In February 2014 – a few months after Councilman Mike Bonin took office – the Los Angeles Times reported that there were 174 homeless people in Venice.

Today, more than 1,120 people – overwhelmingly working-age males from other places – live on Venice’s streets and beaches.

This is largely because Bonin has launched a campaign to transform Venice into the designated homeless hub for the western half of Los Angeles, by installing a massive infrastructure for the ongoing delivery of “homeless” housing and services unmatched anywhere in the City, including:

Bonin has also taken tens of thousands of dollars from the Venice Fund “for additional funding for community services benefiting the homeless” in Venice, while creating an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District (“EIFD”) to use Venice property taxes to fund public housing projects exclusively in Venice. He also wants to use federal COVID-19 funds to purchase distressed properties from private citizens at bargain basement prices for use as public housing projects, presumably in Venice as well.

Bonin says “every part of Los Angeles needs to be part of the solution” to homelessness, but there are only two new homeless housing projects pending – both in West L.A. – for the rest of Bonin’s district (Council District 11) combined.

In fact, Bonin was so determined to avoid putting a housing project in Brentwood that he funneled $32.5 million in limited Prop HHH funds – which have been depleted by overspending on an epic scale – from the City to the federal government to pay for federal housing in a remote section of the Veteran’s Administration Campus insulated by many acres of forested parkland.

In short, the explosion in Venice’s street dwelling population – and the lawlessness that has come with it – is not the result of population growth, economic conditions or other circumstances beyond our control. In fact, homeless has dropped nationwide since Bonin took office in 2013. More than anything else, what’s happening in Venice is the result of the anti-Venice policies of a self-serving politician who has no business on the City Council.

As a result of Bonin’s policies, Venice now accounts for just 5% of the land but 49% of the street-dwelling population in Council District 11…

…and just 4% of the land but more than 40% of the street-dwelling population in LA County’s beach communities from Malibu to Palos Verdes.