VENICE, Calif. -- Forget everything you think you know about Venice politics and meet Travis Binen, a self-described libertarian who is fed up with Los Angeles' “everyone in” approach to solving the homeless crisis by building shelters across the city.
For the past few years, he’s become increasingly vocal against the city’s plan to build a 156-bed temporary shelter at a former bus yard at 100 Sunset Avenue.
“To me, I don’t understand why everybody has to be in in Los Angeles. The vast majority of them aren’t working and the vast majority of them aren’t trying to get jobs,” Binen said.
The software salesman said he worked hard to afford two million-dollar condos near the beach, but there have been four break-ins at his building in the last month. He believes the temporary bridge housing facility going up across the street from his home will make local crime worse.
“I don’t think it works in Venice and I don’t think it works in Koreatown or Hollywood, I think it will end up turning those places into Skid Row,” Binen said.
But city leaders say the shelters are necessary to clean up the streets. After a bridge housing shelter opened in Hollywood, for example, the city began enforcing anti-camping ordinances and pushed out encampments, telling tenants they could either move into the shelter or move out of the area.
On the other side, Venice resident Will Hawkins is done with city politics and won’t run again. He supports the current plant to build the shelter in Venice.
“We need projects like this to succeed in order to get people off the street,” said Hawkins, who runs the non-profit Chamber of Hope, that reconnects Venice’s street population with their families.
In Hawkins’ estimate, at least 15 out of 30 neighborhood council candidates are adamantly against the shelter but he said there is little they can do at this point to stop it.