To police or not to police?
Homelessness | In Los Angeles, “defunding the police” led to disbanding a unit specially designed to help with homelessness
by Sophia Lee
Posted 2/25/21, 08:05 am
Arek Arzoumanian was nervous. As the Los Angeles Department of Sanitation environmental compliance inspector, he stood at a residential street corner in Van Nuys—the Los Angeles neighborhood with the densest population of homelessness in the San Fernando Valley—getting ready to clear out an illegal homeless encampment. Most of the individuals living there had already packed up after getting notice of the cleanup, but several tents remained.