Tent solution: Licensed villages may help ease homelessness in Los Angeles

A drone's view of the Urban Alchemy site in Los Angeles. — Photos: JAY L CLENDENIN/Los Angeles Times/TNS

THE ROWS of white canvas cabin tents newly erected in an out-of-the-way quarter of Culver City, along the bank of Ballona Creek, have the ambience of an Army field base.

To the east in South Los Angeles, more modest camping tents – like one might buy at a sporting goods store – line the parking lot of the shuttered Lincoln Theater, evoking something more like a Boy Scout jamboree.