LA County officials want to register “peddlers” who they say are at-risk athletes seeking benefits from social services offices.
Supervisors voted on Tuesday to consider creating a “buffer zone” outside county offices, prohibiting certain types of “aggressive” solicitation from people seeking food stamps and cash assistance. County attorneys have two months to figure out what such a place looks like.
To come climbing following an investigation into seven people who claimed employers outside the South Los Angeles Social Services office paid them Sue County over sexual harassment. Many times later they told the times, they, were asked for sexual harassment outside the social services office in Long Beach, although at first they believed that they were also recognized as movie extras.
“We are painfully aware of the ongoing allegations of fraud and bribery tactics used to recruit clients and the charges against the County,” said Supervisor Janice Hahn, who announced she would press charges against the county after hours. “There must be greater accountability both to protect survivors from seeking justice and to ensure that fraudulent claims and demands for destruction are stopped at their source.”
More than 40 County Services offices serve as one-stop shops for residents who need help applying for food, housing and financial assistance. Apart from many large offices in poor areas, a bustling ecosystem thrives with goods that sell goods and services to them.
Administrators said Tuesday they were concerned about some of the donations.
“Vendors asking for copies of people’s personal documents, trying to sell them products and recruiting people to come into the County – this behavior puts citizens at real risk and undermines trust in our public services,” said manager Lindsey Horvath.
Supervisor Kathryn Bariger said she wants to see changes that will protect taxpayers and “vulnerable people who are used as pawns to line the pockets of many lawyers.”
The move went from 3 to 0. Directors Hilda Solis and Holly Mitchell, in their district we include the office of the social level where some of the crime happened, absent.
Times spent two weeks outside the South La Fall office and salespeople were looking for a large number of people with Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance for low-income people in California. Retailers would pay them anywhere between $3 and $12 for the Covid and blood tests, which they said would be billed to their state insurance. Some people say they always stop and it’s a fast place.
Free phone giveaways are also popular for those who qualify for a government-sponsored program. Receivers complained that phone service was often short-lived, with some people returning to the kiosks days after they stopped being counted.
Leaders in the Ministry of Social Affairs, who oversee the offices, say they are limited in what they can do outside their institutions. Many of the busiest areas are in Los Angeles or smaller cities, where the County has no jurisdiction. Controlling where vendors can proceed on public side streets has shown a loyal head of local governments in the past.
Last year, the Los Angeles City Council eliminated the “velid-free zones” it had created in areas where street vendors found street vendors. The ban was met with howls and a lawsuit by vendors who protested the street display was not stopped and the city no longer distributed the stairs.
Eugene Volokho, first amendment professor and Stanford University’s Hoover senior fellow Suspensionsays the district will have to be careful to define what behavior is “inappropriate” and what is protected speech.
“The devil will be in the details,” said Volokh. “Whenever you hear words like ‘or’ exploitation’ or ‘exploitation’ or ‘harrassment’ or ‘harrassment’ or ‘harrassment’ or ‘exploitation’, dealing with terms that can seem vague and often made, are too vague to be inaccessible words.”
