I am sitting in a tent placed inside the parlor of a Victorian-era house. Before me lies a spirit board, a lone tarot card and a black scrying mirror. I am here to commune with the dead.
There is no medium. It is only myself and eight other attendees— our guide has left the tent. Though earlier we could hear tension-rattling music setting a cryptic mood, now there is nothing. Lights? Off. The tent has gone pitch black. At this particular moment, there’s only the sound of our breaths, our thoughts and perhaps some new guests.
Welcome to “Phasmagorica,” what composer-turned-magician-turned-spiritual explorer BC Smith describes as “a séance reimagined as art.” It’s running this month at the Heritage Square Museum, itself a location imbued with history and mystery, the site of the homes of Los Angeles as they existed a century ago.
I’ll get right to the point: I did not have an encounter with the dead. And yet I left “Phasmagorica” deeply curious. That’s because Smith sets up the evening as an exploration of the modern Western history of communing with the deceased, attempting to conjure the feeling of a séance as it occurred in late 1880s America, albeit with a better sound system and all the Death in the Afternoon cocktails you can consume (note: you should not consume very many).
The “experiment” — Smith shirks at the word performance — is designed, he says, for believers and nonbelievers. He himself falls somewhere in the middle.
“I’m a hopeful skeptic,” Smith says. “If I were a 100% believer, ‘Phasmagorica’ would be a church. I just wanted to create a space that started a conversation for people.”
It is relevant to point out that Smith is also a magician, a member of the Magic Castle, home itself to a popular séance. While Smith has not conducted a Magic Castle séance, he has — and will — orchestrate what he refers to as a “theatrical séance,” for which he is present as a storyteller. “Phasmagorica” is different, Smith says, and was born out of those more dramatic performances, in part because he kept encountering the unaccountable.
“It’s highly curated,” Smith says of a core difference between a theatrical séance and “Phasmagorica,” as the former will be tailored specifically to guest needs and requests. “But people were experiencing a lot in those séances that I could not explain,” Smith says. He recites a story that opens “Phasmagorica” of a shadow reaching out and touching someone on a shoulder. Smith says he witnessed this phenomena, and at that point decided to create an event that focused on realism and dispensed with the notion that there could be any illusions or magic.
BC Smith’s “Phasmagorica” is not a theatrical or magic performance. The event aims to recreate the feel of a vintage séance.
(Roger Kisby / For The Times)
I was surprised, for instance, when Smith left the room. At that point, we were with only a television, which narrates a short history of séances in America before instructing us to hold a pendulum over a spirit board. Knowing Smith’s past, I went in expecting more of a show. Instead, we are prodded to examine a tarot card, peer into the scrying mirror and ask questions to our spirit board.
“It becomes more personal,” Smith says. “Even in my theatrical séances, I’ve had people want to cut me off mid-sentence and say, ‘This just happened to me.’ And they want to spend the next five minutes talking about it. At the end of the day, I think what people like is that this is all about them.”
And still, Smith says, audiences are looking for wizardry. But there’s no tricks of the light, no hidden fans. He stresses multiple times in this interview and at the start of “Phasmagorica” that this is “not theater, not a performance, not a show.”
“I’ve had people walk out of the room and swear there was a magnet in the pendulum board,” he says. “Or swear there was some effect that made them see a person standing. People still have an explanation that I had something to do with it. Whatever helps you sleep with the light off.”
While numerous cultures and spiritual movements have throughout history long attempted to commune with the dead, a séance, says Lisa Morton, author of “Calling the Spirits: A History of Séances,” is a relatively recent occurrence. She and Smith trace their popularity to the Fox sisters, Kate and Maggie, who performed to packed crowds in the late 1880s in New York, attempting to demonstrate that spirits could speak via a series of raps on the walls.
BC Smith calls “Phasmagorica” an “experiment,” shirking at the word performance.(Roger Kisby / For The Times)
Prior to the Fox sisters, Morton says, attempts to commune with the beyond, broadly speaking, were a more personal and ritualistic affair. “The Greeks believed that sleeping on a grave might give you dreams in which you communed with a spirit,” she says. Popular myths, too, would portray the practice as borderline arcane. In Homer’s “The Odyssey,” for instance, a bridge to the spirit world is reached only after a complex series of sacrifices and offerings — a potent mix of sweet wine and the blood of a lamb.
“The séance comes along, and not only is it a group activity, but it suggests that anyone can communicate with the spirits of the dead,” Morton says. “You just need a medium — someone who can enter a trance state and open themselves to receiving spirit communications. It was done with a group, and in the comfort of someone’s home. Those were startlingly new ideas.”
Morton has taken part in Smith’s “Phasmagorica.” She, too, appreciated the historical emphasis, specifically the way a musician performs after the séance as guests mingle with one another and share their experience. Music was a big part of early séances, Morton says.
“People would sit around a table and the lights would be lowered and they would sing,” Morton says “Now, singing did have a scammy double purpose, as they allowed the medium to start doing things in the dark unheard. But these evenings were wondrous for people, and I thought that was what BC Smith captured really well.”
“Phasmagorica” has been running on select weekends at Heritage Square since the late summer. Smith intends to continue adding events throughout the fall as his schedule allows, announcing them on Instagram. Though intimate, they do typically sell out. It’s traveling via word of mouth, theorizes Smith, because people today are increasingly searching for “connection and meaning.”
Heritage Square Museum is itself a location imbued with history and mystery, the site of the homes of Los Angeles as they existed a century ago.
(Marcus Ubungen / Los Angeles Times)
“The experience is really up to you,” he says. “I think we’re all searching for something. This is a safe space to explore.”
Late in life, Maggie Fox denounced the spiritualism movement that she and her sister Kate had helped start, demonstrating the ways in which they had fooled their audiences. Smith again stresses that he himself is a “hopeful skeptic,” and purposefully stays out of the experience so that guests aren’t trying to figure out if he’s holding onto any secrets.
And yet he says, “Phasmagorica” has permanently changed him. He notes that his wife is a commercial airline pilot and must travel often.
“When she’s away, I sleep with a night-light,” he says. “Maybe that’s the answer to the question whether I believe or not.”
WASHINGTON — When President Trump’s administration last month awarded a contract worth up to $1.2 billion to build and operate what it says will become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex, it didn’t turn to a large government contractor or even a firm that specializes in private prisons.
Instead, it handed the project on a military base to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a small business that has no listed experience running a correction facility and had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million. The company also lacks a functioning website and lists as its address a modest home in suburban Virginia owned by a 77-year-old retired Navy flight officer.
The mystery over the award only deepened last week as the new facility began to accept its first detainees. The Pentagon has refused to release the contract or explain why it selected Acquisition Logistics over a dozen other bidders to build the massive tent camp at Fort Bliss in west Texas. At least one competitor has filed a complaint.
The secretive — and brisk — contracting process is emblematic, experts said, of the government’s broader rush to fulfill the Republican president’s pledge to arrest and deport an estimated 10 million migrants living in the U.S. without permanent legal status. As part of that push, the government is turning increasingly to the military to handle tasks that had traditionally been left to civilian agencies.
A member of Congress who recently toured the camp said she was concerned that such a small and inexperienced firm had been entrusted to build and run a facility expected to house up to 5,000 migrants.
“It’s far too easy for standards to slip,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes Fort Bliss. “Private facilities far too frequently operate with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility.”
Attorney Joshua Schnell, who specializes in federal contracting law, said he was troubled that the Trump administration has provided so little information about the facility.
“The lack of transparency about this contract leads to legitimate questions about why the Army would award such a large contract to a company without a website or any other publicly available information demonstrating its ability to perform such a complicated project,” he said.
Ken A. Wagner, the president and CEO of Acquisition Logistics, did not respond to phone messages or emails. No one answered the door at his three-bedroom house listed as his company’s headquarters. Virginia records list Wagner as an owner of the business, though it’s unclear whether he might have partners.
Army declines to release contract
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved using Fort Bliss for the new detention center, and the administration has hopes to build more at other bases. A spokesperson for the Army declined to discuss its deal with Acquisition Logistics or reveal details about the camp’s construction, citing the litigation over the company’s qualifications.
The Department of Homeland Security, which includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to answer questions about the detention camp it oversees.
Named Camp East Montana for the closest road, the facility is being built in the sand and scrub Chihuahuan Desert, where summertime temperatures can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit and heat-related deaths are common. The 60-acre site is near the U.S.-Mexico border and the El Paso International Airport, a key hub for deportation flights.
The camp has drawn comparisons to “Alligator Alcatraz,” a $245 million tent complex erected to hold ICE detainees in the Florida Everglades. That facility has been the subject of complaints about unsanitary conditions and lawsuits. A federal judge recently ordered that facility to be shut down.
The vast majority of the roughly 57,000 migrants detained by ICE are housed at private prisons operated by companies like Florida’s Geo Group and Tennessee-based CoreCivic. As those facilities fill up, ICE is also exploring temporary options at military bases in California, New York and Utah.
At Fort Bliss, construction began within days of the Army issuing the contract on July 18. Site work began months earlier, before Congress had passed Trump’s big tax and spending cuts bill, which includes a record $45 billion for immigration enforcement. The Defense Department announcement specified only that the Army was financing the initial $232 million for the first 1,000 beds at the complex.
Three white tents, each about 810 feet long, have been erected, according to satellite imagery examined by the Associated Press. A half dozen smaller buildings surround them.
Setareh Ghandehari, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Detention Watch, said the use of military bases hearkens back to World War II, when Japanese Americans were imprisoned at Army camps including Fort Bliss. She said military facilities are especially prone to abuse and neglect because families and loved ones have difficulty accessing them.
“Conditions at all detention facilities are inherently awful,” Ghandehari said. “But when there’s less access and oversight, it creates the potential for even more abuse.”
Company will be responsible for security
A June 9 solicitation notice for the Fort Bliss project specified the contractor will be responsible for building and operating the detention center, including providing security and medical care. The document also requires strict secrecy, ordering the contractor inform ICE to respond to any calls from members of Congress or the news media.
The bidding was open only to small firms such as Acquisition Logistics, which receives preferential status because it’s classified as a veteran and Hispanic-owned small disadvantaged business.
Though Trump’s administration has fought to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, federal contracting rules include set-asides for small businesses owned by women or minorities. For a firm to compete for such contracts, at least 51% of it must be owned by people belonging to a federally designated disadvantaged racial or ethnic group.
One of the losing bidders, Texas-based Gemini Tech Services, filed a protest challenging the award and the Army’s rushed construction timeline with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress’ independent oversight arm that resolves such disputes.
Gemini alleges Acquisition Logistics lacks the experience, staffing and resources to perform the work, according to a person familiar with the complaint who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Acquisition Logistics’ past jobs include repairing small boats for the Air Force, providing information technology support to the Defense Department and building temporary offices to aid with immigration enforcement, federal records show.
Gemini and its lawyer didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.
A ruling by the GAO on whether to sustain, dismiss or require corrective action is not expected before November. A legal appeal is also pending with a U.S. federal court in Washington.
Schnell, the contracting lawyer, said Acquisitions Logistics may be working with a larger company. Geo Group Inc. and CoreCivic Corp., the nation’s biggest for-profit prison operators, have expressed interest in contracting with the Pentagon to house migrants.
In an earnings call this month, Geo Group CEO George Zoley said his company had teamed up with an established Pentagon contractor. Zoley didn’t name the company, and Geo Group didn’t respond to repeated requests asking with whom it had partnered.
A spokesperson for CoreCivic said it wasn’t partnering with Acquisition Logistics or Gemini.
Biesecker and Goodman write for the Associated Press. Goodman reported from Miami. AP writer Alan Suderman in Richmond, Va., and Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, N.M., contributed to this report.
Huda Abu Naja lies weak and emaciated on a thin mattress in her family’s tent in a displacement camp in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah.
The 12-year-old Palestinian girl’s arms are painfully thin, and the bones on her torso are protruding from under her skin, a telltale sign of her acute malnutrition.
“My daughter has been suffering from acute malnutrition since March when Israel closed Gaza’s borders,” Huda’s mother, Somia Abu Naja, tells Al Jazeera, stroking her daughter’s face.
“She spent three months in hospitals, but her condition did not improve,” said Somia, explaining that she decided to bring Huda back to the family’s tent after witnessing five children die of starvation at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis.
“She used to weigh 35 kilos [77lbs], but now she’s down to 20 [44lbs],” Somia added.
Huda is just one of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children suffering from malnutrition in Gaza, according to local health authorities, as Israel continues to block food and other humanitarian aid from entering the bombarded enclave.
On Friday, a United Nations-backed hunger monitor confirmed for the first time that more than half a million people were experiencing famine in northern Gaza – the first such designation ever recorded in the Middle East.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system warned that the figure could reach 614,000 as famine is expected to spread to the Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis governorates by the end of September.
According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 280 people, including more than 110 children, have died due to Israel-induced starvation since the country’s war on Gaza began nearly two years ago.
Children are being hit hard by the crisis, the IPC said on Friday, with an estimated 132,000 children under the age of five projected to be at risk of death from acute malnutrition by June 2026.
Dr Ahmad al-Farra, the chief paediatric physician at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, said 120 children are seeking treatment for malnutrition at the facility, while tens of thousands more are suffering in displacement camps with little assistance.
He told Al Jazeera that children in Gaza will suffer the consequences of malnutrition for the rest of their lives, as hospitals in the enclave are lacking the resources and supplies to respond to the crisis.
Mohammed Abu Salmiya, the director of Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, also told Al Jazeera that an estimated 320,000 children across Gaza were in a state of severe malnutrition.
He said all wounded patients in hospitals were suffering from malnutrition, as well, amid Israel’s continued blockade of the enclave.
Israel has rejected the IPC’s findings, with its foreign ministry saying – despite mounds of evidence – that there was “no famine in Gaza”.
While Israel has allowed limited supplies into the territory in recent weeks amid global outrage over the starvation crisis, the UN and humanitarian groups say what is being allowed in remains woefully insufficient.
An Israeli-backed aid distribution scheme known as GHF has also been condemned as ineffective and deadly, with Israeli forces and US contractors killing more than 2,000 Palestinians as they sought food at the sites since late May.
The IPC famine classification has triggered a renewed wave of calls for Israel to urgently allow a massive and sustained influx of aid into Gaza.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that the famine was a “man-made disaster, a moral indictment, and a failure of humanity itself”.
UN aid chief Tom Fletcher also said starvation was occurring “within a few hundred metres of food” as aid trucks were stuck at border crossings due to Israeli restrictions. He demanded that Israel allow food and medicine in “at the massive scale required”.
According to Richard Edwards, a seasoned glamping expert from White House Glamping , a luxury camping site in Herefordshire, there’s a simple and inexpensive solution that can turn your muddy camping nightmare into a comfortable outdoor escape
Camping can become a little difficult in the mud(Image: FilmMagic via Getty Images)
Mud. The age-old foe of mothers in 90s Persil adverts and campers alike.
When it comes to combining a night in canvas with nature’s premier version of gloop, things can be difficult.
Picture the scene: You’ve spent hours assembling the perfect campsite, your tent is perfectly pitched, and everything feels just right. Then the skies open up with a sudden downpour, turning the ground into a muddy mess. Within minutes, your pristine tent interior becomes a disaster zone, with dirty footprints across your sleeping area and soggy gear everywhere. It’s the kind of scenario that can turn even the most enthusiastic camper’s weekend into a frustrating mess.
But according to Richard Edwards, a seasoned glamping expert from White House Glamping, a luxury camping site in Herefordshire, there’s a simple and inexpensive solution that can turn your muddy camping nightmare into a comfortable outdoor escape.
The tips may be helpful during one of Glastonbury’s soggier years(Image: Getty Images)
“After years of helping guests enjoy the great outdoors, I’ve seen every camping disaster you can imagine,” says Richard. “The mud problem is one of the most common complaints, but it’s also one of the easiest to solve with the right approach.”
When it comes to keeping tents spotless, Richard has a secret weapon. A waterproof car boot liner from your local discount shop. This simple and affordable piece of kit can be transformed into the perfect tent entrance mat that keeps mud firmly where it belongs – outside.
“The trick is to lay the liner flat at your tent entrance, creating what I call a ‘mud porch’. It’s basically a doormat that works in the wild. Campers can step onto it, wipe their boots, and leave all the mess behind before entering their tent,” he explains.
The process couldn’t be simpler. Position the waterproof liner just outside your tent door, ensuring it covers the main traffic area. The rubberised surface grips well to most ground types, while the waterproof material means it won’t absorb moisture or become a soggy mess like traditional mats.
Campers usually just try the shoes-off approach when it comes to coming inside, but Richard explains why this rarely works in practice.
“Asking everyone to remove muddy boots sounds good in theory, but you’re still left with wet socks and nowhere clean to put the boots,” he says. “Plus, it’s not exactly comfortable hopping around on one foot in the rain.”
Traditional camping mats often fall short as well. They’re usually too small, absorb water, and can become slippery hazards when wet. Towels, another common solution, quickly become saturated and useless.
“The car boot liner gives you a proper-sized clean zone that stays functional even in the worst weather,” Richard notes. “It’s also easy to rinse off or wipe clean, and it rolls up small when you’re packing up.”
Richard’s budget-friendly approach doesn’t stop at boot liners. He’s discovered several other unexpected items that work brilliantly in the great outdoors.
“Shower curtains make excellent groundsheets for under your tent. They’re completely waterproof and cost a fraction of purpose-made camping groundsheets. Dollar store microfiber cloths are perfect for quick clean-ups, and those cheap plastic storage boxes? They’re ideal for keeping your gear dry and organised,” he adds.
“A simple plastic tablecloth can create an instant clean eating area, and those disposable plastic plates from party shops are more practical than heavy camping crockery.”
Musician Dennis Henriquez woke up in a doorway in East Hollywood last month, hidden behind cardboard and sheltered by a tarp.
When he peered outside, half a dozen sanitation workers were standing nearby, waiting to carry out one of the more than 30 homeless encampment cleanups planned that day by the city of Los Angeles.
Henriquez eventually emerged, carried out a bicycle and deposited it on a grassy area 20 feet away. He also dragged over a backpack, a scooter, two guitars, a piece of luggage and a beach chair.
The city sanitation crew grabbed the tarp and the cardboard, tossing them into a trash truck. Then, the contingent of city workers, including two police officers, climbed into their vehicles and drove away, leaving behind Henriquez and his pile of belongings.
This type of operation, known as a CARE-plus cleanup, plays out hundreds of times each week in the city, with sanitation crews seizing and destroying tents, tarps, pallets, shopping carts and many other objects.
The cleanups have emerged as a huge source of conflict in a five-year-old legal dispute over the city’s handling of the homelessness crisis. Depending on how the cleanup issue is resolved, the city could face legal sanctions, millions of dollars in penalties or increased outside oversight of its homeless programs.
A construction loader plows through the remains of a homeless encampment on Wilshire Boulevard, just west of downtown.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
Sanitation crews grab a mattress during the cleanup. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
A notice about the cleanup is displayed on a utility pole on Wilshire Boulevard. (Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
In 2022, city leaders reached a legal settlement with the nonprofit L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, promising to create 12,915 homeless beds or other housing opportunities by June 2027. Eventually, they also agreed to remove 9,800 homeless encampments by June 2026 — with an encampment defined as an individual tent, makeshift structure, car or recreational vehicle.
To reach the latter goal, city leaders have been counting each encampment removed from streets, sidewalks and alleys during the Bureau of Sanitation’s CARE-plus cleanups — even in cases where the resident did not obtain housing or a shelter bed.
The alliance has strongly objected to the city’s methodology, arguing that destroying a tent, without housing its occupants, runs afoul of the 2022 settlement agreement. Any “encampment resolution” tallied by the city must be more permanent — and address the larger goal of reducing homelessness, said Elizabeth Mitchell, an attorney for the alliance.
“If the person insists on staying where they are and nothing else has happened, that’s not a resolution,” she said. “They can’t count that.”
City leaders have carried out CARE-plus cleanups for years, saying they are needed to protect public safety and restore sidewalk access for wheelchair users, the elderly and others. Some encampments are strewn with debris that spills across an entire walkway or out into the street, while others carry the smell of urine, fecal matter or decaying food waste.
The cleanups have a Sisyphean quality. Many seasoned residents drag their tents across the street, wait out the cleanup, then return to their original spots in the afternoon. The process frequently restarts a week or two later.
The alliance’s legal team, alarmed by the inclusion of CARE-plus cleanups in the encampment reduction count, recently spent several days trying to persuade a federal judge to seize control of the city’s homelessness initiatives from Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council and turn them over to a third-party receiver.
U.S. Dist. Judge David O. Carter, who presides over the case, declined to take that step, saying it went too far. But he has made clear that he, too, objects to the city’s approach to eliminating the 9,800 encampments.
In March, Carter issued a court order saying the city may not count CARE-plus cleanups toward its goal because, as the alliance had argued, they are “not permanent in nature.”
Last month, in a 62-page ruling, he found the city had “willfully disobeyed” that order — and had improperly reported its encampment reductions. Clarifying his position somewhat, the judge also said that the city cannot count an encampment reduction unless it is “accompanied by an offer of shelter or housing.”
“Individuals need not accept the offer, but an offer of available shelter or housing must be made,” he wrote.
Attorney Shayla Myers, who represents homeless advocacy groups that have intervened in the case, has opposed the 9,800 goal from the beginning, saying it creates a quota system that increases the likelihood that city workers will violate the property rights of unhoused residents.
“Throwing away tents doesn’t help the homelessness crisis,” she said. “Building housing does.”
Shayna, a person experiencing homelessness, moves things out of a tent during the June 24 encampment cleanup.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, who helped negotiate the settlement, told the court last month that his office does not count the tents that homeless people move temporarily — around the corner or across the street — during city cleanups. However, the city does include those that are permanently removed because they block the sidewalk or pose a public health or safety threat, he said.
Szabo, during his testimony, said that when he negotiated the promise to remove 9,800 encampments, he did not expect that every tent removal would lead to someone moving inside.
The city is already working to fulfill the alliance agreement’s requirement of creating 12,915 homeless beds or other housing opportunities. On top of that, Szabo said, encampment residents have “free will” to refuse an offer of housing.
“I wouldn’t ever agree that the city would be obligated to somehow force people to accept [housing] if they did not want to accept it,” he said. “We never would have agreed to that. We didn’t agree to that.”
For an outside observer, it might be difficult to discern what the different types of city encampment operations are designed to accomplish.
Mary, a person experiencing homelessness, speaks with a police officer during the June 24 cleanup.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
Bass’ Inside Safe initiative moves homeless people into hotel and motel rooms, and at least in some cases, permanent housing. By contrast, CARE cleanups — shorthand for Cleanup and Rapid Engagement — are largely focused on trash removal, with crews hauling away debris from curbs and surrounding areas.
CARE-plus cleanups are more comprehensive. Every tent must be moved so workers can haul away debris and, in some instances, powerwash sidewalks.
Sanitation crews are supposed to give residents advance warning of a scheduled CARE-plus cleanup, posting notices on utility poles. If residents don’t relocate their tents and other belongings, they run the risk of having them taken away.
In some cases, cleanup crews take the possessions to a downtown storage facility. In many others, they are tossed.
A construction loader transports the remnants of the Westlake encampment to a city garbage truck.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
One of the largest CARE-plus cleanups in recent weeks took place in the Westlake district, where nearly three dozen tents and structures lined a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard. A construction loader drove back and forth on the sidewalk, scooping up tents and depositing them in a trash truck.
Ryan Cranford, 42, said he didn’t know the cleanup was scheduled until minutes beforehand. He wound up losing his tent, a bed and a canopy, but managed to keep his backpack, saying it contained “all that matters.”
Sitting on a nearby retaining wall, Cranford said he would have accepted a motel room had someone offered one.
“Hell, I’d even take a bus to get all the way back to Oklahoma if I could,” he said.
On the opposite side of the street, Tyson Lewis Angeles wheeled his belongings down the street in a shopping cart before sanitation workers descended on his spot. He said an outreach worker had given him a referral for a shelter bed the day before.
Tyson Lewis Angeles, a person experiencing homelessness, holds his dog, Nami, before city sanitation workers descended on his spot on Wilshire Boulevard.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
Angeles, 30, said he was not interested, in part because he deals with panic attacks, PTSD and other mental health issues. He also does not want a roommate, or the rules imposed by homeless shelters.
“Basically, it’s like volunteer jail,” he said.
While Angeles managed to safeguard his possessions, others are frequently less successful.
Nicholas Johnson, who is living in a box truck in Silver Lake, said city crews took the vast majority of his belongings during a CARE-plus cleanup in mid-June. Some were destroyed, while others were transported by sanitation workers to a downtown storage facility, he said.
Johnson, 56, said he does not know whether some of his most prized possessions, including letters written by his grandmother, went into that facility or were tossed. City crews also took books, tools, his Buddhist prayer bowls and a huge amount of clothes.
“All of my clothing — all of my clothing — the wearables and the sellables, all mixed in. Hats, scarves, socks, ties, a lot of accessories that I wear — you know, double breasted suits from the ’30s, the suit pants,” he said.
Nicholas Johnson, who lives with his dog, Popcorn, in a truck parked in Silver Lake, said the city took many of his prized possessions during a recent encampment cleanup.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Johnson said the city’s cleanup process is a “harassment ceremony” that only makes life more stressful for people on the street.
“They hit you in the kneecaps when they know you’re already down,” he said.
Earlier this year, city officials informed the court that they had removed about 6,100 tents, makeshift shelters and vehicles — nearly two-thirds of what the agreement with the alliance requires. Whether the city will challenge any portion of the judge’s ruling is still unclear.
In a statement, a lawyer for the city contends that the ruling “misconstrues the city’s obligations.”
“We are keeping open our options for next steps,” said the lawyer, Theane Evangelis.
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday again urged California cities and counties to ban homeless encampments, increasing his pressure campaign on local governments to follow the state’s lead and remove tents from sidewalks and other public property.
“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets,” Newsom said in a statement. “Local leaders asked for resources — we delivered the largest state investment in history. They asked for legal clarity — the courts delivered. Now, we’re giving them a model they can put to work immediately, with urgency and with humanity, to resolve encampments and connect people to shelter, housing, and care. The time for inaction is over. There are no more excuses.”
The Democratic governor released a model ordinance for local governments to adopt that his office described as a starting point before jurisdictions craft their own policies. Newsom’s plan asks locals to prohibit persistent camping in one location and encampments that block sidewalks. It also requires local officials to attempt to offer shelter before removing a temporary dwelling.
Newsom coupled the announcement with the release Monday of $3.3 billion in funding from Proposition 1, approved by voters in 2024, for communities to expand behavioral health housing and treatment options for their mentally ill and homeless populations. The funding is not contingent on cities banning encampments.
The funding adds to $27 billion the state has already given to local governments to address homelessness, a challenging political issue in California.
Advocates for the homeless repeatedly argue that the state does not have enough supportive housing and shelter beds to funnel those removed from tents and sidewalks into better conditions. The governor often voices his frustration over the lack of progress at the local level, casting homelessness as a humanitarian crisis and a health and safety issue.
Last year Newsom issued an executive order requiring state agencies to remove homeless encampments on state property and similarly urged local governments to do the same.
