A two-mile road in Los Angeles — next to Hollywood studios where shows like “Friends,” “Will & Grace” and “Gilmore Girls” were filmed — has been overrun by homeless people living in “unsafe, unsanitary” RVs and trailers.
Exclusive video taken by The Post shows trash piling up outside the makeshift camp which is also strewn with feces and bottles full of urine, just minutes from the Universal Studios theme park, visited by up to 40,000 tourists daily.
Nearby business owners complained about the foul smells and black trash bags piling up from the growing number of campers and port-a-potties provided by local authorities of the ultra-liberal city.
One business manager, who asked to remain anonymous, said some of the RV residents have wandered into their property to get water and regularly use their private restrooms and outdoor electric plugs.
“We are kind of in ‘no man’s land’ here,” the manager told The Post. “These people who live in their campers have a beautiful backyard with the hills and studios surrounding them in what is a fancy neighborhood, but it has gone too far. They are literally coming to our front door.
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“Some of them are mentally ill and some of them are just angry, yelling. Some of them were moved away from the more touristy side in Hollywood, but it’s just unfortunate because a lot of them who live here are antagonistic.”
Another local business owner said things have gotten so bad at times, Warner Brothers studios has sent out their own staff to clean up the street, which is nestled below the AVA apartment block where monthly rent is $1,900 for a studio. In close by Universal City, homes start at around $2.3m. Warner Brothers didn’t respond to The Post’s request for comment.
Postings say there is no parking allowed from 2-4 a.m. nightly, but those in the RV camp said cops haven’t told them to move and largely leave them alone, save from towing a few cars with outdated registration tags.
RV campers have even tapped into a fire hydrant by constructing a makeshift spout with a tape and aplastic water bottle to get easy access to fresh water.
Many of the residents say they ended up moving into RVs after not being able to afford rising rents or losing their jobs, mirroring residents of a similar camp in posh Marin County, Northern California.
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RV residents of Forest Lawn Drive told The Post they would rather live free on the busy street than in a government-provided shelter or tiny home. Many have said the cost of living in LA has forced them into RV living.
Richard Yrineo, 45, said when he first parked his trailer on Forest Lawn Drive four years ago, there were only 10 other cars and RVs also parked on the two-mile stretch, which is also home to Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills cemetery where many celebrities are buried, including Carrie Fisher, Paul Walker, Penny Marshall and Bee Gees singer Andy Gibb.
When the pandemic shut down businesses, he started to see more and more people living in their cars and parking on the street and the number of RVs grew to more than 40.
“I worked construction and work stopped because people didn’t want you inside their homes because they were afraid to get COVID. Most people who lost their jobs had nowhere to go and ended up here,” Yrineo told The Post.
Shockingly, some are taking advantage of the situation and becoming so-called “van lords” — landlords who purchase RVs then rent them out to the needy — according said LA City Councilmember Traci Park.
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“When you start looking at the internet and websites like Craigslist, you can see there is actually a flourishing and wholly unregulated business here in our city,” Park said.
“Many of these vehicles are unsafe, unsanitary and could not conceivably pass a basic operability environment test or fire safety inspection. A lot of them don’t meet the basic standards.”
According to the 2022 Point-In-Time Count conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, about 6,500 people live in 4,000 RVs across the city— a 40% increase since 2018.
A report published on June 20 by the University of California, San Francisco showed 47% of single adults in the state who are homeless are over the age of 50. At the Forest Lawn Drive encampment, many are seniors who have banned together for survival.
Park said the whole thing is a legal gray area, and is concerned many of the RV tenants don’t have lease agreements and there is no governing body who provide any kind of oversight.
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In May, Park introduced a city ordinance that would expand city codes to include the sale and lease of RVs. It also would require any RV operator to have an appropriate license for the vehicle and to make sure the RV is up to code.
The ordinance is currently being reviewed by the city’s public works and transportation committees and will go before the LA City Council for a vote in the next few months.
People living in RVs now comprise 22% of the city’s 69,000 homeless population in 2022, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA).
However, city officials challenged LAHSA’s numbers and said the homeless count did not provide an accurate snapshot of the growing numbers of RVs and encampments throughout the city.
On Thursday, LAHSA released its latest numbers — Los Angeles County’s homeless population increased by 9% compared to the prior year. About 75,500 people are living in an RV, car, van, tent or some other form of makeshift shelter, according to the initial report.
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Liberty Justice, a US Army veteran, is one of a handful who rent an RV parked on Forest Lawn Drive. On Tuesday morning, Justice was practicing cover songs and singing karaoke inside her rented trailer.
Justice said she found the RV listing online, which looked pristine and new. She was shocked when she saw the trailer was more rundown than what was shown in the pictures, but said she had no other choice.
“I was sleeping on the concrete and eventually I found this online about a year and three months total,” Justice said of her RV rental. “I talked to the guy on the phone and he seemed reasonable. I never wanted it to begin with, but it was the only thing I could find that I could afford.”
Other campers don’t agree and said many residents are artists or families who have regular “9 to 5” jobs.
One RV dweller, Howie Rice, has lived on Forest Lawn Drive for about six months.
Rice — a musician, writer and producer who has worked with Patti LaBelle, Menudo, Barry Manilow and the Pointer Sisters — spends most of his time now working inside an RV with a makeshift studio owned by his producing partner Edward Sedano.
On Monday, Rice and Sedano, 58, were busy listening and mixing their latest songs as cars on the busy corridor whizzed by.
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“There’s something to be said for creating something under an ‘unusual circ*mstance,’” Rice, 67, told The Post. “Sometimes we’ve worked in ideal situations with the perfect setting, but you are just not inspired. We’ve also run out of motels where crack and everything else is going on. But here, we are able to work.”
Sedano said he and Rice prefer the RV life because they can’t take their producing equipment into a shelter where it could get stolen. Working in a motel also has been difficult because they work at odd hours of the night.
“Nobody bothers us out here and we don’t bother anyone because there isn’t really anyone really walking by,” Sedano said. “We’ve parked under bridges, and closer to residences, but people complain. Here, we aren’t bothering anybody.”
Yrineo said he has noticed more trash in the area since the city trash pick up hasn’t come by Forest Lawn Drive for a few weeks.
The construction worker, who lives in a trailer with his 110-pound pitbull named “Whitey,” tried to make his little area more “homey” by building a fake mailbox by the public sidewalk.
As for drug use in the area, Yrineo said, “We’re not an encampment. I’m sure people might do some drugs out here, but people do drugs everywhere in LA. There’s probably more people using drugs up in those fancy homes in the hills than down here.”
