NEWS
April 16, 2012 | By Jeff Dietrich
Carol Schatz, a leading advocate for downtown business owners, says in her April 9 Times Op-Ed article that a federal judge's ruling to uphold the property rights of skid row's homeless residents enables homelessness. I am a homeless enabler. My organization, Los Angeles Catholic Worker, has been publicly accused by police and the business community of being homeless enablers because we provide food -- more than 5,000 meals weekly. We provide blankets, raincoats and heavy blue tarps for shelter.
OPINION
April 9, 2012 | By Carol Schatz
A federal judge last year issued a preliminary injunction against the city of Los Angeles, effectively allowing anyone in the area around skid row to store personal belongings - including mattresses, overflowing plastic bags and shopping carts - on the sidewalks. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Philip Gutierrez was intended to protect the possessions of homeless and street people, and to prevent them from being mistaken for garbage and removed from the public sidewalks. As a predictable - if unintended - consequence of that ruling, hundreds of people have transformed the streets of skid row and surrounding neighborhoods into their personal storage facilities.
BUSINESS
January 27, 2012 | By Shan Li
Greeters decked out in blue vests are a familiar sight at Wal-Mart store entrances nationwide. Now they are moving inside. In February, the nation's biggest retailer will pull greeters from the lobby and into the store so they can more actively help with customer service, Wal-Mart spokeswoman Ashley Hardie said. Greeters have been around at the discount giant since 1980. Hardie said Wal-Mart has expanded the duties of greeters over the years to include tagging return items and wiping down shopping carts.
BUSINESS
November 25, 2011 | Tiffany Hsu and Hailey Branson-Potts
Southern California shoppers were offered a new twist Thursday to their annual Thanksgiving routine: the chance to do some post-dinner bargain hunting. Eager to get a jump on pushing low-priced inventory out the door, many big chains moved the opening bell for Black Friday sales to midnight -- or even earlier. Toys R Us opened at 9 p.m., while Wal-Mart trotted out new bargains at 10. Macy's, Kohl's, Target and other chains were set to open at midnight. But not all went smoothly.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 26, 2011 | By Bob Pool, Los Angeles Times
So far there have been no dead bodies, no safes stuffed with soggy cash, no rusty stolen cars. The only things exposed by the receding water at Echo Park Lake have been shopping carts, 55-gallon steel barrels, a parking-enforcement "boot" and lots of skateboards. But who knows what is still hidden in the muck at the bottom of the 13-acre lake, soon to be dredged and outfitted with a leak-proof clay liner? Officials say that leaks once required them to replenish the lake with valuable drinking water.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
August 9, 2011 | By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times
The long-awaited Paddle the Los Angeles River pilot program got off to a wobbly start Monday as two dozen civic leaders in hard hats and bulging life vests stepped into kayaks and pushed out through murky ripples in the Sepulveda Basin. The group of flood control officials and City Councilmen Tony Cardenas and Ed Reyes was chaperoned by experienced kayakers and naturalists on hand to make sure no one tipped over into the treated urban runoff or entangled themselves in the heavy brush laden with shredded clothing and plastic bags that lines the 70-foot-wide channel.