Clean and Safe Teams Coordinate with LA Sanitation on Community Cleanup of Bulky Items
From discarded mattresses and other furnishings to wooden pallets and household appliances, our district is awash in bulky item trash. Some of it is illegal dumping and some of it is a byproduct of our large unhoused population. But whatever the cause, we’ve all seen how our streets, sidewalks and alleys can suddenly – or chronically – become cluttered with unwanted objects. The VB BID has made picking up bulky trash items a high priority, but our capacity to dispose of these items is limited by the availability of large dumpsters. We simply don’t have enough of them. However, last month LA Sanitation stepped up to help us out!
Spearheaded by Azucena Vela and Paul Williams, who respectively head up our Safe Team and Clean Team, the BID held a very productive meeting with key representatives from LA Sanitation. As part of an overall process to continually improve our methods of working together, LA Sanitation offered to help us conduct enhanced community cleanups within our district. They provided us with a 40-yard temporary dumpster drop off so that we could do more intensive pickups of bulky trash.
Building trust and mutual cooperation is a high priority.
One of the most important aspects of the VB BID Clean and Safe Team services is our deliberate process of relationship building with our unhoused residents. Because of the respect and concern shown by our team members, our unhoused residents work with us to keep encampments cleaner for all. Our teams hand out trash collection bags as needed, and return to pick them up when full. The teams also work closely with our unhoused population to determine which bulky items are abandoned or unwanted. Unhoused residents identify unwanted items, so our teams can remove them with confidence that they are not someone’s personal property.
Below are a few before and after shots along Venice Boulevard. Throughout the district, the team picked up an extra FIVE TONS of bulky trash during the community cleanup period. What a difference a dumpster drop makes!
These additional cleanup efforts would not have been possible without the assistance of Renée Shackelford and Jennifer Valdivia at LA Sanitation. Thank you both!
