Sanitation workers collected more than 35 tons of trash while cleaning the closed Echo Park Lake, which a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles parks department said the city is hoping to reopen by the end of the month.
This comes more than a month after police cleared a large homeless encampment of more than 170 tents from the park amid large protests by activists in the community. The timing of the park’s closure was kept secret by city officials until the last minute.
But in the preceding weeks and months, outreach workers were able to get more than 160 people who had been living in the park into hotel rooms being rented by the city and other forms of interim housing.
Once it was closed, city workers began to clean the park, pack and store belongings that were left behind by residents and repair broken streetlights and the grass.
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