Lakewood workers deal with homeless hotspot
Workers, shop owners at a northwestern Lakewood intersection with transient traffic tell how they deal with the region's crisis.
Note: This is the third installment of our 4-part series of homelessness in Lakewood. You can read the first story (east Lakewood) and the second story (central Lakewood) by clicking the hyperlinks.
Paying for a hotel room and shooing away trespassers, these are just two ways workers at a hotspot in western Lakewood have handled the city’s homeless problem.
Shopping complexes and other stores meet around Lakewood Boulevard and South Street, an area where transients hang out and pass through. This has led to many area workers figuring out how to deal with the homeless crisis, which has become part of their lives as it rages across Southern California.
“I see them every day,” said the 48-year owner of a Mobil gas station at the intersection.
Bizarre encounters have resulted from this transient traffic.
“I haven’t decided if it’s from the Renaissance or Star Wars type of cape,” said a female worker, describing a homeless visitor.
According to the worker at an area pet shop, a homeless man wearing the cape asked for spray to make himself smell better before asking if he could borrow the Simple Green bottle laying around. After spraying, he washed himself with a nearby water spigot.
Fortunately for the pet shop worker, she didn’t have to clean up afterwards.
“They pooped the (crap) on the floor,” said the gas station owner about homeless using his restroom.
The owner has since stopped allowing homeless to use his facilities, but that hasn’t stopped them from defecating. He reported homeless pooping on the grass and besides his station’s building. The pet shop worker also reported homeless pooping behind the store.
Other encounters proved edgier, though less filthy.
Mike Halim—owner of John’s Shop-Rite Pharmacy Medical Supply store—posted on April 2 a Facebook video of a transient’s standoff with sheriff’s deputies in front of his shop. The transient was carrying a rifle, leading to the deputies shielding themselves behind their vehicles while they pointed guns at the transient, who had laid the rifle on the grass.
The transient was arrested and the rifle confiscated, video footage showed.
Western Lakewood and its consistent homeless population
Most of the housing tracts west of Clark Avenue average between three to five homeless persons living there each year.
The Lakewood Populist took the numbers from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) and its 2018 to 2020 homeless counts to calculate the average. The 2021 homeless count was nixed due to Wuhan Virus fears.
Two housing tracts in this area consistently stood out: the one north of South Street and the housing tract located in the city’s southwestern pocket. Other housing tracts suffering homelessness proved more dynamic, with their homeless populations ranging from zero to 13 persons in different years between 2018 and 2020.
View the Lakewood Populist’s interactive homeless tracking map, complete with pictures and other information, by clicking the link.
Transient-used intersection
It’s that northern housing tract that encompasses half of the aforementioned homeless hotspot.
Between Saturday and Wednesday, the Lakewood Populist documented several transients roaming around that intersection, including its most bizarre case just after midnight on Saturday.
What appeared to be a homeless person’s pile of rags turned out to be a human being. The homeless person had covered his or her entire body with cloth and would drag a shopping cart a few feet across the Mobil station’s lot before laying to rest.
The same homeless person early Sunday evidently parked in front of the intersection’s Jack in the Box restaurant, laying inside the shopping cart to rest. The person had cloth covering the entire face and body.
A worker at the fast-food restaurant said the person was a frequent visitor.
Lakewood Mall area and southwestern housing tract
Further south is another intersection—Candlewood Street and Lakewood Boulevard—frequented by homeless.
A man was spotted on Wednesday making camp in front of the FedEx Office store. On Sunday, a person was also documented sleeping in front of the doorway to the JOANN Fabrics and Crafts store.
Lakewood’s southwestern housing tract—south of Del Amo Boulevard and mostly west of Obispo Avenue—is the city’s second worst-impacted housing tract, according to LAHSA’s data.
In 2019, the LAHSA homeless count found 27 homeless persons living in this housing tract.
However, the Lakewood Populist found that in 2020 most of the homeless were centered into the southern half of this housing tract, largely south of Carson Street. The mostly retail southern portion had about 12 homeless persons living there, while the mostly residential northern part had only one.
The Lakewood Populist has documented an apparent homeless encampment in the housing tract’s southern portion near Walmart.
How to address the homeless crisis?
Lakewood’s homeless problem was already affecting Halim before he officially opened his pharmacy and medical supply store two years ago. Homeless were living in the building when he remodeled the location and sheriff’s deputies were used to clear them out.
“I hate shooing people away,” said Halim, “because majority do have mental health issues.”
While Halim doesn’t believe in giving the homeless money, something he think exacerbates the problem, he has donated wheelchairs and walkers to those who can’t afford it and whose insurance doesn’t cover it.
“We’re human beings,” he explained.
He also isn’t afraid to tell transients to leave.
A man was in the back parking lot and appeared to have a meth pipe when Halim looked at him, letting the man know it was time to go. When another man slept in front of the doorway to his shop, Halim told the man that wasn’t right since customers were behind him.
Making the transients aware that he and others were there, Halim said, was a way to discourage homeless from frequenting the place too much.
“I’m most concerned for the customers outside,” said the Mobil station’s owner, who stopped work on an outdoor patio for those using the station’s vacuuming system.
“I wasn’t thinking it was going to draw homeless people,” the gas station owner said, regarding homeless who began making camp there.
The pet shop worker reported that a colleague once paid for a hotel room to help out a brother and sister living behind the Jack in the Box restaurant with a dog.
Denise Porrazzo, gymnastics program director at Lakewood Family YMCA, said that when a program starts that she tells resting homeless persons to leave, which they do.
Not all encounters have been so peaceful. One man sprayed alcohol onto Halim’s shop windows. The pet shop worker reported three homeless persons that “weren’t quite right”.
When asked if any had been violent with him, the Mobil station owner said no.
“I didn’t allow that to happen,” he said, explaining that homeless take advantage of people’s vulnerabilities. “You really can’t discuss or argue with them.”
NOTE: Click the hyperlinks to view Lakewood’s homeless population maps: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.