Catch everything. Hollywood’s Lexington Park won’t be getting a new playground after all, and that’s both good news and bad news.
To explain, let me take you back to April 15, when I tagged along with Sabine Phillips on a weekly three-hour inspection of the neighborhood’s chronic trash problem. Phillips, a housekeeper by trade, was hired a few years ago by one of his clients to help clean his streets.
So every Wednesday, Phillips would set out in her yellow Huffy cruiser and routinely log 50 or more illegally dumped items and report them to the city’s 311 system for pickup. And every Saturday, she would fill four or five large bags with small pieces and debris.
Near the end of my three hours with Phillips, who was helped that day by volunteer Keith Johnson, we visited Lexington Pocket Park. There were no children there and there never will be, Phillips said. This is due to glass and needles in the sand, drug activity, sporadic violence, gang tags on slides, and homeless camps.
A person from the Recreation and Parks Department came and said the park was in line for a possible upgrade that could cost up to $300,000. In my April 18 column, I questioned the wisdom of investing in a playground that will remain unsafe unless there is a plan to address all of the above issues.
Nick Barnes-Batista, communications director for LA City Council member Hugo Soto-Martinez, wrote to tell me that his office was unaware of any playground project planned for that park.
A spokesperson for Recreation and Parks told me that despite what the employee I met at the park told me, there is no “immediate playground replacement project” on the books. But the department is “working closely” with the councilman’s office “to identify funding sources and work with the community on comprehensive park improvements and/or utilization.”
OK, so it’s good news that taxpayer money won’t be invested in a park that could almost instantly lose its footing to the neighborhood due to all the problems mentioned above.
But it is bad news and sad commentary that a park in a densely populated city will remain unusable in the near future.
However, the more important consideration is what is being done to stop the illegal dumping of furniture, mattresses and other items that sit by the roadside and often end up as the building blocks of new homeless camps.
The neighborhood is crowded with social service agencies, said Stephanie Keenan, a longtime neighborhood volunteer and activist. She is the one who hired her maid to look after the neighborhood, and she insists that, given the crime and frequent fires, there is not enough enforcement of existing laws to address problems that are both a nuisance and a threat to public safety.
A woman pushes her walker across debris in Council District 13 in Los Angeles on Friday.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Soto-Martinez agreed to talk to me about all this on Friday morning, when he came to Bracey FoundationA non-profit organization that provides enrichment activities as well as homelessness prevention programs for youth and families in a largely low-income immigrant community. Staff and volunteers, recruited in collaboration with the council office, were to take to nearby streets with shovels, brooms and garbage bags.
Soto-Martinez acknowledged her district’s many challenges, told the gathering that the strength of a community is its people, and thanked them for their service.
The councilman, a former labor leader who joined the growing progressive wing of the LA City Council in 2022 with the support of the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, faces three challengers (Coulter Carlisle, Dylan Kendall and Rich Sarian) in the June 2 primary. He told me the city needs to do a better job of educating people about illegal dumping and reporting it. A related challenge, he said, “is how quickly we can get to it. And that’s a budget issue because we’ve cut a lot of positions on trash pickup.”
Soto-Martinez said her office used discretionary funds to hire two employees from the L.A. Conservation Corps to pick up trash. On homelessness, he said, they have a team developing strategies to meet needs, and a medical team that works on the streets, and a small home village is in the works.
But housing shortages are a bigger challenge, he said, and when it comes to homelessness, “now we’re starting to deal with more difficult cases.” That is, serious mental illness and serious addiction, both of which generally fall under county jurisdiction.
“We’ve created another team that goes out every day. We door knock, email and phone-bank people who are at risk of eviction,” Soto-Martinez said.
So what’s his message to constituents who say they’re not seeing enough progress?
“We ask them to give us patience and grace,” he said. “There are a lot of examples like this, where we’re not dealing with just one thing. We’re dealing with four or five things.”
All this is true, but the patience he expects is wearing thin among some constituents.
“We need to find common ground and work together,” Soto-Martinez said. “You know, they see litter as an issue, and they’re doing it their way and we’re doing it our way. But how do we team up and do it together? You know, we’re happy to build those networks, and under many of the issues they described, I don’t disagree. … We all have the same goal.”
LA City Council member Hugo Soto-Martinez gives a pep talk to volunteers before heading out to clean up trash on the streets of his neighborhood.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
When Soto-Martinez left for another appointment, volunteers took to the streets filling garbage bags. They made their way up to Vermont, and a Bracey employee told me he works the same roads every day, trying to clear the way for “safe passage” as students walk to and from school.
As I said in a previous column, it’s an inspiration to see people stepping up for their communities, whether out of pride or desperation. And it’s reasonable to expect more from City Hall.
I drove to Western and Sierra Vista, met with Keenan and told him about my conversation with Soto-Martinez. He said the city’s lax policies and consistent non-response to citizens’ appeals for help have led to unresolved problems that residents grapple with daily. He said city officials need to do a better job of helping get homeless people off the streets and preventing neighborhoods from worsening.
He was encouraged by a message from a representative from Mayor Karen Bass’ office who wanted to tour the neighborhood with him.
We drove west on Sierra Vista and came across a discarded couch, some cabinets, mattresses, and a man who had been camping out on the side of the road for months. He sat down near his luggage, which was spread out on the road.
Why was this not paid attention to? Keenan wondered aloud. She has decided to stop paying her maid to help meet the needs of the neighborhood, and she predicts that things will get worse because of this.
I headed to Lexington Pocket Park, which Soto-Martinez called a priority among many other priorities. Friday was a holiday – Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. With the school closed, the park would have become a small neighborhood property.
But the entrance was closed, the gate was locked, and two wired residences were set up in front of the iron fence of the empty park.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
