Ben Oreskes is a metro reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He covers housing and homelessness,

which is the crisis eclipsing every other problem facing the city right now, except for maybe the

pandemic. Maybe. Homelessness, if you talk to some of my colleagues who've worked at the LA Times 10, 20, 30 years,

they say homelessness is now in every neighborhood. It's not just by the beach in Venice,

downtown by Skid Row. It's sort of something that has spread into every neighborhood.

People are sleeping beneath overpasses in alleys, but also on sidewalks and in parks.

A couple years ago, the housing crisis came to roost in a park called Echo Park Lake, a gem in the neighborhood known as Echo Park.

It's sort of the center of, like, public life in that neighborhood.

It's where people, you know, go and hang out with their friends and

ride swan boats. It's also the site of one of the most unique encampments of unhoused people

in L.A. Ben estimated 80 to 100 people were living there on the flat side of the park, creating a stark split-screen

effect of halves and have-nots.

And so on a Saturday, you'd see people sitting with their friends on benches or on the grass,

drinking beers or hanging out, people selling tacos or alote.

And then on the west side of the park, which was called to me

when I was doing the reporting, the homeless side, you had rows and rows of tents.

Last week, Ben got a scoop. The city would be closing the park to everyone and forcing out

anybody living inside. Only city officials wouldn't say when it was happening.

My sources told me that their fear was that protests would come

and that the more time that they knew about it,

the better they would be organized.

Protesters did get organized.

...