The tents and tarpaulins were visible for miles, dotting the scrubby embankments of the Arroyo Seco and prompting complaints to the city from worried neighbors.
Many feared that the people living in the shaggy, freeway-adjacent tent cities were bringing drugs and petty crime into their northeast Los Angeles communities.
In May, the city launched a cleanup that took six days and cost $66,000 by the time it ended in late June, records show. But while the encampments along the concrete riverbed were cleared, none of the displaced people were given housing, advocates say. They simply scattered into the nearby streets of Lincoln Heights and Highland Park, or took to the hills of Elysian Park.