Fed-up Venice residents and business owners are hiring former gang members to do what decades of progressive governance and billions in homeless spending could not: keep encampments off their streets.
Hundreds of locals hired Ghost Town Consultants, an unarmed private patrol founded by Venice natives Bobby Luna and Ricky Myers. The company employs former gang members and recovering addicts. Customers pay at least $300 a month for patrols, property checks and help clearing encampments.
“We were in a war zone,” Venice apartment owner Rick Swinger said of Rose Avenue before Ghost Town started patrolling.
As many as 200 homeless people reportedly lived in a sprawling tent encampment around Rose Avenue, dubbed “Skid Rose” by residents. Swinger said he was hurt, his wife was threatened, and nobody answered their calls for help.
“We saw everything. I got hurt, my wife got threatened. We called for help — no one showed up. It just kept getting worse.”
Swinger started showing up to the city's weekly cleanups in a full HazMat suit and helmet. That was his review of the city's response.
Ghost Town has about a dozen workers. Myers was homeless at 15 and has said he once ran with gangs in Venice's Oakwood neighborhood. Luna spent years struggling with alcohol before he got sober.
Myers and Luna know the neighborhood and many of the people living on its streets. Ghost Town's workers are unarmed, and the founders say they talk people into leaving rather than physically forcing them out.
“They come by, and they talk to them, and they get them to move,” Swinger said, adding that the process is “very peaceful.”
Both men decided to act after separate incidents involving children at Venice parks.
While Myers was coaching at Penmar Recreation Center, parents found needles and people using drugs near play areas. Parents cleaned the area themselves before practices, but conditions eventually forced a cancellation.
“I was pissed,” Myers said.
Luna's breaking point came when a drug user tried to steal his son's bicycle at the park. He and Myers began intervening in neighborhood problems themselves, and Ghost Town grew from there.
Their business has grown while the Los Angeles Police Department has shrunk. Chief Jim McDonnell said in July that the LAPD had roughly 8,550 officers, 200 fewer than in February. He has said Los Angeles needs about 12,500 officers.
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva blamed policies that discourage law enforcement and tolerate street disorder.
“There’s no consequences for illegal behavior. The political establishment in LA County has created an ecosystem that is openly hostile towards law enforcement. When you create that environment, you’re not going to recruit and retain cops. … There are not enough cops around to actually make a difference.”
Former Los Angeles City Councilman and longtime LAPD officer Dennis Zine agreed, saying officers face more work with fewer resources.
"Our officers are so maxed out with responsibilities and duties and lack of personnel," Zine said.
Residents didn't wait for the city to figure it out. Ghost Town has its critics. Homeless advocates question whether the group is properly licensed and accuse it of simply moving people from one block to another. Luna denied that his employees threaten or mistreat anyone. "Never has that happened. We don't operate like that. We don't talk to people disrespectfully. We do not put our hands on anybody." Peggy Kennedy, a longtime advocate, called it "thug security," a characterization that carries some weight coming from a movement that has spent decades and billions of dollars producing the conditions residents are now paying out of pocket to fix.
Local reports said Ghost Town workers also provide food, water, and help connecting people with treatment. Luna said the company maintains an open-door policy for anyone who wants to get off the street. The founders said they helped a mother living in an RV with three children, including a 6-month-old, find housing in the San Fernando Valley.
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Los Angeles Councilwoman Traci Park's office made clear that Ghost Town does not work with the city and that the council has no involvement in what the company does. In other words: Residents are on their own. Park's office did allow that some Venice residents and businesses appreciate having the patrol there, which is one way to describe people spending $300 a month because their elected representatives cannot keep a sidewalk clear.
Calls to the city got residents nowhere. Tents, fires, needles and drug use remained. Luna, Myers and their crew went door to door and persuaded people to move.
Now Venice residents are paying them to do it.
When homeowners are writing $300-a-month checks to former gang members because City Hall cannot keep order on the sidewalk, Los Angeles has a much bigger problem than one encampment, and no amount of task forces, commissions, or billion-dollar homeless budgets is going to fix it.
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