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Before the sun rose on Tuesday, Benito Flores strengthened the front door of his one-bedroom duplex on the narrow streets of El Sereno.
Flores, a 70-year-old retired welder, illegally seized his home five years ago, after the California Department of Transport left it vacant five years ago. He was allowed to stay for several months and was then directed to this nearby home owned by the agency, but it’s time for him to go.
Late in the morning, deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office were planning to keep him out.
Flores clearly had other plans. Over the course of months he saw 2×4 wooden and used it as a brace between the entrance and the interior wall to make it difficult to violate. He closed the metal screen door. After Flores was satisfied, he secured the entrance on Tuesday and retreated to a wooden structure that made it 28 feet tall on ashes in his backyard.
If the police want him to leave, they will have to bring him to his wooden house.
“I’ll resist as much as I can,” Flores said.
The 6-foot-tall, 3-foot-wide homemade structure represents a bigger protest that attracted national attention in March 2020 with Flores’ final stand. They said they wanted to bring attention to the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles.
According to Flores, this issue is not so urgent today either. He argued that political leaders have failed to provide housing to everyone who needs it.
“They don’t care about people,” Flores said. “Who is supposed to give permanent housing to elders, disabled people, families with children? It’s the city and the nation. And they’re driving me out.”
For the public institutions involved, resistance represents an incompromise that they believe in the support and tolerance they have provided to Flores and fellow protesters who call their group “recovering our homes.” The state allowed group members or collectors to stay legally and pay rent well below the market rate for two years. Since then, the institution continues to offer permanent housing and referrals for financial settlements up to $20,000 if group members voluntarily leave.
They said evictions are a last resort and are required by law.
“We have no authority to operate anywhere else,” says Tina Booth, director of assets management for the city of Los Angeles Housing Authority, who runs the housing program on behalf of Cartran.
Four reconstructors remain in the house, including Flores.
The two are expected to accept the village and leave within a few weeks. The ultimate recoverer also has a court-ordered eviction against him, but plans to leave safely.
Caltrans wants to sell Flores’ homes and other empty homes in El Sereno to public or non-profit housing providers.
Flores said it would make no sense to kick him out as he was intended to be used as a qualified and affordable home. Flores, who suffers from diabetes, raises around $1,200 a month with Social Security and supplemental payments. Flores said he had no other option but to sleep in the van if he was removed.
“We’re going to live on the streets for the rest of our lives,” Flores said in an open letter sent to Sheriff Robert Luna last week that he and others kicked him out in a protest group.
Flores has received advance notice of lockout. His supporters began arriving at 6am on Tuesday to fill in the normal sleepy block. Flores had already awakened in the tree.
Within 90 minutes, over 20 people arrived. They stationed an observation deck in the corner. Some provided another layer of defense through a side door inside Flores’ home.
1. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies will speak across the fence at Benito Flores on Shelley Street in El Sereno, California on Tuesday, June 3, 2025.
Activist and former mayoral candidate Gina Viola gathered crowds on the sidewalk. What she said was “despicable.” She said people in power need to act to quickly provide permanent housing, just like Flores and the Reconstructionists have.
“This is part of a long postponed calculation,” Viola said.
She pointed to the treehouse and praised Flores.
“He was a 70-year-old elder, and he climbed… Turns this point into the sky to the world: “This is my home, and I will not leave it.”
The structure can be seen from a few weeks. Flores had signed the front in a message calling for a city-wide rent strike.
The tree house is elaborate. Flores used galvanized steel braces to attach a series of ladders to ash tree trunks. If the trunk became higher and narrower in the tree, Flores bolted the spikes to the bark and took the final few steps into the structure.
Hanging inside the wooden house and on nearby branches were blankets, warm clothes, food, water and his medicine. To keep things clean there is a wooden broom that allows him to clean up the leaves and other debris. Flores was hoping to charge his phone through an extension cord connected to electricity in the garage. He bolts the chair to the bottom of the wooden house and holds a safety belt to catch him if he falls down.
Deputies had not arrived by 9am, wearing a harness to speak to members of the news media from his driveway. He spoke from behind a locked fence.
Flores rejected the allegations that housing authorities provided him with another place to live. He said that offers to support agents, such as Section 8 vouchers, are not guaranteed. He cited the struggles voucher holders face when they find landlords to accept grants.
“They provided me with potential permanent housing,” Flores said of the housing authorities.
Jenny Scanlin, the agency’s chief strategic development officer, said Flores was offered more than 20 referrals to other homes, but he refused them. Some were involved in waiting lists and vouchers, but others were quickly occupied, she said.
“We absolutely believe there was an alternative place for him to live in: permanent affordable housing,” Flores was open to support, Scandin said.
Joseph de la O, 62, seized a Caltrans home in 2020. He accepted a settlement from Hakra and then returned to homelessness. He came to Flores’ house to protest the eviction. ”
When Flores was held in court in the driveway, he rolled up the legs of his pants to show his diabetic pain and said there was no place to refrigerate his insulin on the street.
The supporters were dominant while Flores spoke. The property management company representative held the drill and milled it far from the block.
At about 9:45, two sheriff’s cruisers parked away from the block. Three agents left, met the real estate manager and walked to Flores’ house.
Flores’ supporters met them in the driveway. The deputy said he wanted to talk to Flores and said he had hone his past into a locked gate. Flores asked himself why seniors need to be kicked out. The agent responded that he provided assistance from the adult protective services and was following orders from the court.
The deputy handed him a pamphlet explaining the housing resources the county had provided. The crowd began booing and screaming “shame.”
The officer then tried to reason with Flores in Spanish. But it was clear that things weren’t going anywhere.
“Sute,” the policeman told Flores. “Good luck.”
Then they left.
The sheriff’s department could not immediately request comment, and a Caltrans spokesman introduced the comments to housing authorities. Scanlin said it hopes the lockout process will continue in response to court orders.
Flores and his supporters believe that sheriff’s deputies can return at any time. Some plan to camp at his house overnight.
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