The project would do nothing to address L.A.’s homelessness crisis, but it would destroy an entire neighborhood

Who wouldn’t want this across the street from their home? Artist rendering of the proposed Venice Dell project by Eric Owen Moss Architects

It seems there’s no profit-driven homeless housing development the editors of the Los Angeles Times won’t embrace. Yesterday, the board published an editorial in support of a proposed “permanent supportive housing” development on the Venice Dell, one block from the beach. The 117-unit structure, which would be absurdly oversized compared to the surrounding neighborhood, would include 68 apartments for homeless people and 49 for low income residents. In a city with an estimated 45,252 homeless people, 68 isn’t even a rounding error. The project is a prime example of why L.A. continues to fail to solve the crisis: Rather than a coordinated, coherent effort to help those who can be helped and house those who need to be housed, it’s a few new apartments here, a few there. In many, if not most cases the housing proves neither permanent nor supportive.

The Dell would likely cost as much as $100 million. A hundred million taxpayer dollars — to house a few dozen people. That’s madness. L.A. is putting staggeringly expensive Band-aids on a hemorrhaging wound. And the Band-aids keep falling off.

There are so many problems with the proposal, it’s hard to know where to start. The architects renderings reveal a monstrosity that from some angles resembles a landlocked container ship. The project would replace a grade level parking lot with a three story garage, blighting Venice’s low skyline. It would radically and permanently change the character of the north Venice Canals neighborhood. Residents who live on that part of North and South Venice Boulevard would lose much of their light, space, and air. The project would straddle and abut a small, fragile wetlands ecosystem, and effectively cut off public access to it. It would be yet another example of the city cramming homeless housing into a thriving neighborhood.

And in the “you can’t make this stuff up” category, it would require the displacement of residents in an existing six unit low income apartment building, which would be demolished.

Along with the nonprofits who have collected billions in taxpayer dollars over the last decade, the City has proven itself inept when it comes to managing most homeless projects. Many become magnets for criminal and antisocial behavior. Violence, gang activity, drug dealing and use, prostitution, and vagrancy are common. In effect, “permanent supportive” developments have done little more than to put lids over the same problems that plague illegal encampments. Out of sight, out of mind. Except for the residents who live nearby, who suffer the consequences.

Locals have every reason to be worried. Experience has unfortunately shown that homeless housing projects often become magnets for more homeless people outside. Venice Beach has suffered a particularly violent string of homeless related crimes, from arson to rape and murder. The Venice Dell proposal itself, which locals have dubbed the “Monster in the Median,” would be just blocks from where a criminal vagrant violently beat and raped two women last April. One of the women subsequently died of her injuries. In 2021 another vagrant set a house on fire, resulting in the horrific death of a woman’s beloved dog. Violent outbursts, fights, fires, robbery, and vandalism continue to be daily realities.

None of these realities bother the editorial board. They’re too busy wagging their fingers to be concerned about the project’s impacts on the neighborhood, too self-satisfied to care about the eye-watering cost. For any City official to oppose the project would be “a disgrace,” they say. Hilariously, they portray the developers, Venice Community Housing and Hollywood Community Housing Corp., as innocent victims of unscrupulous neighbors. Never mind that both companies have benefited from the homeless gold rush at taxpayer expense, more than tripling their real estate holdings in just the last four years.

Mountains of ever mounting evidence show that “permanent supportive housing” and “housing first” ebeen abject and colossally expensive failures. While the homeless industrial complex churns out self-serving propaganda claiming that 90% of homeless people are “our unhoused neighbors,” in reality a substantial portion of L.A.’s homeless population are from out of state. For obvious reasons, this is especially true in coastal communities like Venice and Santa Monica. Two years ago I interviewed a dozen vagrants who had taken over Westminster Park in Venice. None were from L.A. and only two were from California. The situation is similar at Santa Monica’s Christine Reed Emerson Park, where a rotating cast of vagrants routinely drink, do drugs, and engage in violent outbursts and fights mere feet from a children’s playground. They should be given bus tickets back to where they came from, not luxury beachfront housing. 

None of these undeniable realities matter to the finger waggers at what’s left of the L.A. Times. Angelenos should ask ourselves, if the people who run the paper are so delusional, or worse, disingenuous, when it comes to one of the most important issues facing the City and County, why should they be trusted at all? Heck, they even lie about their own readership numbers. In July 2023 the paper announced a record 550,000 digital subscriptions. Three months later they quietly revised the number to 303,000. They were only off by 55%.

A local newspaper’s editorial board is supposed to advocate for the best interests of the communities they serve. The editors bemoan that city officials’ opposition to the Monster in the Median is “shameful.” The real shame is what’s become of a once storied newspaper.