Tag: Mayor Garbageciti

Letter From a Neighbor to Councilwoman Nury Martinez

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My neighbor, who has lived in Van Nuys since 1979, is aghast at its condition and appalled at the utter lack of leadership in correcting its continuing decline.

She wrote a letter, intended for Nury Martinez our Councilwoman and now the President of the City Council.

I agree with everything in it. Our community is dying with rampant lawlessness and political leaders who mouth platitudes but have no guts to fight for the forgotten taxpayers and residents of Van Nuys.

Here it is:

“As a long time resident of Van Nuys, 42 years, I have watched its steady decline with dismay.

Among my many concerns is the appalling lack of investment in upgrading and maintaining the city center. All the city buildings are here: the courthouse, the police station, the library, train/bus stops etc. This should be a center of pride for the city, but instead it is a fenced off desert with no landscaping, few trees, garbage and litter everywhere.

Old Post Office

I understand that the homeless problem has impacted all, but other than DTLA or Venice, we are the worst.

3/5/18 Bessemer at Cedros.
Van Nuys, CA 90401 Built: 1929 Owners: Shraga Agam, Shulamit Agam

At one point, a few years ago, Van Nuys Blvd. received a grant titled something like “Beautiful Streets.” There were plans afoot to utilize that money to help VNB from Oxnard to Victory but nothing ever was accomplished. What happened to that money?

In the past I have been to several Van Nuys City Council meetings and found them to be a joke. Most of the Council members seemed preoccupied with eating pizza, nothing was accomplished and many did not even live in Van Nuys.

Once upon a time Van Nuys was a charming little town with thriving shops, and restaurants and a pretty City Center. Now it is a filthy, sad and neglected relic. Come take a drive Along Van Nuys Blvd from Oxnard to Roscoe and tell me if you would feel any pride in living here?

Van Nuys, 1938


At least clean up the median on Sepulveda Blvd between Haynes and Le May. Clean it, plant trees and maintain it. Clean up the constant trash along the streets.

This list could go on and on but it would show that you care if you would just do this much, it is the least you could do and it’s a start.

And is it not illegal to litter? What about a litter free campaign and enforcement of the law? LA used to be one of the cleanest cities in the country now it is the filthiest.

My heart is breaking. Please help us!

And if you cannot, let us know whom to vote for who can.”

Work From Home, Help the Homeless

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Sofa by Kardiel

They live in trash camps beside the freeways, under bridges, or along the train tracks. You know they are around when fire trucks speed down the street to put out their fires. Perhaps you’ve seen their gardening, the charred acres of blackened trees in Woodley Park?

But you are happy because you work from home, perhaps in your condo in Studio City, or in a rented house in the Hollywood Hills, earning $85,000 a year to assist a non-profit in expediting relief programs for unhoused individuals.

Flush with money from Mayor Garbageciti, (now in his seventh year of misadministration) blessed by the kind intentions of Washington, applauded by those who imagine that a city and state that allows vagrancy of 100,000 people, is somehow going to end the blight and destruction of the Golden City; this is the shining hour when, at last, the absolute desecration of urban life by filth, trash, feces, squalor, crime and disorder ends. 

For the erection of storage sheds behind high fences on freeway offramps will persuade those who have fallen into drug and alcohol abuse to move their dozens of trash filled carts and begin reform!  

To perpetuate the madness of a declining civilization, there are now many executive positions in a new industry that will keep you; college educated, highly skilled, they/them/he/she; comfortably employed with benefits for years to come.

The homeless crisis is now a permanent industry, as real as the movie studios and oil wells once were. It is the new future of California. And it fits in perfectly with performance virtue signaling, to pretend to be doing socially beneficial acts while skimming public money into private pockets. 

Common sense would have once required all homeless persons to register with the police. Then they would have been monitored. The sick ones would be sent to mental hospitals or treatment centers. The bad ones would be sent to jail. The single ones would be sent back to Kansas. The ones who refused help would be arrested.  

And nobody would sleep on the sidewalk. 

But to maintain law and order, a special type of government worker, with a blue uniform, badge and gun is required. And they, my friend, are not welcome.

For now, the word police itself is toxic, a derogatory word to describe beasts. Let us, try then, to live in a nation without any law enforcement, to erect a new country where 400 million people are self-policing.

The experiment in lite, invisible policing is well underway in Los Angeles, and we lucky ones who live here in 2021 are now under strict rules as to how we may express ourselves, and what words we may not use. But those who wreck, defile, and implode in their own life are invited to perform in public to bring down the rest of us to live inside their mental and physical hell. 

In this modern era, private words are punishable but public acts that endanger life, health and security are permissible. It’s enough to make housed people want to set their own houses afire. 

But don’t fret about it. There are high paying executive jobs, working from home, snuggled up on your couch, in the air-conditioning, attending Zoom meetings and sending out memos to government entities who are earnestly working to end the very thing that keeps them employed. 

As they say on Instagram, it’s so amazing!

Moonlight Walk in Seoul.

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Let us go for a moonlight walk in Seoul.

Put on your mask, there is still a pandemic going on. Everyone else is wearing one, because it is a responsible and civil gesture, protecting oneself and others.

Let us go walking on spotless streets. 

See the others walk past us. Everyone is trim, they seem to take care of their health. 

Let us go into the temple grounds. 

How beautiful it looks at dusk!

See the glorious architecture, behold the trees in bloom. There are families everywhere. Nobody fears a mass shooter. Nobody is scared of homeless or mentally disturbed people. All is orderly and regulated, safe and comforting.

Let us walk through Gyeongbokgung Palace, into the gardens, along the walkways, under the trees.

There is no garbage, no litter, no trash camping, no graffiti. People are content because they live in a city and a nation of self-respect and dignity, law and order. 

Let us live in Los Angeles as one might live in South Korea.

America once saved Korea. 40,000 American soldiers died, 100,000 were wounded to protect freedom and fight communism. The prosperity and happiness of modern South Korea was built upon the sacrifices of many who died so life could be lived in liberty.

Now Seoul, if it is not too much trouble, can you please save the soul of America?

Can you import your values to Los Angeles?

We are in desperate need.

#BlockGarcetti: A City United

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  • Hollywood Freeway Offramp, Western Av., Homeless, 2020
  • Old Post Office
  • Homeless, Bus Bench
  • Homeless Trash
  • Homeless on Aetna St. Feb. 2016
  • Van Nuys Boulevard, 2018, at the height of prosperity, before the pandemic.

The possible, rumored appointment of Mayor Eric Garcetti to a post in the Biden Administration has provoked protests at the mayor’s house in Hancock Park, daily, for the last week.

Black Lives Matter and other leftwing groups are angry at him for everything that ails this city. He hasn’t disbanded the police, he hasn’t legalized illegal trash camping on streets, he seems to sympathize with those powers who wear uniforms and carry guns and enforce laws against lawbreakers. Appalling. 

And those who are not protesting, but living here in this city, under the Garcetti years, are also angry. 

We are disgusted with encampments that burn up the parks, that litter the freeways with tents, shopping carts and garbage, that destroy the environment as if it is their right, befouling beaches, streets, sidewalks, bus benches and the urban region. 

We are aghast that a state, whose economy is the seventh largest in the world, cannot manufacture housing to house the unhoused. We are appalled by the sight of squalor everywhere and the abandonment of the most ill, helpless and lost people who are permitted to turn the entire city into a mental institution.

We are bitterly laughing that a new lamppost contest was initiated by Mayor Garcetti in the midst of an unprecedented housing crisis. Who would devote city resources to the redesign of streetlights when there are people living on mattresses under all styles of outdoor illumination?

We know 2020 has been a year unlike any other. But we also know that all the other years that lead up to 2020, when Los Angeles was allegedly prosperous, humming along happily, these were the years when this city fell apart, way before a virus arrived.

So we cheer the protesters at his house, and hope the new administration does not promote him to a position undeserved. 

Somehow Eric Garcetti has brought the people of this city together, all the people who disagree, for they all agree that he has destroyed the quality of life in Los Angeles and should not be called to Washington for any high title or undeserved honor.

Letter From a Homeless Man

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  • Hollywood Freeway Offramp, Western Av., Homeless, 2020
  • Old Post Office, Van Nuys.

From the LA Times article, “Garcetti’s A Bridge Home Homeless Problem Has Mixed Results.”

A formerly homeless addict refutes all the tolerant and feel-good ideas that are bandied about by Garcetti and other enablers. Here is what WEHO LIBERAL said in a letter to the LAT:

“I’m someone who once was homeless multiple times, but always stayed in shelters no matter what. NEVER, ever camp outside! It’s a dead end and that behavior is only for people with serious behavioral problems, alcoholism, drug addiction and mental illness. If you lose your housing? You do NOT camp outside. Period.

I’ve posted multiple times about homelessness on LAT over the years. The last time I did, Nita Lilyveld (not sure if I spelled her name right) wrote about 2 young homeless people in their early twenties that I reached out to offering support and even to take them to dinner. After 2 or 3 texts between one of them where they kept saying they’d follow up with me, they flaked. No more texts. They didn’t follow up or stay in touch.

I am done with this nonsense. And I say that as a liberal Democrat who supported all of these shelters being built. Enough is enough. My mother was mentally ill her entire life and constantly refused treatment.  Even when I was struggling with my own addiction, I ALWAYS made sure I had shelter.

I live in Hollywood.  You see these people every day.  I see them sitting or lying around their campsites when I leave for work. I come home from work and they’re still there, doing nothing but eating, urinating, defecating, some listening to the radio or watching TV on their phones. But they are always there and they make zero effort to change their lives or better their situation.

They ask me for cigarettes, they ask me for money. Their laziness and refusal to change infuriates me. I was homeless, multiple times. I’m sick and tired of LAT columnists like Steve Lopez and Nita Lilyveld pleading to help people who simply do not want to help themselves–or in the case of Lopez, only interested in finding a charity case that they can champion in press and on TV for his own ego.  No, I do not care to hear about how hard Nathanial Ayers’ life is when he refuses to take his medication that would help save his life and better his living situation. My own mother refused treatment for years so I have zero sympathy for people like him who literally are victims of their own refusal to simply do what could get them housed and improve their lives.

Look, being homeless and living in either a shelter or housing provided by local government was no picnic and no fun. I was miserable. My addiction was my responsibility and I deal with it and take responsibility for it. But Lopez, Lilyveld and others like them have their own faults and shortcomings, too.  It’s morally right to have compassion for others, absolutely.  But people who refuse to help themselves even when others try to help them and move Heaven & Earth to do it are not worthy or deserving of compassion.  They are not money pits; they are emotional black holes who will drain the time, energy and resource of everyone around them because they refuse to do what they need to do.

I’m living paycheck-to-paycheck. Yes, I’ve been lucky and yes, I have white male privilege. But as an incest survivor and an HIV+ positive drug addict in recovery, I no longer buy what Lopez, Lilyveld, LAHSA and others like them keep preaching. It is infuriating and it’s becoming obscene. I tried to help 2 homeless young people less than half my age last year after reading about them here.  For God sakes, I offered to feed them more than once. They kept making excuses and then just stopped reaching out to me.

I am done with supporting this policy and their behavior. We all need help sometimes. God knows I spent years exhausting people and it took me a long time to get my act together. But sooner or later, you have to reach deep down inside yourself, confront your problems and change your behavior as much as possible to save your own life.

I am not perfect and all of my problems are not solved. But as someone who sees homeless people every day who sit around all day doing nothing, my compassion for all but a select few is pretty much drained and gone.”

Woodley Park, R.I.P.

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A man rides his mini bike down a bike path at Lake Balboa in the Sepulveda Basin as a wall of flames approaches Saturday, July 18, 2020. The fire put up a huge cloud of smoke and burned for well over an hour near a model airplane park and along Woodley Avenue. The blaze charred about 4 acres of brush before over 60 firefighters managed to contain it. No structures were damaged and no injuries were reported. (Photo by Mike Meadows, contributing photographer)

One of the ameliorating joys of moving to Van Nuys in 2000 was escaping, on bike, to Woodley Park, that formerly glorious area of bird sanctuaries, bike paths, grasslands, ponds, and the Japanese Garden.

Through the years I was so happy to ride through it, to feel the wind and the sun and openness of the park, a place to photograph, and wander and exercise in.

Since the reign of Mayor Eric Garcetti (Garbageciti) began in 2013, the park has become a homeless encampment, with hundreds trashing it with shopping carts, drugs, needles, garbage and worst of all, starting fires. 

It seems that every other month there is a massive blaze in Woodley Park, illegal cookouts or arson or just exploding propane tanks, and now the park is an ashen graveyard of nature, just black fields where tall grasses once thrived.

Why is it “humane” to allow vagrancy, disorder, disrespect and abuse of our parks, our streets and our environment?  We thought we had seen the worse of this city and nation in 2020, but if you want to feel even more gloom, take a saunter over to Woodley Park and witness for yourself the broken fences, the depleted environment, and the still evident trash camps of tents, shopping carts, stolen bikes and litter along Burbank Boulevard.

And ask yourself what competent and worthy leader would permit his city to become so degraded that even a simple park is too embarrassing to look at?