Had the city of LA forgotten the homeless of Broadway Place?
LOS ANGELES - Summer was a season to dread, and during the first heat wave in early July last year, the residents of the encampment on Broadway Place had no place to hide.
The sun blazed upon them. The air hardly moved. The sidewalks baked. It would be one of the hottest days in the recorded history of Los Angeles.
An older man complained of dizziness, and his neighbors sat him down. They put a towel on his head and poured water over him.
By midafternoon, temperatures had soared to 108 degrees, and the encampment had its first fatality: Caesar, the pit bull.
He was a familiar presence but had been neglected ever since his owner was stabbed in the neck during a fight and had moved away.
Tied to a jacaranda tree, Caesar had clawed his way into the shadows of a tent, where it was even hotter. The heat killed him. Someone carried his body across the street, and four days later the city's Department of Sanitation claimed him.
The trauma of his death lingered for days. Weariness was in the air, along with the smell of sweat, urine and moldering trash. Crushed cockroaches dotted the sidewalk.
"This going to be a crazy summer, like all the summers," Big Mama said. "Tragedy happens on this block. It never fails. It never fails."
Big Mama, 51, tried to keep everyone in line on the street, but it was getting more difficult.
Even as she kept her appointments for getting housed - sorting out her identification, income and a background check - she had watched smoke rise from a nearby tent fire, felt the glare of business owners and scrambled to stay clear of the Sanitation Bureau as crews swept through the encampment with military efficiency.
She had been told that she and her neighbors would be off the street by the end of June and living in their own apartments in a building a couple of miles away.
