Opinion: The Hatred of Homelessness Hits Home in Woodland Hills

Editor’s Note: The following column is a work of fiction inspired by the recent arrest of the disabled veteran known to many as the “Mayor of Woodland Hills.” The author has written extensively about the plight of the homeless in this neighborhood of Los Angeles.

“Crazy white people,” Frank thought, shaking his head ever so subtly as he listened to the scene a half block away — surreptitiously eyeing it from under a large, straw, sombrero-style sun-hat.

Seventy years old, short, and powerfully built, the hat covered a round bald head that was smooth and unlined just like the rest of Frank’s honey-brown skin. But the most distinctive thing about Frank was his profoundly black eyes — eyes so ink-black it was if a bonfire were kindling when they twinkled at you.

Outwardly, bent over a red rose bush in his immaculate postage-stamp-sized “front yard,” small garden shears in hand, wearing worn, heavily scuffed brown boots, and blue old-school overalls over a crisp white t-shirt, he looked completely absorbed in his task — a smile of satisfaction and serenity on his face — not paying the slightest bit of attention to anybody or anything else; he was engrossed as if delicately trimming a delicate bonsai tree only he could see.

But Frank Hudson was a fixture on “Providence Street,” one who saw and heard everything that happened in Woodland Hills. And he could be faithfully relied upon to say absolutely nothing about it — what he saw, and what he heard — to anyone. He was completely uncommunicative. The most you could ever reasonably expect from Frank was that he might tip his hat or nod in your direction if disposed to you favorably.

Other than that Frank kept to himself. However, he did — anonymously of course—regularly report the obvious criminal activity he saw in and around “Brownies,” the new grotesquely pastel-brown-painted marijuana dispensary built a half block away and within eyesight of Frank’s house. Not just a store it was also one of the company’s concrete greenhouses, where weed was grown by the ton under bright lights. A veritable eyesore, “Brownies” itself was about a half block in length and width. Frank would never ever allow himself to get used to it.

Frank had been trimming the same rose bush abutting his sturdy, little, starter-style house — a house he’d lived in for over 40 years, 30 of them with his wife Darla who was dead now — and he bore the distinction of being the last Black man to fully and outrightly own a house on Providence Street since, well, since at least the turn of the century: 2000.

Heck, these days buying a house was damn near impossible in Woodland Hills even for well-to-do white folk in the valley. Soaring interest rates, a tight housing market saturated with cutthroat all-cash buyers, in many instances corporate entities, meant not even close to enough affordable housing for everyone. It meant million-dollar-plus homes rearing their heads just one or two more streets up from the boulevard than where Providence Street sat with its older, more utilitarian structures, more urban yards and lots.

In fact, there weren’t many personal residences left on Providence Street — at least not anymore. With its proximity to Ventura Boulevard, many of the original owners saw the light— and the money — decamping, mostly, to parts of California unknown while their old “dream” houses from yesteryear were converted/retrofitted into small businesses, with the exception of St. Mark’s Church of the Holy Redeemer and the run-down “Vistas on Ventura” apartment complex. The few single-family homes still existing were mostly old and outdated homes occupied by seniors, pockmarked haphazardly now down the length of Providence Street.

Suddenly, the “crazy white people” Frank had been feigning as if he was “not” paying attention to began to act even crazier.

It began with public Defender Sally Garon. She was running late for a court hearing and out on Providence Street investigating the misdemeanor theft of a Whole Foods shopping cart her new client, Gerald Freeman, aka “The Mayor of Woodland Hills,” was charged with, but she was nevertheless deep in thought. (Inexplicably, or perhaps completely understandably given the circumstances, Sally was thinking about the captivating diary of Brazilian writer Carolina Maria de Jesus she’d just read — and that woman’s herculean struggle to stave off her and her children’s hunger by scavenging for scraps of metal and paper to sell.

Despite the fact that Sally had just been publicly — and extremely loudly — harangued by the owner of Diva Salon, Candice “Chic,” merely for doing her job, defending “The Mayor,” Sally was remembering one of DeJesus’ final heartbreaking entries: “The world is so bitter that I want to die. I sat in the sun to warm up. With the harshness of life, we are the unhappy wanderers in this world, feeling the cold inside as well as out.”

Candice, not one to be ignored, was feeling emboldened from a bottle of “Southern Comfort” she’d been nipping on with Buster Frinch — an out-of-place looking lawyer who was currently standing off to the side, on the sidewalk, looking sheepishly at his nearby son, Abacus. Abacus, a chunky, frumpy-suited man, was in many ways like his dad. But he was a part-time realtor and wannabe lawyer currently stumped by the California Bar Exam. Abacus was perspiring, and his face was red. He was glaring at his dad.

“He confessed, you know?” Candice hissed at Sally, giving her and Sally’s investigator, Rusty, the evilest of evil eyes.

“Your client, the so-called ‘Mayor of Woodland Hills,’ came wheeling out of his apartment like a bat-out-of-hell, probably high on drugs if you ask me, and rolled right up on the police. He said that was ‘his’ Whole Foods cart that some dirty old homeless broad was pushing down the street. Confessed it right out loud. One of my regular customers, Cordelia D. told me all about it. So listen, sweetie: Your ‘client’ (Candice used her hands to emphasize air quotes) best plead guilty.”

“Hey Candice, yoo-hoo, hey can you see me?” Everyone including Frank Hudson — though one would never have noticed, his gardening hat barely moved — looked in the direction of where the voice was coming from over on the corner, near the back of the decaying and facetiously named “Vistas on Ventura” apartments. It was old Ms. Majeski. She’d been a tenant in the Vistas for almost as long as they’d existed, and she was decaying just as bad.

Her housecoat, face, and brown-silver hair were dirty, and she wore pink open-toe flip flops with no sandals. She had her walking stick in one hand and in the other a plastic bag from 7-Eleven. “Hey Candice Chic, hey yoo-hoo,” Ms. Majeski crowed mawkishly at the oddball, motley crew.

“Hey Candice: You just called your own mom a ‘dirty old homeless broad.’ How’d she get that way, huh?”

Even from where Frank was lovingly pruning his roses, he saw the shades on the back window of The Mayor’s apartment flutter. A muffled, hoarse laugh, one that could easily have been mistaken for a sudden burst of bird chatter — unless you were Frank Hudson and had his senses, his wealth of knowledge — was echoing loudly, positively rumbling from within.

Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills. Follow him on “X”/Twitter @SteveCooperEsq