A Los Angeles business owner has found a novel way to keep homeless people from camping near his building: playing a children’s song on an annoying loop.
“They played ‘Baby Shark’ all night long,” Tracy, a woman who lives in an encampment next door to the building at the corner of West 11th and Main streets, told NBC4 Los Angeles. “They’re doing everything they can to make us move or drive us crazy. But it’s doing the latter. It’s driving people crazy.”
The building owners began playing the song through a loudspeaker pointed directly at the encampment, which Tracy told the outlet had “kept her and others up all night.”
“This is ridiculous. We can’t get any sleep. We can’t get housing. We can’t eat,” she said. “And now they’re trying to drive us crazy with children’s music.”
Shalom Styles, who owns the barbershop Styles Barber Lounge, around the corner from the business playing “Baby Shark” told the outlet that they aren’t trying to be mean or insensitive to the homeless, but have businesses to run and are “just trying to survive.”
“It’s not always about being kind, because when people are taking away from business, and all the stores are going out of business,” Styles said. “We’re still here surviving, trying to put up for our family.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom released details last week about his multi-billion-dollar plan to tackle the homeless crisis in the Golden State and is pushing cities and counties to take “immediate action.”
On Monday, Newsom shared a model ordinance for cities and counties to “immediately address dangerous and unhealthy encampments and connect people experiencing homelessness with shelter and services.”
“There’s nothing compassionate about letting people die on the streets,” Newsom said in a news release.
The ordinance is backed in part by $3.3 billion in new Prop 1 funding, Newsom’s office announced, adding that the governor is “calling on all local governments to act without delay.”
Newsom is also encouraging local leaders to use their authority, affirmed by the US Supreme Court, to address homeless encampments.
“The Governor is calling on every local government to adopt and implement local policies without delay,” Newsom’s office said.
Newsom’s office told Fox News Digital that the governor has “actively held communities accountable who do not follow state law to address homelessness”, sharing an example of when the state sued the City of Norwalk in 2024 for “its unlawful ban on homeless shelters.”
The governor’s office added that, while national homelessness went up by nearly 7% last year, California’s increase was only 0.45% and was lower than those of 44 other states.
“Governor Newsom is the first governor to actively address this issue in our state, and he is reversing a crisis that was decades in the making,” Newsom’s office said.
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