There is a drama unfolding on the street in front of my condo building in Brentwood. For the last four months, an RV with a trailer hitch has been regularly parked on the block. Clunky and well worn, it easily takes up two parking spaces. A fluffy white American Eskimo dog often perches in the passenger seat.

How to get the man who lives in the RV off our block has been a constant topic of discussion in my building. He complies with most city ordinances. He drives off the block for weekly street cleanings. He seems to move his RV just enough to avoid being towed. There is a city law against living or sleeping in your car, but it’s difficult to enforce and is being challenged in court.

Some residents have complained to the police (and to the man himself) or called our City Council member to try to get restrictions on oversized vehicles for our block. When the man was recently jailed overnight, someone called the city’s Department of Transportation hotline and reported the RV as abandoned. But the next day, the man was released and back in his vehicle, dog in tow.

My neighbors’ worries are many: Where is he dumping his waste? Will his eyesore of an RV lower property values? Is he dangerous? One neighbor said the man screamed at him. A police officer who has chatted with him told me that he could be “excitable” but didn’t appear to be a threat.


In fact, the man who opened the door to the RV for me one recent morning was friendly and low key, neatly dressed in long camouflage shorts and a gray long-sleeve shirt. Farhad Alexander-Alizadeh, 57, was born in Iran but left in 1975 and has been a U.S. citizen, he says, since 1994. His back-story is long and complicated and filled with bouts of bad luck that started with a divorce in Pennsylvania. When he first moved to Los Angeles, he drove a limo, but he lost the job when the company went bankrupt. His recent brush with the law came after an alleged altercation over another car of his that was being towed out of a nearby parking lot. He is charged with a misdemeanor count of interfering with police.

He pointed out that no windows in my building look out on his RV. “I am not in front of anyone’s eyes,” he said. “If I am not allowed to be parked in the street, where can I go?”

He says he is willing to work at almost anything. So I have a proposition for my neighbors. Instead of putting all that effort into making calls to impose new restrictions, what if we made a few phone calls to homeless advocates who might help find Alexander-Alizadeh some work and a place to live?

— Carla Hall