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Some customers walking outside of West Hollywood trader Joe wear an annoyed look on their faces. It has nothing to do with rising grocery prices.
The source of the stimuli is a small blue box installed in the stairwell leading to the market, and is the latest tactic used to prevent immobility from camping in the area.
As people pass by the shopping centres, motion-activated devices chat like loud, unsettling cricket.
“That’s very annoying,” Jeffrey Howard said, leaving the market with groceries. “It’s like an alarm from a smoke detector, just waiting for someone to turn it off.”
Another shopper, Travis Adam Wright, said he thought the device had a bad response to the issue of homelessness and the bad look of West Hollywood.
“I feel that’s the Jerk’s first reaction to people living on the streets,” he said.
Blue Box joins an increasing list of deterrents deployed by business owners in Southern California and property managers who have put issues into their own hands to deal with the homeless crisis.
In downtown Los Angeles, property owners blasted out the monotonous children’s song “Baby Shark” to stop camping last month. In 2023, LA Metro began playing big classical music as part of a pilot program to drive homeless people out of subway stations.
Bluechirper, a $400 device invented from frustration, plagued passersby at a West Hollywood shopping centre. The site’s real estate management company has tested the devices and says the results so far appear positive.
(David Butow/For the Times)
However, a blue box called Bluechirper releases a rhythmic racket. Chirp sounds are caused by passing through someone under the motion sensing device, regardless of their intention.
A West Hollywood City spokesman said Code Enforcement Officers will visit the stairwell to check if the device complies with local noise ordinances. If there is a violation, the city recommends alternatives.
West Hollywood spokesman Joshua Shea said the Chirp Devices are not in line with the city’s response to the homeless population, including nonprofits providing outreach services.
The shopping centre property management company learned about the device through other news stories and installed it a few weeks ago. The company said it was testing the devices, but so far the results appear to be positive.
“We all recognize and worry about caring for the homeless population,” investor real estate services president Robert Warren III said in an email. “On the other hand, we are responsible for working to provide clean and safe access to this shopping centre.”
Chargers represent one less subtle way that property owners and others feel that public places are welcome to those unwelcome.
Armrests protruding from the middle of bus benches and park benches are a modest way to prevent people from lying down, said Esther Marglies, a professor at the USC School of Architecture and the Institute of Spatial Sciences at Dawncife.
Margulies said they understand that dissatisfied property owners will meet as people try to find shelter around the building. But she said devices like Chirper represent the private sector trying to solve problems local governments need to deal with.
“We’re not dealing with the underlying causes by either taking people out of the shelter or creating these kinds of hostile elements that are just moving,” Margulies said. “We are dealing with this social and economic problem without dealing with causes, so we are despicable and have reduced the quality of the public environment.”
The latest data shows that there were 75,312 homeless people in Los Angeles County in January 2024, about 200 fewer than the previous year, but about 6,100 more than 2023.
In March, Los Angeles County supervisors approved a $980 million funding budget for homeless services, including initial funding based on the Scale A sales tax, aimed at addressing the issue of homelessness in cities.
The BlueChirper device sold for $400 and was invented out of frustration.
Stephen McMahon first unfolded the device outside the complex storage area of the Santa Monica Mansion after the invasion and her young daughter’s neighbor was attacked by two men.
McMahon initially proposed a solution to the Homeowners Association’s board of directors to block trespassers. Now, the retired photo shoot director follows the Bluechirper order after teaching himself how to make a circuit board that can emit annoying sounds and flash blue light.
He says the device works as intended in his condo complex.
The majority of the sale comes from women under the age of 40 who prefer the “non-aggressive side” of the device, McMahon said.
He hopes there’s no need to resort to this tactic, but he feels that little has been done to deal with the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles County.
“I don’t want to punish anyone. I want them to go somewhere else,” he said.
In West Hollywood, local merchants say the device has managed to stop camping on the stairwell leading to Santa Monica Boulevard and several eateries.
Chirp is hardly noticeable at nearby pizza restaurants with closed doors. But in Waxology Weho’s four businesses, employee Roxanne Moreno says he can hear the sound and is embarrassed that this is the solution used to address the issue of homelessness in the area.
“These people are patrons too, and this comes across as another step in criminalizing the homeless,” Moreno said. “What is the ultimate goal for all of these?”
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