Last week I wrote about the conflict between homeless people and business owners in Sherman Oaks, California. Sherman Oaks is a suburban community just a few miles north of Beverly Hills in the San Fernando Valley. A pub owner named Paul Scrivano has had so many difficult interactions with the homeless near his business that he started recording them on his phone. One of those videos involved an adult man living on the sidewalk who defecated into a plastic bag and then threw the bag at Scrivano’s car.
Scrivano, who compared the situation outside his business to a “psych ward” sent that video and others to his city council representative Nithya Raman, begging for some help with the problem. Instead, Raman’s office asked him not to send such disgusting videos to her office because it was upsetting to her staff.
Fortunately, Fox 11 got involved and produced an excellent 7-minute-long report. That report went viral and seems to have changed some things. Two days after it aired, the LAPD showed up and arrested the man who threw feces at Scrivano.
“Thankfully, you guys came along and picked up the story and then it got national attention, and all at once, cops are calling me saying we want to go arrest him,” said Scrivano, owner of Blue Dog Beer Tavern.
The homeless man was identified as Kamran Niroo. He faces a charge of throwing an object at a moving vehicle.
While Scrivano sees this arrest as a step in the direction, he admits having mixed feelings.
“I feel horribly for this guy, but the officers told me, not only were they going to book him and charge him, but they were going to seek the housing and health that he needs,” Scrivano said.
The arrest represents a small amount of progress but if you watch the report from last week, Kamran Niroo was just one of several homeless people in the area who were clearly suffering from mental problems.
Friday, Fox 11 spoke to another business owner in the area who described similar problems dealing with the homeless. Christy Vega, the owner of restaurant Casa Vega, told reporter Gina Silva that at least a dozen cars in their valet parking lot have been broken into. She had to build a block wall with a steel gate because homeless people kept breaking into her building.
“The homeless were breaking into our electrical room and shooting up with needles and trashing it,” Vega said. She was worried that one day she would open the door and find a dead body inside. This clip also tells the story of an employee who was taking the bus to work and was stabbed by a homeless person flashing a knife at everyone on the bus.
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So the arrest of one deranged individual is a start but it’s barely going to put a dent in the overall problem. Reporter Gina Silva has another interview with another local business owner coming up later today.
I’ll wrap this up with one more video. Fox 11 had Paul Scrivano on for an interview last week. Scrivano believes his Democratic Socialist representative, Nithya Raman, is part of the problem. “I think she likes it this way,” he said after pointing out that all of the city owned property near his business is in a state of disrepair.
As for the homeless, Scrivano drew a line between those who were temporarily in trouble and just needed to get back on their feet and the mentally deranged who can’t possibly help themselves and who wind up victimizing others in their attempts to live on the sidewalks. “Ultimately this has to be an issue of compulsory housing. The problem is the city will not pass judgment on bad behavior,” he said.
It does seem unlikely to me that this situation is ever going to improve so long as people who are borderline mentally competent are allowed to refuse the help they obviously need.
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Update: A homeless advocacy group called KTown For All has given Nithya Raman an A rating for her homeless approach.
KTown’s description of their goals:
Through planning our own actions and supporting those of allied groups, our goal is to amplify the voice of the unhoused in the political process in Los Angeles. Our political organizing focuses on advocating for more housing and services for homeless Angelenos, equitable housing policies in LA and across the state, and eliminating policies that criminalize homelessness.
In other words, they oppose arresting the homeless no matter what they do, creating the situation that currently exists in Sherman Oaks where business owners are left to deal with constant low-level crime at their own expense because (until a local news report goes viral) the police won’t touch it.
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