Benito Flores has been waiting almost a week for Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies to arrive at his door. The 70-year-old recently received a notice to vacate his home in El Sereno or be forced out. Surviving on around $1,200 a month through Social Security and government payments, with no other housing lined up, he says he faces a stark choice: either this place, or the street.
“ We are going to resist in [a] very, very intense, very strong way, and very creative way,” Flores told LA Public Press while standing in front of his home on May 7, the deadline for him to leave. In a press release, he wrote that “it is likely that I will be killed by the violence of the sheriff or Highway Patrol.”
Five years ago, Flores, along with more than a dozen other people, took over Caltrans-owned homes in El Sereno that had sat vacant for decades due to a proposed freeway expansion that never happened. They shared a united purpose: to highlight the government’s failure to provide people with housing, even while liveable housing sat empty…