Venice's Penmar Park Pulled From Consideration For Homeless Parking Program After Double Murder There

By Dennis Romero Thu., Jul. 21 2011 at 7:00 AM

Dennis Romero

An RV in Venice.

Few issues in the liberal seaside community of Venice are more contentious than what to do with otherwise homeless RV dwellers who have flocked the artists' enclave in recent years.

City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represents the area, has come up with a compromise program, now called Roadmap to Housing (the name has changed a few times) that will allow RVs to park overnight in area lots where dwellers will also see services that could help them get of the streets.

But following last month's double homicide at Venice's Penmar Park ...

... Rosendahl has taken that location off the list for potential overnight parking.

In a letter last week to Linda Lucks, president of the Venice Neighborhood Council, Rosendahl writes:

The councilman, however, attached a list of 16 other locations in Venice that are still under consideration for overnight RV parking duty.

Mark Ryavec of the Venice Stakeholders Association reiterated his unhappiness with the plan to keep the RVs in Venice. In an email to Rosendahl Wednesday, he wrote:

You can accommodate them all on the Westchester and West LA lots with no difficulty and there you will have adequate setbacks from residents.

A bit of NIMBYism? Maybe. But Ryavec says the RVs have been disappearing from Venice this summer, with only 18 remaining, by his count.

Wonder where they all went.

[Added]: See Venice leader David Ewing's answer to that question in the comments section, below.

[@dennisjromero/djromero@laweekly.com]

Tags:

Bill Rosendahl, homeless, Mark Ryavec, parking lots, RVs, Venice

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David Ewing

While we have all learned to take Mr. Ryavec's facts with a large grain of salt, he is certainly right that the number of RVs in Venice has greatly declined. Having benefited from Rosendahl's success in bringing a 21 officer LAPD homeless task force to address the concentration of vehice dwellers in Venice, Ryavec, true to form, now bites the hand that fed him, threatening to sue the Councilman for trying to give a helping hand to people in just eight vehicles within Venice. That's more than "a bit of NIMBYism." It's an absence of public spirit.

Venice Born and Bred

Maybe you can volunteer to clean up the feces on the street when the next RV unloads like you did last summer? What did you say then... "a shovel won't be enough?" Too bad. You almost covered it up. Oh well...

David Ewing

Thanks for the incoherent response. I guess you're talking about the dumping incident on Pacific Ave last summer. Mark's press conference notwithstanding, it was Venice Action's phone call that actually got the Street Services crew down to Pacific Ave. to clean it up. Six days after Boston Dawna originally reported the dumping, it was still there in the gutter. Within an hour and a half of our phone calls, the City had a crew at the location. We didn't hold a press conference. I guess that was our mistake.

Venice Born and Bred

Hysterical! Keep taking credit!! Rosedahl's office got emails from many people including myself for a week reporting it. Something finally happened when the media started covering it.Venice Action's action consisted of sending you out with a shovel to cover it up. Nice try at rewriting history.

Venice Born and Bred

I can tell you where they didn't go...Bill Rosendahl's neighborhood. This is just an attempt by certain members of the VNC to keep some of their RV-living, street-crapping friends around in Venice. Why Bill can't see this is beyond me. Especially when the head of the program hired to do this(PATH) insists that a lot in Venice is not needed.Get ready for lawsuits when you try to turn Venice into an RV park, Bill! Seriously, yoiur head is gonna spin.

David Ewing

Actually, many of them did go to Bill's neighborhood. The number of RVs in Mar Vista has risen dramatically as the number in Venice has dropped. You don't solve this problem by simply pushing it from neighborhood to neighborhood.

VB&B repeats the misstatement popularized among the program's opponents, that PATH CEO Joel Roberts says parking lots aren't needed. Roberts has explicitly debunked that rumor.

Some people in Westchester and WLA have raised objections to using lots there, too, but their Neighborhood Councils have agreed to use the lots as long as Venice does its share by having a lot as well.

After all, the highest concentration of these vehicles was in Venice until Rosendahl brought in the LAPD homeless task force to run them into other neighborhoods. Their success in doing so has not made those people less homeless, it has just burdened other neighborhoods, including Rosendahl's.