Homeless/RVs

Ongoing efforts to oppress the homeless.

Mark Ryavec and the Venice Stakeholders Association deploy MRSA scare i.e.; fake news) to promote their anti-homeless agenda.

This fake news story is likely part of Mr Ryavec’s campaign for CD11 Council Seat. The only related truth to it is that the health workers in the area keep a stock of medicine for MRSA.
“No Outbreaks”

County health officials, investigating a report of as many as six cases of the antibiotic-resistant virus known as MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) in Venice, released a statement that there have been “no outbreaks” confirmed in the area.

Yo Venice, i.e., Melanie Camp, jumped onboard the fake news bandwagon on this issue, spreading fear, uncertaity and doubt.

Here is a letter sent to Rayevec.

“Mr. Ryavec,
I am frankly dismayed that you would use my photo to boost your own agenda, and even promote the ideas, solutions, hard work, and successes of the Homeless Task Force organization as your own. What started out as small donations to the HTF by the Venice Stakeholders Association a few years back, as initiated at the request of LAPD Captain Brian Johnson, resulted in a firm decision on our part to end all communication with you – we found your agenda toward the homeless not to be in alignment with ours. I personally was disheartened by your self-aggrandizing and abusive nature. We asked you at that time to cease and desist, and evidently you still choose not to respect our request. Now, we are forced to publicly ask you to stop.
By the way, I have your emails in archive that will substantiate our position.

Regina Weller
Senior Crisis Chaplain
Executive Director, Homeless Task Force”

michaelkohlhaas.org point us to a tax form revealing the the VSA board of directors as of 2012 was Mark Ryavec, Robert Feist, Bonnie Felix, and Michael King.

Now that the Venice BID is official, and that proposition HHH passed, opponents have begun sabotage efforts including stacking the boards and committees.
Historic core bid executive directrix Blair Besten, nominated for Measure HHH citizens’ oversight committee, is opposed by skid row organizers, service providers, and sane people everywhere

“January 24, 2017
“Councilmember Huizar,
We the undersigned Skid Row-based organizations and service providers write you to express our deep concern with the proposed appointment of Blair Besten to the Proposition HHH Civilian Oversight Committee. This appointment is expected to go in front of City Council on Friday, January 27, and we strongly urge you to reconsider this appointment and instead propose someone who is more qualified and has more experience in working with homeless policy and programs.
Our organizations worked tirelessly in last year’s election to ensure that every voter we engaged voted “Yes” on Proposition HHH. LA CAN’s work on HHH alone through door knocking, phone banking, and GOTV efforts resulted in us contacting more than 35,000 unique voters to support HHH. Now that it has passed, proper implementation is key, and the civilian oversight committee is critical to ensuring that these funds are spent wisely. It is also an opportunity to bring experts and advocates on homelessness and housing to the table to provide the valuable input required to make sure Proposition HHH funding is delegated appropriately. Lastly, we believe that there should be representation from those impacted by homelessness. Expertise comes in many forms – and those with lived experience in homelessness and/or working directly with homeless populations is extremely important.
For these reasons and others, we strongly oppose the appointment of Blair Besten to this committee. Besten is a business leader in Downtown LA whose work has actually contributed to the displacement of low-income and/or homeless residents in our community. As opposed to the other two proposed appointees, she has no expertise on homeless services, policy or permanent supportive housing development. Additionally, in recent years she has been opposed to opportunities to get people off the streets and into housing, like the failed Cecil Hotel Home for Good proposal that would have seen 300 homeless people put into housing.
There are far more qualified individuals within Downtown and specifically Skid Row who would be better candidates for this committee. We would be willing to submit potential names, as our organizations have been serving the homeless population in Skid Row for decades.
In closing, we urge you to not appoint Blair Besten and instead make a greater effort to create a committee of individuals who are qualified and fully committed to getting homeless individuals off the streets and into permanent housing.

Church without Walls
UCCEP
Los Angeles Community Action Network
Los Angeles Poverty Department
United Central City East Prevention Project
Can we organize????”

Again LA City officials have passed laws forbidding both rich and poor from sleeping in their cars and on the street, despite the failure of court mandated programs to house the homeless, due to the problem being larger that the resources assigned to resolving the problem. – eric

1 reply »

  1. All I know is there is and always has been huge amounts of staph in Venice….MRSA….I got it 3 times and I had an apartment there for seven years….the homeless had it, the renter’s had it….it is obviously spread via bed bugs….even a single bug can drop off a tourists rolling suitcase, hitchiking a ride….it’s all over LA actually and nothing to do with Venice homeless….it’s in homes all over the USA actually….mostly found where people sit and sit in the same place on a regular basis like a habit.

    I have pictures of some of my Venice staph…the doctor’s won’t tell people it is spread via bed bugs…they act like your a dirty person with scabies and they would know it’s really bed bugs…….

    Would you want to sleep in a hotel bed that a drug addict slept in the night before? Hotels have the most bed bugs. Apartments next. Homeless have them also but they move around so much they have the least. Some people got them in vans but the summer heat tends to kill them off….unless they keep their vehicle cool and keep pets inside it’s unlikely.

    The bugs are still there in hotel rooms….and bit the next tenant with the old tenants blood in them, often some traveler carts them around because travelers pick them up from hotel beds, they change the sheets but the bugs are hiding, often clear across the room behind picture frames in bed frames and under the carpets…..

    Some of the diseases these bugs carry is not as bad as staph…you may just get a lot of bites or swollen lymph glands…..people think bed bugs are so harmless but they carry as many diseases as the blood in them found…which is really likely to be at least several dozen or more……

    Any arguments? I studied bed bugs, many years….watched them bite certain places on me and watched the staph and lymph infections grow….If an animal does not suck and carry blood, the infections people get are entirely different. Staph is blood vector-spread disease, spider bites is a poison bite.

    Bed bugs do infect certain homeless camps….they tend to grow populations only around regular places if outside…A day of one time blood meal isn’t going to do much….They tend to show up where there are people in places where people sit in the same spot day after day after day like an invalid in bed or someone that sits on a computer in the same spot everyday or a sick and dying pet is the most trouble.

    If someone is sedentary on the same spot day after day or in the case of a hotel that always has a new tenant in the same bed..there’s blood there everynight, but the bug bites aren’t as noticed if there are just a few little spots…it looks like you scraped yourself……..that is a trouble spot if it has a steady source of human blood…..the bugs don’t get noticed multiplying if they get blood off of a different person all the time or the person is bed bug resistant, they get bit but it doesn’t show and spiders and mice, etc eat bed bugs so they keep them dying.

    Staph rarely comes from a toilet seat…we always got it on ankles or wrists, exposed easy skin….so I know it’s bed bug bites causing it…..the bugs find people sitting and sleeping and sneak around to bite ankles, even crawl under clothes or bite the neck sometimes…..but it’s much easier to bite a naked person in a hotel room so hotels have the most bed bugs because each person get’s bit just a little so it goes unnoticed.

    Homeless have less bed bugs because they sleep with more clothes on and don’t tend to have pets…the bugs live on pets also mice or even birds in cages…. but not unless the pets have a regular and stationary sleeping spot and the bed bugs memorize the spot…..they are more likely to be in hotels… apartments and homes with sick pets in the same spot all the time….that’s where staph is coming from…hotels and pets mostly and the people in them always dropping bugs around the homeless…..