Whoa! Don't start making up false stories about the homeless and exploiting them to put fear in people's hearts! Discarded furniture certainly can be a blight, but when's the last time you saw a big homeless encampment suddenly appear around it? The homeless have enough problems with their plight without people making up false and fear-mongering stories about them. Did you think homeless people would not exist if you simply did not put your furniture out?! Are you suggesting people leave their homes and become homeless because they see furniture on the street -- and so without the furniture, people would just stay in their homes and we would have no homeless people?!

Walking the dog this morning on Sunset Boulevard we passed a rather nice library chair just sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. I looked a bit of the fool carrying it home, but that didn't stop us from the adoption. Little did I know until reading LAPD Officer Serrano's fear-fueling assertion that our deed may have prevented the chair from potentially attracting upwards of 25 homeless people to it!

Ida Talalla asked me to post this for her:

Despite the convenience of calling 311 to have Bulky Items removed at no cost,
many have the mistaken notion that it will be taken away by somebody who might find it useful. However, this rarely occurs and the item is vandalized over time. Want to feel altruistic? Call a Thrift Store that has a furniture pick up service at no cost, such asOut Of The Closet.

What is a worse trash blight in community is orphan trash (surface trash) that gets into Echo Lake, the LA River and the Ocean. Waterways are major transporters of surface trash that is not adequately managed, Our storm drains empty along the way, till it arrives at the Ocean where pollution affects recreational use and often kills marine life. The wire mesh trash cans are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of trash deposited. More frequent trash collections are costly. However, in recent years many US cities, parks and towns haveturned to solar Big Belly, a solar powered compactor trash can. Echo Park TAP (TrashAbatement Project), a community based organization obtained grants from the Officeof Community Beautification and Keep LA Beautiful. The attached recycling units have abaffle to prevent cans and bottles from being retrieved. The efficiency, despite the high initial cost, saves on labor and energy, and in a short time pays for itself. The two sets willdebut in Echo Park shortly.

I must agree with Mark's point about Homeless being attracted to the bulky items left on the street. We, the Greater Echo Park Elysian Neighborhood Council, have held about a dozen community clean ups in the last year or so where part of the clean up focus is picking up bulky items.

We have been provided huge roll off bins by the City of LA Sanitation Department that we park in the community and then rent a U-Haul truck to pick items up.

Unfortunately, we have consistently filled each one of the bins in just a few hours of driving around the neighborhood. According to the department of sanitation, we have picked up over 6 tons of bulky items with those clean ups.

I have participated in each one of those bulky item clean up events and have picked up items in at least 250-350 locations around the neighborhood and have never seen a homeless camp around any couches, mattresses and entertainment centers tossed out by our inconsiderate neighbors.

I think the state of the economy and the lack of adequate resources available to the homeless community contribute more to the homeless situation than bulky items left out on the street.

finally, I would like to encourage our neighbors to call 3-1-1 to report any bulky items that have been left out or they are considering getting rid of. The more we all participate the better our community will look.
JOSE SIGALA