Erika D. Smith: 'Enough is enough.' Why RV encampments might finally start disappearing in LA
LOS ANGELES — For almost three years, "home" for Wendy Lockett was a dilapidated RV.
Her "community" was a close-knit group of men, women and dogs living in equally dilapidated RVs, and her "neighborhood" — much to the aggravation of many on the Westside of L.A. — was a trash-strewn encampment on Jefferson Boulevard alongside the Ballona Wetlands.
I used to see Lockett every now and then — usually after some tragedy, like the fire in February that killed her good friend, Woody Akiedis. "He was very diplomatic," I remember her telling me wistfully, standing next to the burned out husk of his RV.
Then, one morning this summer, it was Lockett's "home" that went up in flames.
She wasn't there. "She had a rodent infestation," explained Scott Culbertson, executive director of the Friends of Ballona Wetlands. "So she went to stay with a friend."
I haven't seen Lockett since and there's a good chance I never will again.
The very same morning that her RV caught fire, an army of workers cleared much of the encampment in the name of the Jefferson Trail Rehabilitation Project. They towed vehicles, coaxed encampment residents into hotels, and left behind concrete barricades, metal fencing and gigantic "no parking" signs.
Lockett's "community" is now
