Los Angeles Airport Faces Squatter Problem
A long-term parking lot at Los Angeles International Airport is home to some 130 recreational vehicles. The RVs provide housing for many airport and airline staff who need to stay overnight in Los Angeles but have no place to stay. Airport authorities want to shut down this semi-permanent squatter camp.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Los Angeles International Airport has an issue with squatters. They're not homeless, and they're not protesting anything. They're airport and airline workers, and they've set up camp in a parking lot. More than a hundred state-of-the-art RVs, bedraggled trailers, even a converted bus or two have converged on a corner of long-term Lot B. Reporter Robin Urevich paid a visit.
ROBIN UREVICH reporting:
Aboard this airport shuttle, LAX Lot B looks like a pretty ordinary parking lot.
Automated Voice: Now approaching Lot B. I serve all designated shuttle stops in the lot. Please be sure to claim...
UREVICH: But then the bus makes a wide right turn, and RVs are stacked up, well, like planes on a runway. One of them belongs to flight attendant Donisha Galbreth(ph).
Ms. DONISHA GALBRETH (Flight Attendant): It's just a little community. We all have an understanding. And kind of, sort of, everybody keeps a watch out.
UREVICH: Twenty days a month Galbreth is on call at LAX more than 300 miles from her home in San Jose.
Ms. GALBRETH: So if they don't call me in to fly, then I don't have anyplace to stay, and so I bring my motor home down here. I stay in the motor home. I have all my own stuff.
UREVICH: Some of Galbreth's neighbors have tried to make this giant slab of potholed concrete a little more like home. Flags fly from some rigs. A ceramic lawn ornament in the shape of a puppy sits outside one trailer. Others have real-life pets. But Mike Biagi, who directs airport land operations, says LAX is not in the business of running mobile home parks.
Mr. MIKE BIAGI (LAX Land Operations): This is a public parking lot and not an RV storage facility nor an RV campground, and we really aren't set up for that. I personally have observed outside containers for human waste that were leaking onto the pavement.
UREVICH: For years, Biagi says, a few employees parked RVs on the lot, so they could rest between shifts. But when a nearby beach campground closed, non-airport employees settled in, too. The price was right at $30 a month, and at last count airport police report 130 rigs on the lot, and they say at least one prostitute had set up shop. Last month airport police served eviction notices on all the RV dwellers, but employees protested and won a reprieve till July 1st.
(Soundbite of aircraft flying overhead)
UREVICH: Another reason the squatters camp has grown is hard times in the airline industry, says Northwest Airline's mechanic Terry Johnson. He says no one wants to be on Lot B, but he has no other option.
Mr. TERRY JOHNSON (Northwest Airlines): Why would you want to stay in a parking lot if you didn't have to, you know? Airplanes every five minutes, you know, all the alarms going off in the cars when they go over, so not the best. But like I said, it's all I can do as far as ...(unintelligible) 'cause I got a house payment and a kid and a wife at home, you know. So...
UREVICH: Home is Minneapolis, where Johnson spends his days off. Other Lot B dwellers commute from places like Hawaii, Indiana and Washington state. With little job security in the airline industry these days, they say they don't want to sign a lease. Meantime, Lot B dwellers are negotiating with airport officials. If they aren't allowed to stay, says Donisha Galbreth...
Ms. GALBRETH: A lot of people don't know what they're going to do. Some people have said that they're just going to sleep in the break room, you know, which we're not supposed to do. But if they kick us out of here, then some of us don't have any other choice.
UREVICH: The board of airport commissioners is expected to make its decision early next month, well before the July 1st eviction deadline. For NPR News, I'm Robin Urevich.
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