By Jon Wolff
Run Down Housing
The following is from the testimony of Homelessness Advocate Michael Ridley about the fate of Venice unhoused people who have been affected by Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park’s Inside Safe Program.
These are the people that she [Traci Park] sent out to South L.A., put in motels or in shared living, when she promised them Section 8 vouchers. All their vouchers have been sold, and other people are living off the profit. They’re still moving people into shared living. These people cannot afford the rent, so they’re pushed back to the streets. Now they can’t come back to Venice because of Traci Park’s order. You take all our people and send them to another city they don’t know anything about.
They moved them to MacArthur Park. Now they’re under the cartel’s watch out there. I go there to see the people, the girls. They can’t come back. They’re branded. These guys [the cartel] took these girls and put tattoos on their buttocks. They stamped “L.A.”, like the L.A. Dodgers symbol. Once they have that symbol on their butt cheeks, there’s nothing we can do.
Our people have either gone on to the next life or are incarcerated or had a mental breakdown. Some of them have got clean and went back to their family. And some are in shared living. They’re stressed out because, at the end of the year, they’re responsible to take on the lease.
The girl they had over in that garage… They moved her all the way to City of Commerce, because she filed a sexual harassment against the landlord. And it never went anywhere. She filed it with St. Joseph’s Center and it never went anywhere. These people have a lot of complaints through St. Joseph’s Center, and St. Joseph’s Center has ignored everything that they complained about.