TV shows are clashing with advocates for the homeless at film shoots

The Hollywood Reporter

Last month, Freeform's Good Trouble made headlines for filming a housing protest two blocks from an actual encampment sweep. A 2020 report by news site Knock LA reported that Apple TV+’s Truth Be Told had displaced more than 75 unhoused people. "Downtown Los Angeles has for a century served as the entertainment industry’s go-to urban backlot, and its 54-block Skid Row, which began in the late 19th century, has complicated it," reports The Hollywood Reporter's Gary Baum and Katie Kilkenny. "Yet as the number of shoot days in the L.A. area has seen a recent uptick and the region’s homelessness crisis persists (according to L.A. County’s last homelessness count, in January 2020, more than 66,000 individuals lived on the streets, in shelters and in vehicles), critics claim productions are triggering city crackdowns. Meanwhile, crewmembers say they’re just trying to go about their permitted business amid a tricky terrain. The Good Trouble incident became a flashpoint of a larger civic conflict without end, one in which workaday Hollywood finds itself at the center."