Benito Flores, who greater than 5 years in the past seized a state-owned residence in El Sereno to protest towards homelessness in Los Angeles, has died.
A 70-year-old retired welder, Flores had been preventing to stay within the residence. Final month, he and a gaggle of supporters prevented Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division deputies from evicting him from a small duplex on a slender avenue in El Sereno.
As a part of the eviction protection, Flores constructed an elaborate tree home 28 ft excessive in an ash tree within the residence’s yard, the place he deliberate to retreat if police tried to haul him out.
Within the six weeks because the failed eviction try, Flores continued to fortify the property, together with constructing extra defenses in a second tree within the yard. Supporters imagine that Flores died after falling out of that tree.
On Friday afternoon, a neighbor discovered him unresponsive on the bottom close to the tree together with his security harness damaged, stated Roberto Flores, who operates a non-public neighborhood heart in El Sereno and helped manage the continued protests.
“He’s a martyr for human rights, for the first rate proper of housing for everybody,” stated Roberto Flores, who isn’t associated to Benito.
Benito Flores was the ultimate holdout in a protest that captured nationwide curiosity when it started in March 2020.
Flores and a dozen others occupied empty houses owned by the California Division of Transportation, which the company acquired by the lots of a half-century in the past for a freeway enlargement that by no means occurred.
The activists, who name themselves “Reclaiming Our Properties,” argued that the true crime wasn’t breaking into empty homes, however moderately that publicly owned houses had been left vacant whereas tens of hundreds of individuals lived on the streets of Los Angeles.
Backed by a wave of public help, the dozen “Reclaimers” had been allowed to remain legally in Caltrans-owned houses for 2 years by way of a short lived lease settlement managed by the Housing Authority of the Metropolis of Los Angeles. When that expired in late 2022, Flores and lots of Reclaimers tried to stay within the properties, saying the alternate options supplied by the housing authority had been inadequate to maintain them completely housed.
However as eviction threats mounted, a few of the protesters started accepting settlements to go away and others had been evicted. Flores continued the battle.
He informed The Occasions on the eve of the June eviction try that he wished to make a press release about political leaders failing to offer housing for all who want it. Flores suffered from diabetes and stated if he was eliminated he would have had no different choice besides to sleep in his van — the place he lived for 14 years earlier than the house seizure.
“Who is meant to provide everlasting housing to elders, disabled and households with youngsters?” Flores informed The Occasions final month. “It’s the metropolis and the state. And they’re evicting me.”
About 50 mourners gathered at Flores’ residence Friday night time for a vigil and ceremony honoring his life and activism. His physique, coated with a white sheet, remained within the yard and supporters positioned flowers on it after paying their respects.
The official reason for loss of life stays beneath investigation. Personnel from the L.A. County Medical Examiner arrived on the property Friday night to take away the physique and start their examination.
