[ad_1]
A woman known as the ‘Governor’ of downtown Los Angeles‘ notorious Skid Row section has slammed city officials who destroyed her luxurious tent last week.
Stephanie Arnold Williams blasted the destruction of her luxurious dwelling – dubbed the White House – even though she also owns a nearby tiny home.
The brazen vagrant’s former property came equipped with a hot tube, generator, solar panels, toilet, kitchenette, sewing machines and a walk-in closet.
In a video posted on Twitter a week before authorities moved in, Williams showed her home off in a manner similar to the popular MTV series Cribs. ‘Every person should have one… You might as well do it right,’ Williams said as she lay across her immaculate white sheets.
‘I call it the White House because the government’s not doing their job correctly so I’m here to show them how to do it… they just sit at a round table and talk about stuff that don’t work,’ she added.
Stephanie Williams shows off her hot tub in a recent video that was posted to TikTok
In the recent video, Williams said: ‘Every person should have one… You might as well do it right’
A crowd gathered to watch the home known in the area as The White House get taken away
The canopy of Williams’ home is loaded into the back of a dump truck
Williams’ hot tub was one of the many items that were destroyed
The mother of four’s home was destroyed as part of what’s been called a ‘routine cleanup’ by the Department of Sanitation & Environment, reports ABC Los Angeles.
The station described crews dismantling several homeless encampments along Skid Row. Camera’s captured the moments when a the crane of a dump truck grabbed the canopy of Williams’ tent.
The canopy, along with the home’s floor and walls were then loaded into the truck.
‘So I built my house right here on wheels. I was going to start building it for the homeless. They don’t want tiny houses here,’ Williams told the gathered reporters.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Williams said: ‘I said wait a minute, it’s on wheels. I can push it around the corner. We can push it to the street. We can do a lot of things other than demolishing it.’
On her Facebook page, Williams references one of her jobs as ‘freedom fighter at Stop Police Brutality Now.’
Williams told social issues publication Red Canary in a 2022 interview that she moved to Skid Row from her native Indianapolis in 2013 after she became involved in a ‘beef’ with the local police.
She said that an Indianapolis cop broke her leg during an altercation in which she was accused of trespassing in her son’s apartment.
‘We called the police cause we was having a family dispute, and when they came in, they was like: “I hate black people,”‘ Williams said. She went on to allege that an officer handcuffed her and then proceeded to break her leg.
The impeccable white sheets and bedspread in Williams’ home
Williams speaking to the media on the day her home was destroyed
Crews sweeping up the debris after the destruction of Williams’ home
In an interview with LA Magazine, Williams said that on February 13, the day her home was destroyed, it was encircled by members of the Los Angeles Police Department.
‘They didn’t offer me housing. They didn’t offer me anything. They took my blankets, my contact lenses, all my food. They threw away pots and pans and cups and things I needed to eat,’ Williams told the magazine.
She went on to say that she was given 30 minutes notice before the destruction and spent most of that time remonstrating with the police officers.
A GoFundMe page has been set up by Williams’ assistant Debra Reed in order to help her to back on her feet.
Williams also said that she is known locally as either The Governor or Mama Stephanie. In November 2020, she wrote in a Facebook post that she had suffered a stroke.
‘I provide tents around me while people are waiting for housing. There are also protesters and a community watch team that help watch the community. And we’re our own security,’ Williams continued.
‘It was callous, it was mean and, in many ways, it was calculative. You had no less than 12 to 15 cops, you had heavy equipment and the [sanitation crews] came out to essentially demolish that corner while letting the tents across the street remain,’ a witness to the demolishing, Pete White, told the Los Angeles Times.
Williams pictured on her Facebook page prior to moving to Skid Row in 2013
Williams posted this photo shortly after she suffered a stroke in November 2020
The Times article goes on to say that a spokesperson for the Department of Public Works said that all of Williams’ belongings were available to be picked up at a storage facility.
‘News footage and videos on social media showed a crane from a dump truck damaging the canopies as it scooped them off the sidewalk, and crews discarding tables used for the distribution of food and clothes,’ the Times reported.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass pledged in 2022 to get over 17,000 homeless people into housing in her first year through a mix of interim and permanent facilities.
On the same day as the LA Magazine interview, Williams spoke to a representative from the Mayor’s Office of City Homelessness, Jarvis Emerson. He told Williams that he did not know about the planned destruction.
‘I put wheels on my house so that you can clean underneath. I’m the one that gets on my hands and knees and scrubs this ground with a mop. I use a toothbrush to get into cracks. There’s not even a cigarette butt on this ground. I’m the best cleaner,’ Williams said in her interview.
Earlier this week, Culver City officials voted three to two on Monday to bar tents and other structures – and the change will come into effect when more housing models for the homeless become available, including a Project Room Key site and a designated homeless area at Virginia Parking Lot.
Culver City is located just west of Los Angeles.
In total, there are around 100,000 unhoused people in California. With other high concentrations in the northern part of the state in cities such as San Francisco where nearly 8,000 people are sleeping on the streets.
Homelessness is hugely visible throughout California with people living in tents and cars and sleeping outdoors on sidewalks and under highway overpasses.
Mayor Bass vowed to get people housed and more housing built so that residents can see a real difference, which hasn’t been visible despite billions spent on programs to curb homelessness, including $1.2 billion in the current city budget.
The leading cause of death among homeless people in Los Angeles is drug overdoses, other leading causes include murder and suicide.
Between 2016 and 2021, fentanyl overdose deaths in Los Angeles County increased a whopping 1280 percent, between 2019 and 2020, they increased 149 percent from 462 to 1,149, and were up 31 percent in 2021 to 1,504.
[ad_2]
Source link
