Boulders placed in LA neighborhood’s freeway corridor fuel feud over plight of homeless

Workers remove massive boulders left on the sidewalk under the Santa Monica Freeway in the 8800 block of Cattaraugus Avenue on Thursday, September 10, 2020. (Photo by Gene Blevins/Contributing Photographer)

Dozens of boulders that sat for five days on the sidewalks along a freeway underpass — intended to discourage homeless people from living there — had been hauled away as last week drew to a close. But the tensions the rocks triggered endured, intensifying a squabble over the plight of the unhoused in a diverse Los Angeles neighborhood. That’s right: Boulders. Big ones. Dozens of them, some weighing hundreds of pounds each. After the rocks arrived early last week, they were decried by some as “hostile architecture” designed to displace homeless people during a week of extreme heat and unhealthful, smoke-choked air fouled by scattered wildfires. The neighbors who paid for the rocks via an internet fund-raising campaign saw their plan as a creative, urgent way to prevent people from living on the streets there. They raised $3,650 through GoFundMe to place the boulders on the sidewalks on both sides of Cattaraugus Avenue under the 10 Freeway, not far from Culver City. They say they’d had enough of blocked […]

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