Sun Valley business owner Val Mijailovic has reached his breaking point.
Since 2007, he’s operated a martial arts video production company in what was once a quiet industrial area. But during the pandemic, the city relaxed parking enforcement, and the block of Randall Street where he works began transforming into an unsanctioned RV park, cluttered with rundown vehicles, piles of trash, and disruptive behavior.
“The businesses on Randall Street have been infested by mobile homes, tents, drugs, addicts, prostitution, and mentally ill people,” says Mijailovic, who made a YouTube video highlighting the disorder. “They are getting into our trash cans. They’re smoking dope between the cars. They are walking around naked. They break our sprinkler systems. And it just goes on and on and on.”
This Sun Valley RV encampment is blocks away from the nearest home, located close to an LA County Department of Public Social Services office where people receive General Relief checks and food stamps.
Today, parked beside warehouses and recycling centers, there are 25 recreational vehicles, plus dozens of cars, tents, makeshift shelters, and even a boat.
Concerns like Mijailovic’s have been mounting across the city. Throughout Los Angeles, there are about 6,500 people currently living in RVs parked on public streets. That’s one in seven of LA’s total unhoused population.
Now the city is ramping up efforts to remove many RV encampments. Last month, the LA City Council directed transportation officials to start towing more RVs, and city leaders are also considering a new policy to provide more resources to RV dwellers: safe parking sites, temporary storage, even financial incentives to turn over vehicles.
But that doesn’t mean the people living in them want to leave … or have anywhere to go.
In sweltering heat, Hope the Mission’s Armando Covarrubias hands out cold water to unhoused RV dwellers along Randall Street in Sun Valley. Photo Credit: Aaron Schrank/KCRW.
A few weeks ahead of a planned RV removal operation on Randall Street, outreach worker Armando Covarrubias and his colleagues from local nonprofit Hope the Mission canvass the block, delivering water bottles, snacks, and hygiene kits –– along with some unsettling news.
“Later on this month, they're going to come in, and they're going to do an operation with the RVs,” Covarrubias tells the locals. “I don't know what they're going to do, but if [your RV is] not operating, chances are that they're going to get a tow. Just to give you guys a heads up.”
Randall Street’s unhoused residents aren’t tracking policy, but they certainly know neighbors like Mijailovic and others – whose pleas to City Councilmember Imelda Padilla to remove the encampment have led to the upcoming sweep – are mad.
“It is understandable,” says Narek Pogosyan, on a break from playing an amplified bass guitar on the sidewalk. “It’s hard to blame them for that. But then it creates a little bit of friction.”
Pogosyan says he’s been experiencing homelessness for the past five years and has lived in an RV here for the past five months with his longtime friend and drummer, Greg.
“We’re from Armenia originally,” says Pogosyan. “We went to the same school in Armenia. Then, we came here, and we were part of the jazz band in [Glendale] High School together. And then we kind of crossed paths again.”
Narek Pogosyan jams on his bass guitar on the sidewalk beside his RV home. Pogosyan is the former frontman of a band called Slow Motion Reign. He has been experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles for the past five years. Photo Credit: Aaron Schrank/KCRW.
He’s grateful to have a community – and a motor home. Like many other RV dwellers, he doesn’t exactly consider himself homeless.
“I call it residentially challenged,” says Pogosyan, half-jokingly. “We’ve kind of been getting by living in our RVs and stuff. With RVs, it’s like a mini-house with amenities. You can have a shower, a stove, a refrigerator. It does feel closer to home. But it does have its limitations of course.”
In his case, the mobile home isn’t always fully mobile.
“It runs,” says Pogoysan. “It just needs some small adjustments. Like a flat tire could keep you basically stuck. And then you’re S out of luck.”
Many of the RVs on this block don’t start –– which means they could be impounded by the city this month. Greg, the drummer, says even more of those on this block could lose their RVs because of expired registrations.
“They would prefer it to be registered, but they don’t have the money to register it,” says Greg, who has been experiencing homelessness for about a decade and preferred not to use his last name. “They can’t do it, and most of them will get towed because of that reason. And it has [happened] before too. They walked them out of their RV and towed the RV. They’ve done it to me before.”
Some inoperable RVs could be disassembled and destroyed –– a process that costs the city between $5,000 and $9,000 per vehicle.
Seized RVs will be stored in city-owned impound lots, as owners do have legal rights to their property.
“Then you could go pay for it and get it back,” says Greg. “But if I didn't have money for the registration, how am I going to pay $700 for a tow?”
25 RVs are parked on Randall Street in Sun Valley, along with cars, tents and makeshift shelters. Photo Credit: Aaron Schrank/KCRW.
The city is currently expanding its RV storage capacity. According to an August 22 report from LA’s City Administrative Officer, the city recently leased a parking lot from LA Metro for RV storage. The city has approved more than $2.7 million in construction costs for new fencing and asphalt grading on the lot.
Between June 2022 and June 2024, LA’s City Administrator’s Office has overseen about 370 of these RV operations, involving more than 2,800 vehicles. Thousands of people were told to leave – but fewer than 200 ended up in temporary shelter. Meanwhile, more than 600 recreational vehicles were impounded by the city.
Greg isn’t sure what will happen here.
“I’ve heard that things like that are coming up,” says Greg. “But I’ve also heard that you will get paid for them taking your RV. Five hundred dollars –– that’s what I heard. But I’m not so sure.”
He heard wrong. That $500 incentive has been offered as part of a pilot program in a different LA City Council District nearby. City leaders are considering expanding that approach across the city, but they haven’t done it yet. So, that’s not happening here, at least not this time.
When this RV encampment is displaced, everyone living on the street will be offered “interim housing,” which typically means a shelter bed.
“Our job is to offer them services and try to get them indoors,” says Laura Harwood, Hope the Mission’s senior program director. “Obviously the street is not a waiting room. We need them inside our shelters and able for our case managers to be able to work with them and get them referred to other types of housing. Permanent housing is the goal, but there’s not enough beds for all these people.” 
Outreach workers for nonprofit Hope the Mission approach an RV on Randall Street to offer water, hygiene items, Narcan and other items. Photo Credit: Aaron Schrank/KCRW.
“Good morning,” says Hope the Mission’s Armando Covarrubias, approaching a rundown RV. “Would you be interested in getting on a waitlist at the shelter?”
“I already am,” says RV dweller Derek Randall. “I’ve been on the waitlist a long time. But they say I have too many animals: three chihuahuas and a cat.”
For many people surviving in RVs, moving into a shelter is seen as a step down. It can be a tough sell for outreach workers.
“They always put us in the shelter in Sylmar,” says Denise Smith, a 60-year-old woman who uses a walker and has been staying on Randall Street. “They keep offering me the same thing. It’s like, I don’t want to go to the damn shelter, people. They have fights there. The food sucks. I don’t know if this one has a curfew or not, but most do. There’s no privacy, just a little cubicle. It’s just weird.”
Like most people on this street, Denise has been to nearby shelters and tiny home villages, but prefers it out here. She stays in a car with her 36-year-old daughter, Francesca.
“They said it'll take way longer for us to get a room if we want to be roommates together,” says Francesca Smith. “I take care of my mom. If I'm not there, mom won't survive. So I guess that means we have to be on the streets longer to get in there. I mean, we've talked to them a thousand times and just the same crap every time.”
A box truck on Randall Street has been converted into a living space. Photo Credit: Aaron Schrank/KCRW.
The mother-daughter duo used to have an RV, but not anymore.
“The cops took it,” says Francesca. “We couldn’t move it, because we couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t starting. I mean I begged the cop. I was hysterical.”
She says the same police officer advised her and her mother to come to this street.
“They said if you go down on Randall Street where the GR office is, we’ll leave you alone,” says Francesca. “So we come down here, and then boom –– sanitation, boom –– cops are going to be coming soon, supposedly, to kick us out. Well then, why tell us to come here? It’s like they’re just rounding us all up like cattle.”
The Smiths have been homeless together for about five years. They want a hotel room –– like their friend on this street, Daniel Strasser.
“I was staying right here in an RV with my buddy, but they put me in one of the housing hotels for right now,” says Strasser. “Hopefully to get into a place, but it’s kind of weird there because you have a roommate that you don't know, and there's nothing to do there. So, I go there a couple nights a week, stay, sleep, come out here for a few days, and then go back and forth, because everyone I know is over here and my hotel is all the way in Van Nuys.”
Strasser has been unhoused for 13 years. At one point, he even had a good chance at permanent housing –– something everybody out here wants.
“Well, I was on Section 8 and I got approved for it, but I was in jail,” says Strasser. “So my voucher expired by the time I got out. It was my own fault. I should’ve [taken] care of my warrants and stuff.”
Trash and discarded belongings are strewn along the Randall Street RV encampment following a scheduled cleaning that was cut short by sanitation workers. Photo Credit: Aaron Schrank/KCRW.
According to the LA City Administrator’s Office, the RV removal operation in Sun Valley will involve outreach workers from Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, officials from the city’s transportation and sanitation departments, as well as LAPD officers.
The city hasn’t told the street’s residents exactly when they must leave, but promises to provide 72 hours notice to everyone here.
“I don’t know where they think we’re all going to go,” says Francesca Smith. “We’re just going to end up going out into the community, all scattered about. And then the community is going to be pissed to see us, you know?”
Narek Pogosyan isn’t too worried.
“It’s not my first time having to move from a location,” says Pogosyan. “That’s why we have RVs, you know? They’re vehicles that can move. We don’t want to overstay our welcome either.”
A 62-year-old RV dweller named Joe puts it more bluntly.
“We’ve gotta find another street to go to,” he says. “It's a complete circle, you know what I mean? It's a never-ending cycle.”