according to ABC 7.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThe reason why people are sleeping here is because you leaders are sleeping on not taking initiative and action to clean this place up,\u201d neighborhood resident Daniel King told the station.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Aerial view shows the sprawling Koreatown encampment neighbors say now includes a tennis court, garden and barbecue pit. ABC 7<\/p>\n
The Koreatown homeless camp occupies a vacant lot surrounded by apartment buildings between Seventh and Eighth streets. ABC 7<\/p>\n
Max Smith, another neighbor, described the privately owned site as \u201ca city in there,\u201d adding, \u201cIt\u2019s crazy. It\u2019s crazy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a tennis court, there\u2019s a garden where they\u2019re growing stuff,\u201d resident Sangmin Lee told the local station. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a barbecue pit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lee raised alarms over safety after witnessing people living on the lot pry open a streetlight, place a surge protector inside, and run an extension cord across the street into the camp.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Residents say the privately owned site has grown into \u201ca city in there\u201d as more people move in. ABC 7<\/p>\n
A streetlight was pried open and rigged with a surge protector to power the encampment illegally. ABC 7<\/p>\n
\u201cThank God it hasn\u2019t rained in a while,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a fire hazard \u2026 then they run the cable across the street, and it\u2019s a trip hazard for everyone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A young woman living nearby told ABC 7 she avoids walking her dog near the site because people from the encampment have approached her while she was alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An ABC 7 crew visiting the lot reported being threatened by a person on the property.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Extension cords run across the street from the tampered light pole into the encampment. ABC 7<\/p>\n
Los Angeles City Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said the city has struggled to act because the land is privately owned.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that the challenge comes from the fact that this is private property,\u201d Yaroslavsky told ABC 7.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut because it\u2019s private property, there\u2019s [a] different path and that path is convoluted. It\u2019s over-bureaucratic. It\u2019s the city at its worst, sort of not being able to get out of its own way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lot is owned by a limited liability corporation registered in Delaware, which did not respond to requests for comment, according to ABC7.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yaroslavsky said the company has cooperated with officials and is expected to soon post \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d signs on the fence around the encampment, a step that would allow LAPD to intervene.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Blue tarps and makeshift shelters cover the Koreatown lot, which officials say sits on private property. ABC 7<\/p>\n
The Los Angeles Department of Building Safety told ABC 7 it is \u201cissuing an order to comply to the property owner to address the security, rubbish, garbage, trash and debris graffiti.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Yaroslavsky pressed for quicker enforcement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe immediately called [them] and said, \u2018Hey, get out there. Please send an inspector out there so we can start this process,\u2019 and it took a while, but they finally have gotten someone out there,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Public Works told ABC 7 that crews will install an anti-vandal wrap around the streetlight that was rigged to provide electricity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mayor Karen Bass\u2019 office told the news station that outreach teams have been dispatched to the encampment in an effort to move residents into housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sprawling homeless encampment in Los Angeles is drawing ire from neighbors who say the makeshift shelter has…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":222643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,7265,5413,2961,224,5337,1154],"class_list":{"0":"post-222642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-homelessness","11":"tag-karen-bass","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-losangeles","15":"tag-us-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115195096873948798","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}