Los Angeles Residents Are Working Around the City’s Dysfunctional Homeless Policies

From street cleaning to trash removal to helping people find housing, exasperated residents are taking matters into their own hands.

A homeless encampment ravaged by fire on El Centro Avenue in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles before cleanup. Courtesy of Keith Johnson

LOS ANGELES—It started with one street in Hollywood. A retiree began chatting with a neighbor who was picking up trash and volunteered to help.

Keith Johnson had spent years as a high school photography teacher. Now, looking around at what he saw as a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in front of him, he thought the homeless crisis wasn’t being accurately reflected in media coverage—or official responses coming from City Hall.