workers

started dismantling

the fence that surrounds Echo Park Lake on Monday, two years after a massive homeless camp was evacuated from the historic park.

Councilman Hugo Soto-Martinez, who took office in December, vowed to remove the temporary fence, calling it a “symbol” of the city’s biggest homelessness bust. The fence went up in 2021, just as dozens of homeless people were moved from the park to motels, hotels and homeless shelters.

Two weeks ago, Soto-Martinez and Mayor Karen Bass conducted their own camp operation nearby, moving dozens of homeless people from the streets near Echo Park Lake to hotels in downtown and Silver Lake. Soto-Martinez has promised to send street workers and unarmed aid workers to the park to make sure it remains safe and people don’t retreat.

Some who were in the park on Monday morning had their doubts.

Reina Moreno, who walks in the park every morning, said she no longer wants to see the park full of rubbish and human waste. Moreno, who lives nearby, said she’s okay with crews taking down the chain link “as long as they put one up.”

“If there is 24/7 security here, there is no problem,” said the 57-year-old hair stylist. “But if they don’t take care of it, then there should be a permanent fence.”

Some residents who live across the lake have expressed similar concerns, saying the park was the scene of fistfights, shootings and fatal overdoses when the encampment was at its peak. They had lobbied for a nicer, permanent fence.

Spencer Bowman, 25, was thrilled to see the gate come down. Sitting on a bench overlooking the lake, he called the fence “an eyesore and a monument to that ugly period.”

“It just seems to exclude and it’s visually metallic and gray and ugly,” he said.

Two years ago, an encampment of nearly 200 tents covered much of the park, occupying almost all of the grassy areas on the Glendale Boulevard side. Hundreds of people showed up to protest the removal of the encampment, sparking clashes between LAPD officers and protesters.

In November, Soto-Martinez defeated Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, who had not taken a position on the fence, saying he would follow the wishes of the community.

Soto-Martinez said earlier this month that voters in the district, which stretches from Echo Park to Hollywood and Glassell Park, chose to tear down the fence when they elected him as their councilman because he had repeatedly promised to do it during his campaign to delete. .

“Fences represent a plaster,” he said. “It represents elected officials basically saying, ‘I don’t know how to solve this problem.'”

Soto-Martinez has been somewhat vague in recent weeks about the exact date of the fence’s removal. In a recent statement, he said only that it would disappear by the end Friday.

Representatives for the councilor had no comment on the fence, which came down on a municipal holiday, when city services are closed.