I live in West Los Angeles and have been by this encampment, as well as many others throughout West LA. The article portrays the encampment as some sort of "community" where people who have made a few bad decisions or caught a few bad breaks have come to "get back on their feet".

The reality is this encampment, like many others, is pretty close to hell on earth. It's a site of abject misery, squalor, and violence. People regularly get stabbed, beaten, and raped there. The people in the camp set fires, scream wildly at all hours of the day and night, fight with the fire department, consume hard drugs openly (i.e. meth and fentanyl), and destroy the surrounding environment with an astounding amount of trash and human waste. The park they occupy as well as the nearby library are now unusable by the general public.