Austin Yi said he couldn’t take it anymore. Noise from the tents along Shatto Place rose to his third-floor Koreatown apartment at night: yelling, screaming, the clanging of tools as people repaired bikes.
When he couldn’t drown out the racket with white noise, the 27-year-old and his wife would drag blankets into the hallway to sleep on the floor. Yi regularly lodged complaints through the city’s 311 system.
“At first I had so much sympathy,” he said, recounting the times he had handed over money or offered to buy food. “Now it changed me. … I wish they would just go away.”
Around the corner from Yi, Fernando Alvarado lamented the items he lost to city sweeps of homeless encampments: His shoes. His identification card. A blanket to ward off the night chill.