Tent City Report


By C.V. Beck

At Tent City, intersection of California/ Frederick, Venice, (east of the Ross store), some of the embattled seniors and disabled residents of our now world-famous Lincoln Place Garden Apartments gather twice weekly (on Wednesdays and Saturdays 10-5pm), as we continue to fight for our rights of due process of law.


We gather at what we call “Squirrel Square” (a free speech area), sit in lawn chairs and actually converse with each other about the latest manoeuvres in our long, long struggle for our rights. We sometimes tell jokes and funny stories and have a pretty good laugh, acting just like regular, plain folks in a small town atmosphere and observing the life of the community around us.

Recently, our group has been joined sometimes by a “Happy Camper,” a senior lady with a charming small dog on a leash. On her last visit, she told us someone had left a computer-written note on her motor home which reads as follows: “I think it’s about time you moved your trailer into someone else’s neighborhood, a month is long enough to be living outside our house. Please do this as soon as possible before we have to call the police and have them move you Thanks”. This person was very upset by this and said to those present that she couldn’t understand why someone (who seems to live in the houses across the street), would leave such a hostile note. This senior woman said she minds her own business, keeps clean and quiet and doesn’t make a mess and is a responsible person. What is the problem? We were upset, too, at the gratuitous cruelty of people who are more affluent and secure, who seem to be wallowing in their very good fortune, at the pointed expense of others – who are less so.

At another time, a young woman came by and said the most horrible things to us, while smiling sweetly in our faces. Things like...my parents used to live at Lincoln Place for many years...now they own their own home nearby...this is a nice, middle-class neighborhood...now there are mattresses in the alleys!...what happened today?, there was supposed to be a telephone meeting between Mayor Villaraigosa and AIMCO.

She was remarkably up-to-date on our minutia and I wondered why this was so. One of our group asked her very politely if she really felt she should be talking to us like this?, and this young woman, feeling no doubt virtuous and on top of the world (just graduated from UCLA and still living with her parents), blithely and shallowly missed the point completely. She then smugly, smarmily, went on her way home, having dropped her parent’s property-owners “bomb” of invidious comparison upon us. How crass!

What’s happening now? This is where we are in the legal process: we have been extended in our residencies at Lincoln Place through August 31 and have now filed a CEQA lawsuit on the City, City Council, LA Planning Department and LA Housing Department, and AIMCO, the beginning of which will be heard in court on August 16, 2006 in Santa Monica.

Another lawsuit, Marlin v. AIMCO is now in Appellate Court in Santa Monica. The opening brief has just been filed on this along with a Motion for Calendar Preference due to exigent circumstances (of age, health and possible eviction) has also been filed.

More later, as the world turns...or rather, spins crazily in Venice, Ca.

Posted: Sat - July 1, 2006 at 10:20 AM          


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