![]() The property information on this website is derived from Royal LePage listings and the Canadian Real Estate Association's Data Distribution Facility (DDF®). ![]() “Even today when I see a fire, I feel a knot in my stomach.© 2022 BRIDGEMARQ REAL ESTATE SERVICES MANAGER LIMITED “You work day and night for years to build something and it is gone in a matter of hours,” he said. He fears his family wil live with insecurity for the rest of their lives. He lost the clothes he had preserved from his sons’ first birthdays. Álvarez lost the letters his wife, Marta, had written to him from Mexico when he first arrived in L.A. ![]() When we bought the house in 1997, I felt like it justified our decision to immigrate from Mexico.” I immigrated from Mexico because I wanted a better life for my kids. “I feel helpless living in an area like this,” he said. The new encampment sits directly behind the cramped two-bedroom apartment where Álvarez moved after his house burned. “We don’t have the means to replace the house if it gets burnt down,” she said. Her daughter, Sabrina Brown, said she stays up all night worrying about what’s going on behind her house. “I constantly live in fear of something happening at the back of my house.” “Do you know how scary it is to get a call that says there is another fire behind your home?” asked Álvarez’s next-door neighbor, Yvonnette Brown. The man has now set up a new camp a short distance down the same pathway, and more fires have occurred, terrifying others on the block. He had notified the police about the man, who would often get high and play loud music. Álvarez said he thinks the man who built the encampment behind his house sparked the fire while trying to steal power. Cooking outdoors, burning wood to keep warm, and heating up drugs to inject or smoke are among the many causes of these fires. My wife is working at a clothing store to make up for some of it.”Ĭamps have become a major source of fires across Los Angeles. “But the $1,400 of rent for our temporary house has been an added expense. “We are saving up to fix the house,” he said. The $70,000 shortfall is equivalent to more than 100 weeks of hard work in the furniture workshop making closets and cabinets. Álvarez hasn’t been able to fix his house yet because the insurance company has covered only a part of the $200,000 replacement cost. The concrete channel falls under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Flood Control District, but the dirt path parallel to it is part of the Los Angeles city street system. Housing & Homelessness L.A.’s crackdown on homeless camping off to slow start with little enforcementĮnforcement of Los Angeles’ revised anti-camping law rolls out in slow and uneven steps. The fire that burned his house started in a homeless camp occupying a dirt path that extends from the so-called Lanzit property along the Compton Creek channel behind a row of factories and residences on East 108th Street. Álvarez, who owns a cabinet-making business in a cramped factory half a block from the house, has become a heart-wrenching example of the gloom and frustration spreading over his Watts neighborhood from a nearby 10-acre field of weeds and homeless camps owned by the city of Los Angeles. “When it caught onto the tree, I had to back off,” Álvarez said.īy the time firefighters doused the fire, much of the house had been reduced to ashes. But all he could do was helplessly watch as his worst fear came true. Álvarez frantically picked up a garden hose. He screamed for his wife, who awoke their son, and the family fled the house. Instead, the back of his house was on fire - where his adult son was fast asleep. Gustavo Flores Álvarez was getting ready for bed on that November night in 2021 when he thought he heard a gunshot.
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