report about the status of residential hotels before the end of 2023 per Executive Order 6, but if the report was completed, it was never published. Capital & Main and ProPublica published an investigative series called “Checked Out” about these protected hotels which inspired a City Council motion for a report back about the status of these motels, but there has been no action by the City since August 2023 on the matter.

Venice Dell

A permanent housing project in Venice has been stalled for eight years, seemingly intentionally, by CD11 Traci Park, who ran on a “Not In My Back Yard” (NIMBY) platform. In December, the Coastal Commission cleared the project, only to have the Board of Transportation Commissioners “BOTC” railroad it the next day. City Council’s Transportation Committee, in a special joint meeting with the Public Works Committee last week, heard from BOTC that they voted not to approve the Venice Dell project, sited for a median parking lot called Lot 731.

Venice Dell was planned by former CD11 councilman Mike Bonin in an era prior to the passage of City Measure HHH as a 100% affordable deed-restricted project. Recent plans include 128 units, 68 of which were to be reserved for formerly homeless people. The agenda item heard by Transportation Committee on Thursday was about a transportation hub planned for a nearby parking lot, Lot 701, which BOTC have decided is a better fit for the larger Lot 731. The Venice Dell already included replacement public beach parking and even a boat launch with access to the original canal built by Abott-Kinney, plus much-needed affordable housing on top, but now it sounds like it may never get off the ground.

The question is if anyone will ever get to live in that space in a real affordable unit, or if it will only intermittently house people who wander through with little more than a sleeping bag and get shooed away by police and sanitation.

Ava’s formerly unhoused neighbor told Ava it was time to start packing up, so she would be ready, but how ready can one be for homelessness, especially in a community that is so hostile to the unhoused?

To be continued…

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