A report by the Los Angeles city administrator has panned City Council member Mike Bonin’s proposals to build temporary housing shelters on parking lots at local beaches, which have provoked a recall campaign against Bonin.
As Breitbart News has reported, local residents have begun supporting a recall against Bonin, who represented the 11th district, which includes much of the west side of L.A., including beach communities like Venice and Pacific Palisades.
Residents are unhappy with the growth of homeless encampments, particularly in Venice Beach, which were only removed over the past several weeks as popular momentum for the recall against Bonin grew.
Will Rogers Beach (Joel Pollak / Breitbart News)
The city administrator’s report said:
The CAO followed its feasibility process as outlined in C.F. 20-1351 to assess the proposed sites. The CAO worked with the Bureau of Engineering (BOE), the Department of General Services (GSD), and the public and private owners of the sites to determine feasibility. Based on these assessments, the majority of the sites are not feasible for homeless interventions, mainly due to infrastructure constraints.
…
Will Rogers State Beach and Dockweiler State Beach are owned by the State of California and managed by the County of Los Angeles. The BOE assessment determined that these sites are cost prohibitive for the following reasons:
- Lack of Infrastructure Capacity: The beach sites were not built for 24/7 residential use, and thus, the sewer infrastructure is not suitable for homeless housing.
- Lack of Utility Capacity: The power capacity would have to be increased at both beaches, and the nearest transformer is located 1,000 feet from the sites.
- Fire Safety: There are no fire hydrants near these two beaches, and new hydrants would need to be installed as a requirement for residential use.
Bonin has defended his proposals as an effort to remove homeless encampments from local parks. He has clashed with Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who has called on other elected officials to declare a “state of emergency” on homelessness, and who vowed earlier this summer to clear the homeless encampments from Venice Beach.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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