Today, the Cahuenga tunnel was cleared of rubbish. Neighbors barraged Madelynn Taras, CD4 Hollywood Field Deputy, with emails seeking help. WHCA president; Lynn Grijalva, VP; Carl Ripaldi, and HHWNC Area 3 Chair; Brian Dyer had a conference call with Ms. Taras.

Brian Dyer gave me the following information to pass along.

CD4 has a dedicated sanitation truck that can clean up 3 or 4 encampment hot-spots a day. Each crew is accompanied by a LAHSA outreach team  https://lafh.org/ourmission and a special LAPD backup team.

Be realistic about expectation. Sadly, more trash will likely be generated on Cahuenga. Sanitation clean-ups average 80 sites monthly. If you do the math, sanitation/LAHSA/LAPD team can cycle through every 10 days.

Please contact Madelynn Taras with questions and concerns: madelynn.taras@lacity.org

A few other notes:

1) The Supreme Court declined to review the 9th Circuit decision.

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2019/12/16/scotus-homeless-sleep-street-la-supreme-court/ That means people experiencing homelessness can continue to sleep outside and not be criminalized.

2) The police are constrained by the law to make arrests.

3) There’s been a gradual decrease of inmates in our overloaded state prisons. SCOTUS voted in May 2011 to require CA to reduce its prison population. In 2016 voters passed prop 57 furthering inmate releases.

Photos by Greg Orson.