191 People Take Offer To Leave Venice Boardwalk And Move Indoors

VENICE, CA — So far, at least 191 people have moved from living on the Venice Beach boardwalk to indoor housing, Councilman Mike Bonin and Mayor Eric Garcetti said.

The Encampment to Home initiative is an effort to provide housing for the unhoused living along Ocean Front Walk. It started June 28 with outreach teams from St. Joseph Center. At the time, it was estimated about 200 people were living at the iconic beach, a growing population that was pushed to the streets in the wake of the pandemic.

"A metric that people are judging this by is how the boardwalk looks, and that's a reasonable one, but the metric that really matters is how many people have been brought indoors and how many lives are being transformed for the better," Bonin said.

"It has demonstrated that when offered real housing, people jump to say yes, people want to be housed."

The outreach teams divided the area into five zones and worked from zone to zone offering people in those areas housing — the deadline to accept the offer was Friday.

Garcetti said Friday that if outreach teams need a few more days to offer housing to those who haven't accepted yet, the program can be extended.

Bonin said Monday that most of the people who have accepted housing options are temporarily living in motels, some have moved into a Venice shelter and three were reunited with family. Bonin added that 119 people have been matched with permanent housing vouchers, and St. Joseph Center is searching for available units and landlords that will accept the vouchers.

In an email to constituents Monday, he quoted a man named Moses who had been unhoused for 11 years and has accepted housing from St. Joseph's Center outreach teams:

"I have to get used to actually having a door and being able to close that door," Moses told outreach teams who checked in on him, according to Bonin. "I'll never take that door for granted. When you're outside, you're outside ... I'm so grateful to this program."

Moses is living in a former motel in Venice that was converted into a Project Homekey site and is run by People Assisting The Homeless (PATH).

Along with PATH, the Encampment to Home program's partners include Safe Place for Youth, Venice Family Clinic, Self Help and Recovery Exchange, and CLARE Matrix.

Participating government agencies include the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the Public Health, Mental Health and Recreation & Parks departments, and the Bureau of Sanitation.

People in Venice have grown frustrated by the number of encampments and safety concerns around increased fires, assaults and shootings.

The Los Angeles City Council this week finalized approval for an ordinance that restricts encampments in certain areas of the city, including schools, parks and libraries. Bonin and Councilmember Nithya Raman voted against the ordinance, and 13 other council members voted to approve it.

Bonin said via Twitter that the city only has enough beds to house only 39% of the unhoused population.

"I again voted against an ordinance that will make it harder to be homeless in LA by greatly limiting the areas where people who are unhoused can sit, lie, or sleep," Bonin said.

- City News Service and Patch Editor Nicole Charky contributed to this report.

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