"Finding a Home" Night at the Mar Vista Community Council

If Tuesday night’s meeting of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) had a theme, it was “finding a home.”  Partially because of Rob and Chelsea McFarland’s important beekeeping initiative, which was approved and for which a couple MVCC councilmembers even offered up their yards, partially because of the polystyrene ban proposal, looking to keep our home planet clean and healthy, which was also approved, but mostly because of the contentious discussion about Los Angeles City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl’s “Roadmap to Housing” homeless initiative, which needs a home of its own.

First, an admission: I didn’t want to write this article.  I wasn’t taking notes during the meeting, I was busily scribbling notes about what I was going to say in support of my own motion, asking the MVCC for a letter of support for SB-568, a statewide ban on polystyrene (most commonly known as Styrofoam).  To take up this space with my press release about my motion passing, after what went on at the MVCC meeting Tuesday night, is to do a disservice to all the people who spoke so eloquently and to all the people living in their cars in the streets around us night after night.  Click here if you want more information about the polystyrene ban.

As many people as I’ve ever seen jam into the Mar Vista Rec Center showed up on Tuesday night.  Passions were high and it wasn’t because of polystyrene.  It was about finding a home for Los Angeles Councilmember Bill Rosendahl’s “Roadmap to Housing” initiative, which involves getting people who are living in their cars the support they need to find soluble jobs and permanent housing.  Councilmember Rosendahl’s Chief-of-Staff, Mike Bonin laid out the plan for the program for the audience.  Three parking areas, including Rosendahl’s office lots in Westchester and West Los Angeles, would provide safe parking for people in the program. 

Getting one of the vouchers for the program is “like gold,” both Rosendahl and Bonin said.  It was stressed that these are not stereotypical crazy homeless people that might concern [certain] MVCC residents.  These are people just like you and me who got a bad break and now need a good one.  That the stereotypical mentally-ill, potentially-dangerous homeless people also need a home and social support was not discussed.

MVCC Councilmember Chuck Ray brought forth the motion, opposing Rosendahl’s plan to use a third parking lot in the vicinity of Mar Vista.  The motion stated, “Whereas some Mar Vista stakeholders have expressed particular concerns about safety, security health and similar issues relating to the CD11 Roadmap to Homes Program, the Mar Vista Community Council opposes the use of the Penmar Golf Course parking lot for the Roadmap to Homes Program.” 

That the Penmar Golf Course lies outside the MVCC district, and therefore outside of the MVCC’s sphere of influence was brought up by many throughout the evening, and none more eloquently than Councilmember Laura Bodensteiner, but I digress.

MVCC Councilmember Marilyn Marble spoke up in favor of opposing using the Penmar Golf Course, saying that she golfs there all the time and doesn’t want the homeless program there.  “It’s not that I’m rich, you can golf there for eight dollars,” she said.

Not in my backyard and certainly not on my golf course.

Marble’s argument withered under what – thankfully – came next.  Impassioned pleas by West Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Chair, Jay Handal, and Venice Neighborhood Council President Linda Lucks, who both of whom said their councils specifically requested the parking lots be placed within their districts... with the open arms and community-mindedness we’ve seen most recently up and down the flooding Missouri and Mississippi Rivers and especially in Joplin, Missouri, which was nearly completely destroyed by a tornado last month. 

The homeless epidemic in Southern California and elsewhere is no less tragic and no less devastating.  MVCC Councilmember Alex Thompson put in into perspective and moved the whole room by seeing himself in the shoes of these people looking for a hand up, not a handout.  He told, much more eloquently than I will recount it, of his own family’s financial struggles when he was growing up.  In hindsight, he said, he really understands that, without help from family and without a little luck, he, his mother and his siblings could easily have been living out on the streets.  One paycheck away.

When LA City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl stood up to speak, after patiently listening hard to each and every speaker, he did what he does over and over, he showed us why he is not only the best man to represent the Westside, but the best man to represent Los Angeles itself in a time of upheaval and economic uncertainty.  He remembered his years in the armed forces, telling about how, when he saw a broken system, he volunteered to fix it.  When he was elected to the LA City Council, he immediately met with West Los Angeles Veteran’s Administration administrators to see what could be done for homeless vets in L.A.  His new “Roadmap to Housing” initiative is only part of a larger vision he has for helping the homeless and he made clear, just like his days in the service, he will not rest until he has done all he can to fix a broken system: “There is no excuse for the richest country in the world to have homeless people.  None.”

The MVCC voted down the measure before them, supporting Rosendahl’s plan, and giving people living in their cars that hand they need so that one day, perhaps they too will have the luxury of buying a golf bag, and clubs, and a putter, and balls, and shoes, and sunblock, and maybe one day they can afford the luxury of eight-dollar green fees.  Maybe they can then afford the oblivious, obnoxious, ridiculously self-centered notion that easier access to the golf course is more important than giving someone less fortunate a shot at a new start, at a home, and a kitchen, and a bed.

The MVCC meeting, under the able guidance of Chair Albert Olson through a difficult evening, was the best and the worst of us on display, which is, at the end of the day, American Democracy in action, at its finest.