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As a backhoe and skip loader ripped away the screen of arundo stalks, the outskirts of a hidden village of huts slowly came into view. Most were made from tents, tarps, blankets and sticks.
A few stragglers slunk away, dragging what they could in suitcases and rickety carts along the sand and boulder surface of Big Tujunga Wash.
The excavation of the invasive bamboolike arundo began Nov. 7 as more than 100 volunteers donned masks and gloves to begin the Herculean task of cleaning up the wash. Among the items collected: piles of clothing, mattresses, dressers, tires, box springs, hypodermic needles, a big-screen TV and a wheelless motor home.
The cleanup -- and summary eviction of as many as a hundred squatters -- on 300 acres of private land a little more than a mile upstream from Hansen Dam was organized and financed by property owners of the Riverwood community of Sunland, a hillside enclave of about 35 homes whose residents come and go on a single road crossing the wash.
Over the last three years, the growth of the shanty village has despoiled a public resource and subjected homes along Oro Vista Avenue to burglaries and the threat of violence, said Brian Schneider, who spoke for the residents.
But the encampments of Tujunga Wash have fallen into a tangle of inconsistent rules for public and private land and conflicting perceptions of homelessness.
Among the volunteers, many of whom did not want to be named, a whistle-while-you-work spirit was offset by open animosity for public officials -- particularly 7th District Councilman Felipe Fuentes -- who, they contend, have dismissed their calls for help out of deference to the rights of homeless people.
In Tujunga Wash, Schneider said, "homeless" is a "euphemism for people who are breaking into our cars, trying to break into our homes, selling drugs. I'm not safe in my own neighborhood."
Fuentes countered that the city, unlike private property owners, is limited by constitutional constraints and its own homeless ordinance from removing people from public property and confiscating their property, while private-property owners are responsible for abating nuisances on their land.
He agreed that there is...