Chatsworth Residents, Business Owners Want Homeless Staying In RVs To Scram

CHATSWORTH (CBSLA)  —  Business owners and residents in Chatsworth are fed up with homeless people who have made their streets look more like a homeless encampment or RV park.

The homeless are using RVs and they line Nordhoff Place.

"You can look around, everything is dirt," said Danny Aslan, owner of Cosmetics Made In USA.

"It's a big problem," he said.

Business owners have gotten so fed up, someone painted a curb red a couple months ago. Now a petition is being circulated by Scott Caswell to get the RV's out of the area.

"The Rv'-erss are dropping their refuse on the ground. And when they need to defecate, they don't have choices," said Caswell.

"I don't think that that is true," said Candace Curran, "maybe for some. But that's not true for us....They're just using it as an excuse to get us out."

Curran and her family have been in an RV in the neighborhood for the past two weeks.

"It's a little frustrating," she said, "because they don't give us many places to park."

She says the problem is two-fold. The RV parks are either too full, or too expensive.

Caswell says the petition isn't just to get rid of the people here but to find a solution.

"Pushing the homeless out to another spot is not solving it. It's just moving the problem around. We've got  to do something better," said Caswell.

Caswell submitted the petition with 600 signatures to Councilman Mitch Englander. The councilman voted against the vehicle dwelling ordinance that was amended by the City Council. It forced the RV's out of the residential areas and into industrial areas.

Englander's office has spent money on sanitation teams and extra parking enforcement.

In a statement he said in part: "while residents are understandably fed up with a problem that continues to grow in scope year after year, I am determined to continue tackling the issue so that the current crisis never becomes the status quo."

Today, 'No Parking' signs went up on this street forcing Candace and the others to leave by 10 p.m. but Candace says she has a better idea.

"Open an empty lot or something like that, so we can all park," she said.