A group of homeless mothers, their children and others have occupied a dozen vacant Caltrans-owned houses in El Sereno in an effort to call attention to the fact that the state transportation agency is sitting on more than 160 empty homes during an unprecedented public health and housing crisis.
The group, called Reclaiming Our Homes, includes Benito Flores, Ruby Gordillo, Martha Escudero and their five young children, who first occupied a Caltrans house located at 3135 Sheffield Ave., Los Angeles, on Saturday. Several others reclaimed other nearby vacant Caltrans houses in the following days. The group released a list of demands, including turning publicly-owned vacant properties into housing, freezing rents and other measures.
“With this health crisis and this housing crisis we need every vacant house to be a home for those who don’t have a safe and stable place to sleep in,” Gordillo said at a press conference in front of one of the houses on Wednesday.
Nearly 60,000 people in Los Angeles and nearly 550 in Pasadena are living in unsheltered locations or temporary shelters on any given night, according to the 2019 homeless counts. Numbers from the 2020 count have not yet been released.
According to Los Angeles Times reporter Liam Dillon, Caltrans released this statement on Thursday: “We are aware of the situation, and Caltrans is currently in discussions regarding the use of these properties.”
On Monday, eight state legislators sent a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, asking him to use the empty Caltrans houses as immediate rapid rehousing for the homeless in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. The signatories included Assemblymembers Richard Bloom, David Chiu, Sharon Quirk-Silva, Buffy Wicks, Rob Bonta and Mark Stone and state Senators Scott Wiener and Lena Gonzalez.
Notably, state legislators for the El Sereno and Pasadena areas, including state Senator Anthony Portantino, Assemblymember Chris Holden, Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo and state Senator Maria Elena Durazo did not sign the letter, and the governor has not yet responded.
“We urge you to take all steps necessary to immediately make these homes available for occupancy in a fair and systematic way,” they wrote in the letter, which also announced the formation of the California Legislative COVID-19 Housing and Homelessness Urgent Action Group. “The confluence of burgeoning homelessness, widespread layoffs, the housing affordability crisis and the healthcare emergency brought on by the COVID-19 emergency, the impact on those who are already homeless and those who are most at risk: economically disadvantaged Californians, requires us to act boldly and rapidly.”
LA Mayor Eric Garcetti said he “asked Caltrans to see whether or not [LA’s] housing authority might be able to get that house and many other houses, and make that affordable housing for folks that today need that, or who are homeless. But that will require state action.”
On Tuesday, the LA City Council passed new protections against evictions and foreclosures in an effort to mitigate the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Impacted by the housing crisis, and feeling even more urgency in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, we are reclaiming vacant houses owned by the state to fight for housing as a human right,” the Reclaiming Our Homes group wrote on its website. “We the Reclaimers are calling on the city and state to immediately use all vacant properties to house people. We need all levels of government to make a massive investment in public and social housing so that everyone has a home during this housing and public health crisis.”
A large group of supporters held a demonstration in front of 3135 Sheffield Ave., Los Angeles, on Saturday and helped carry in furniture and beautify the front yard. Meanwhile, six California Highway Patrol officers watched the scene from across the street but did not intervene. Earlier on Saturday morning, however, two organizers were arrested for entering another vacant Caltrans house on Sheffield.
“We are urging for vacant houses to be homes for these unhoused folks—now,” Gordillo said in a press conference in front of the house on Saturday.
Caltrans purchased and acquired through eminent domain about 460 properties in El Sereno, South Pasadena and Pasadena in the 1960s and 70s with the goal of tearing them down to build first a surface freeway and then a tunnel freeway connecting the 710 and 210 freeways. In October, Newsom signed a bill into law effectively killing the freeway extension, including the tunnel, making the properties surplus and thus subject to sale.
Caltrans has said it is preparing to sell the houses in three phases since 2015, but so far very few houses have been sold. According to the Roberti Bill, existing tenants are supposed to be offered first right of refusal to buy their homes at an affordable rate. In 2019, Caltrans tried to implement inappropriately inflated sales prices for Phase 1 tenants, but Pasadena attorney Christopher Sutton sued on behalf of three tenants and won.
Caltrans defied that court order by implementing “emergency regulations” enabling them to impose the inflated sales prices. Those regulations expired in November and Sutton’s lawsuit to ensure that the tenants are offered an affordable price for their homes continues. The next trial-setting hearing in that case was rescheduled to April 21 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
At a community forum in Pasadena in November focusing on what to do with the 50 acres of land known as the 710 freeway “ditch” near California Blvd., Caltrans District 7 Director John Bulinski claimed Sutton’s lawsuit is what’s preventing Caltrans from selling the remaining houses. Sutton disputes this, saying nothing is preventing Caltrans from moving forward and following the law.
Meanwhile, more than 160 houses remain empty in the 710 Corridor, many of them for years and all of them falling into disrepair. Reclaiming Our Homes advocates say unused public property such as the vacant Caltrans homes should be used for public good in these extraordinary times.
“It is never the wrong time to do the right thing,” wrote the United Caltrans Tenants (UCT) coordinating committee in an email. “Please reach out and meet the Reclaimers, all of whom were homeless and/or housing insecure prior to reclaiming the empty homes. Now these formerly empty homes, which made our streets feel like blighted ghost towns, are filled with families and people who are loving on these homes and our community. We hope you will embrace our new neighbors, volunteer and support housing those in need, especially in this time.”
UCT said all volunteers are following social distancing protocols.
The group was inspired by a similar action earlier this year by two homeless mothers in Oakland called Moms 4 Housing, who were ultimately successful following a standoff with police, according to L.A. Taco.
“The months-long standoff in Oakland between two unhoused mothers and a development company based in Redondo Beach resulted in a militarized police eviction that attracted over 25 sheriff’s deputies and left the mothers in handcuffs, but ultimately ended in victory after Wedgewood Properties made a ‘good faith agreement’ to sell the property to Oakland’s Community Land Trust,” Lexis-Olivier Ray wrote.
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