A homeless encampment bordering Beverly Hills is upsetting residents and business owners in the wealthy pocket of celebrities and millionaires surrounded by the city of Los Angeles.

The encampment along San Vicente Boulevard, near the upscale Beverly Center shopping mall and famed Wilshire Boulevard, is technically in Los Angeles. The Beverly Hills Police Department made clear to the Sun that there are no encampments within Beverly Hills city limits.

“We have an ordinance that prohibits overnight encampments in the city,” the Beverly Hills public information coordinator, Lauren Santillana, tells the Sun.

Business owners with shops along San Vicente Boulevard, on the Beverly Hills side, say the technical border between municipalities doesn’t stop the unhoused — many dealing with substance abuse disorders and mental health issues — from crossing the street and wreaking havoc on their businesses.

“They ask for money. They sometimes take things without permission, of course,” restauranter Vrej Madadian, whose Beverly Hills restaurant is situated at the intersection of San Vicente and Wilshire boulevards, tells the Sun. “We sympathize with them, but on the other hand, it’s a family-friendly business. We’ve had instances where in front of a full house — lunch time — they broke a big window, shattered it. And luckily nobody was hurt.”

Mr. Madadian says another time a homeless person threw his chairs into traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. He says most of the time he doesn’t call the police when he thinks he can handle a disturbance. “But sometimes we call the police, but there’s not much they can do,” he says.

An employee at a Beverly Hills Starbucks near the encampment site, who would give only her first name, Jackie, tells the Sun unhoused residents come in to steal food and take “showers” in the bathroom. Some have stolen money from the tip jar. She says employees are instructed to mark the incidents down in a ledger and not to call the police, unless the situation turns violent.

Los Angeles is reeling with a homelessness crisis. There are more than 41,000 homeless people in the city, and more than 69,000 in Los Angeles County, according to the most recent head count conducted by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. About half of all homeless people in Los Angeles County suffer from substance use disorder, while about a third have a serious mental illness. There are on average five homeless deaths per day.  

The homeless population is visible in tents along sidewalks, in RVs parked along city streets, under highway overpasses, and crammed along the sides of freeway exits. Skid Row and Venice have been dealing with large homeless encampments for years. Despite a former Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, committing nearly $1 billion in the 2021 city budget toward combating homelessness, the problem continues to grow.

A Democratic mayor, Karen Bass, was elected in November in large part over her promises to address the homelessness crisis. In her “state of the city” address this week, Ms. Bass conceded that “the state of our city is not where it needs to be.” 

The first challenge Ms. Bass addressed in her speech was homelessness. She touted the initial success of her Inside Safe initiative to convince residents of homeless encampments to accept temporary rooms in motels with social services, followed by permanent housing placement. Ms. Bass says since its launch a few months ago, Inside Safe has placed 1,000 individuals in temporary housing. She said she is committing $250 million in the city budget toward expanding Inside Safe.

“We have finally dispelled the myth that people do not want to come inside,” Ms. Bass said.

Ms. Bass also said her budget will include an “unprecedented” $1.3 billion “to accelerate our momentum on homelessness.” The money will in part go toward buying motels and hotels to be converted into housing for the homeless. Ms. Bass also said the city will use opioid and tobacco settlement money to pay for substance abuse treatment beds, though she provided no numbers.

Homelessness is the top concern for California voters, according to a March Quinnipiac poll, which found that 84 percent of the state’s residents think it’s “a very serious problem,” and 69 percent think California is “doing too little to help.” Los Angeles, like other West Coast cities, is hamstrung by a 2018 Ninth Circuit decision that bars the city from clearing tents and enforcing anti-camping ordinances because it doesn’t have adequate shelter beds to provide the unhoused.

On the border with Beverly Hills, the contrast between the haves and have nots is even more stark. A resident of the San Vicente Boulevard homeless encampment, James Boss, told a local news reporter that the Los Angeles police had told him to camp there.

“The police department told us to come over this way because they were going to offer us housing,” Mr. Bass said.

The Sun reached out to the LAPD and was told to contact the mayor’s office. Mayor Bass’s office did not return a request for comment by time of publication.

“The City of Beverly Hills works to provide resources to the unhoused, as all cities should,” Ms. Santillana said. She would not say whether the city provides shelter for all unhoused. Yet on the San Vicente encampment she was firm: “I want to make it clear that is not in Beverly Hills.”