Life at Homeless Commune Comes to a Bittersweet End

By ANNETTE KONDO

May 22, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SUNLAND — They called it home, this tree-shaded gulch next to a creek.

For a decade, and probably longer, homeless residents had created a commune-like cluster of plywood-and-tarp huts, built side by side in a hidden glade near the Foothill Freeway.

Communal breakfasts and dinners were served from a central mess tent equipped with an outdoor grill and makeshift stove. A hanging tire provided children with recreation, a discarded tub was recycled for outdoor bathing.

Residents pooled weekly money for groceries and sundries, one person was assigned fire detail, and the community handled problems by democratic consensus.

“We were a family. It all worked,” said recent inhabitant Charles Bolin, a 50-year-old Vietnam veteran. “If someone didn’t get along, we had a vote and kicked them out.”

But on Friday, “Jurassic Park,” as the inhabitants affectionately called it, had become extinct. No trespassing signs were posted on the private land Thursday and those of the encampment’s 14 residents who remained were told to leave immediately.

The property owner, Joyce Majors, has hired a contractor to clear the area of brush and structures on Monday, said Pat Davenport, a deputy to Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs. Majors could not be reached for comment.

The rural homeless encampment was one of several in the Sunland and Tujunga area that generated complaints from nearby residents in recent months. Because of brush fire danger, city fire officials recommended a July 1 deadline to close all the encampments, some of them nestled deep in Little and Big Tujunga canyons.

When the complaints reached Wachs’ office, several social agencies were contacted to try to find alternative housing and services for the homeless, Davenport said.

A meeting has been scheduled for Thursday, when the homeless will be transported to Finn Park in Tujunga to meet with shelter and social service agencies. The hope, officials said, is to avoid displacing people to the streets when all the camps are closed.

Bolin questioned why Jurassic Park, which he said has kept the homeless “out of sight and out of mind” for 12 years, has only recently been viewed as a fire and public health hazard.

Bolin’s friend, Noel Johnson, 56, who used to visit fellow homeless at the encampment, said most of the inhabitants do not have enough money for an apartment, and, like Bolin, do not want to live in a shelter.

“A great many of them want to continue to camp out and not pay rent,” Davenport said. “The problem is, where is that acceptable? And I don’t have an answer for that.”

Jurassic Park, so-named, Bolin said, for the area’s abundant deer, rabbits, coyotes and other “natural critters,” was home to three married couples and a former Vietnam War medic.

Family-style meals of stew, rice and beans, even chicken and dumplings, were cooked up in the mess tent.

But on Friday, the village was ghostly silent.

Tiny footbridges spanned the now-dry creek, leading to a 50-foot-long complex of shelters. Across from the creek, an outdoor “living room” was set up complete with area rugs and a plywood table.

An odd assortment of castoff chairs in a variety of fabrics--ochre, brown velour, floral, beige geometric--seemed ready for guests.

Everything--Coleman lanterns, old pans, tarps, children’s toys--was recycled and re-recycled.

A few weeks ago, some of the homeless, aware of the camp’s impending closure, were visited by police officers and city officials.

Some decided to leave, lining up a dozen suitcases on the street. A truck picked up the people and their possessions, but no one interviewed Friday knew who hired it or where it went.

Don Muniz, a Los Angeles police officer familiar with the area, said he remembered residents such as “Benny,” who had been at the camp for 10 years.

At one point, Benny left to take care of a friend who was terminally ill, Muniz said, but after his friend’s death Benny ended up back at Jurassic Park.

Some residents have known of the encampment for years. Muniz and others speculated that they thought Caltrans owned the freeway-adjacent property or that no one knew how to track down the private landowner.

Jurassic Park’s demise has put the homeless closer to local businesses and neighbors.

“In my opinion, it will make them more visible,” Muniz said. “Now they will be there in the city constantly. For a while we will get more calls about them living in doorways and sleeping in parking lots.”

For Bolin, who shuns shelters, the future is uncertain.

With just a few minutes to leave, he said he packed up only his most precious possessions, including the American flag from his Army company in Vietnam. He wondered if he should risk going back to get a tent.

“Maybe it’s a push to get us to do something,” he said of the encampment’s closure. “I don’t know. Maybe it will push us down farther.”