I don't know anyone who is not frustrated, saddened and appalled by our homelessness crisis.
The tent cities, the garbage-strewn sidewalks, the plein-air bicycle chop shops _ they're all signs of a great social apocalypse.
We have failed on such a massive scale.
Because of that, I simply cannot hold it against people who live in cars or vans.
For many homeowners in neighborhoods such as Venice, vehicle dwellers are a scourge. For a homeless man named Gary Gallerie, they presented a business opportunity.
Some years ago, Gallerie, a former beer truck driver and World Series of Poker dealer, decided to buy cheap vans and rent them to people who were homeless or unable to afford apartments.
The idea came to him after the van of some friends was impounded.
He bought their van at auction, and made them a deal: If they paid him a small monthly amount for 22 months, they could have the van back. After 17 months, though, they found an apartment. "I made out like a champ," Gallerie, 70, told me late Friday afternoon as we sat on the Venice boardwalk. "I got the rent for 17 months, and I got the van. I said, 'Wow, what a good way to get people off the street, I'll just rent 'em vans.'"
The van lord of Venice was in business.
He took out an $8,500 credit card loan and started buying old vans, mostly from private parties.
His fleet numbers 13. Nine are parked in Venice in the funky residential neighborhood between Pacific Avenue and Abbot Kinney Boulevard. Monthly rents range from $150 a month to $300.
Most of his vans have little stickers on the back windows: "Van Life Is Not a Crime."
"I've identified all mine," he told me. "I don't care if the neighbors know which ones are my vans. My vans are clean vans. They are not the ones that have all the garbage around them."
In fact, the stickers were how I tracked him down after reading about his business in the Santa Monica Daily Press.
On Friday, I rode my bike around Venice, looking for his stickers. I found one of his renters, who called Gallerie for me. Gallerie was hanging out on the boardwalk, so I biked over and met up with him.
He was remarkably open with me about his business. He's been living happily in vehicles for 15 years, although it's been hell on his love life.
"Once a woman finds out I live in my van it's over," he said. "Absolutely over."
He keeps a low profile, sweeps the streets and tries not to annoy the residents.
He prefers single renters; couples, he said, fight too much. Tenants come to him from Craigslist, or by word of mouth. He has a five-person waiting list right now, he said, and he will evict renters who bother the neighbors or fail to keep the area around the van clean.
"One guy was hanging his clothes to dry in the trees next to the van. After two warnings, I said, 'You do it again, you're out.'" (His renters do not have traditional tenants' rights; they sign no contracts.)
Gallerie keeps the ignition keys and gives tenants door keys only. Cars can be considered abandoned if they stay in the same spot for more than 72 hours, so he moves the vans every three or four days to accommodate the law. In Venice, street cleaning is on Mondays and Tuesdays, so he moves each van to avoid tickets.
They all have current registrations and insurance.
There's just one problem: The business is not legal.
