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A BUSINESS FAILS - Shock, five decades of service to the Community gone. The Red Barn Pet Food store was more than just a business in the San Fernando Valley—it was a beloved community institution. Parents brought their children to see baby chicks, pet owners sought advice from knowledgeable staff who understood animals, and generations of families made it a regular stop for everything from bird seed to horse feed. When the Orange Line threatened to raze the property years ago, the Community rallied, attended meetings, and successfully lobbied Metro to create a special cutout to save this beloved local store.
It was a pyrrhic victory. Red Barn Pet Food is closing, not because of eminent domain, corporate greed, lack of support, or a dearth of loyal customers, but because Los Angeles has failed to protect the Community that fought so hard to preserve it.
The cruel irony is unavoidable: the same Metropolitan authorities that once collaborated with residents to save Red Barn have made its continued operation impossible. City leaders created conditions no responsible business owner could accept by establishing tiny home encampments nearby. As a result, this area became a magnet for drug users and crime. Break-ins became common. Employees faced threats. Customers felt intimidated. The psychological, physical, and financial toll grew overwhelming.
When Red Barn's owners cite "criminal, drug, and homeless activity in the area" as the reason for their closure, they're not making a political statement—they're describing a business reality that City Councilman Bob Blumenfield, city officials, and the county supervisors studiously ignore. Despite the owners' investments in capital improvements and security solutions, the fundamental problem persisted and became so severe that the owner, after just three short years and many capital and inventory improvements, is now forced to abandon this property and business.
The owners' final statement cuts to the heart of the matter: "We cannot thank you enough for the love, loyalty, and support you've shown Theresa's Country Feed/Red Barn over the years. This was not about walking away. It was about protecting the people who mean the most—our employees and customers." When a business that has survived for over 50 years must choose between staying open and protecting human lives, the failure of governance is complete.
The neighborhood's response reflects what a bitter pill this is to swallow. Everything good, decent, fun, and effective is torn asunder to promote false equity and inclusion for the least deserving parasites in our communities.
Julie D. says, “I am outraged that this 55-year-old establishment is being torn down to make way for a parking lot for a Homeless Encampment.”
Some, like Jill H, are ready to fight again: "We need to do the same. I'm willing to help now." But the question haunts every comment: why should residents organize repeatedly to protect the same business from their own government's failures?
Nancy S. perfectly captured the Community's frustration: "Contact your councilperson to urge another plan that saves Red Barn, a local institution!" But what happens when your councilperson is part of the problem?
Barbara S. noted that it "was used for filming too," a detail that speaks to Red Barn's place in the cultural fabric of Los Angeles.
Suzanne M. captured what has been lost: "It used to be a place to go and get real help with your animals' needs, with knowledgeable old timers to guide you and a plethora of items covering every need.
Jackie C. spoke for many when she wrote: "It is a sad day. I used to take my kids there often when they were little after my divorce. This is a special place for me and my kids. I don't want it to close.
Perhaps Angelia W.'s well-meaning defense of the tiny home project illustrates the stinking thinking that passes for enlightened social commentary: suggesting that Red Barn's closure might create "a wonderful legacy" by helping the homeless. How so? By Red Barn becoming a punching bag for society's worst elements? By keeping the business open, so that untreated, drug-addled, mentally ill individuals can continue to pilfer, threaten, and intimidate loyal customers and hardworking employees.
What we're witnessing in Los Angeles is the predictable outcome of policies that have turned the city into what many residents describe as "a consequence-free zone"—at least for criminals. The catch-and-release approach to dangerous criminals, combined with policies that prioritize ideology over public safety, creates a multiplier effect of destruction that ripples through every level of society.
Red Barn's closure isn't an isolated incident—it's a symptom of systemic failure. Other businesses near the tiny home sites have already moved, and the owner may be selling all his stores, having relocated out of state. What was once a thriving commercial corridor is becoming a cautionary tale about what happens when the consequences of lawlessness compound exponentially.
For every Red Barn that closes, every family that leaves the city, and every business that moves to safer locations, Los Angeles loses more than just economic activity. The tax base shrinks. We lose the most productive and creative people essential for continued prosperity. Individual prosperity declines, and the city's gross domestic product contracts. The deficit grows, encouraging bureaucrats to consider raising taxes again.
What political leaders call compassionate policy turns into economic self-destruction, as the people and businesses that fund city services are driven away by the failure to deliver those services, even ineffectively. Perpetuating a vicious circle of defeat and exodus.
The cruel mathematics are undeniable: when the city spends $800,000 per unit on housing for the chronically homeless while failing to protect law-abiding businesses from repeated break-ins and threats, it signals a fundamental inversion of priorities. Resources that could address the root causes of homelessness and crime are instead poured into expensive band-aids that neither solve the underlying problems nor protect the community institutions that make neighborhoods livable.
Los Angeles has created something unprecedented in American urban governance: a system that effectively rewards criminal behavior while punishing law-abiding citizens and businesses. When shoplifting becomes routine, when burglaries become standard practice, when grand theft auto carries minimal consequences, when assault "for no reason" becomes commonplace, and when drug-fueled destruction of public spaces is tolerated as inevitable, the ruling political class and their minions' worship at the altar of reformative justice and repatriations feed the very forces that are destroying LA.
The feed store symbolizes something Los Angeles seems determined to destroy: generational community businesses that serve as gathering places, sources of expertise, and threads in the social fabric. These aren't faceless corporations that can absorb losses and relocate—they're family enterprises built on relationships, trust, and local knowledge accumulated over decades.
This isn't just policy failure—it's suicidal empathy taken to an illogical extreme. By refusing to distinguish between those who contribute to society and those who prey on it, Los Angeles has created conditions where honest business owners like Red Barn must choose between safety and their livelihood. At the same time, criminal behavior is met with understanding, resources, second chances, third chances, and endless do-overs.
The result is social barbarism disguised as compassion. When a city's policies consistently favor those who break its laws over those who obey them, and when community institutions are sacrificed to support destructive behaviors, the outcome isn't social justice—it's the unraveling of the social contract itself.
Red Barn's story reflects Los Angeles' broader abandonment of the communities that make the city livable. Time and again, residents organize, advocate, and invest their time and energy to preserve what makes their neighborhoods special—only to watch city leaders undermine those achievements through poor policy choices and willful neglect of basic services and common sense.
The parallels to historical urban collapse are impossible to ignore. Like Rome in its decline, Los Angeles has created conditions where basic civic functions deteriorate while resources are squandered on increasingly expensive and ineffective solutions. The difference is that Rome's fall took centuries; Los Angeles is accomplishing its own destruction in a mere couple of decades through policies that systematically undermine the very foundations of civil society.
The real tragedy isn't just that Red Barn is closing, but that this was entirely preventable. With competent leadership prioritizing public safety over woke political theater, adequate enforcement of existing laws, a genuine commitment to protecting law-abiding citizens and community businesses, and effective social services prioritizing treatment, rehabilitation, or jail time, we could make a serious dent in vagrancy and criminality. Instead, Los Angeles chose the path of mismanaged decline, creating a system where the productive are punished and the destructive are rewarded.
With Mayor Garcetti's and Mayor Bass's policies, no community, business, or home in Los Angeles is safe from the criminal elements allowed to grow and spread until everything becomes toxic. The Democrats running this city have no intention of ever examining or considering the 2nd and 3rd order effects of their policies. To be fair to them, and unfair to us, they think they're doing the right thing—believing that housing, free drug paraphernalia, and overly tolerant attitudes are somehow an enlightened way to facilitate harm reduction. When all that has happened is that billions of dollars have been squandered unaccountably.
When elected leaders systematically fail to provide basic protections—particularly when that failure appears deliberate or ideologically driven—it is a form of political violence. Here's why:
The Social Contract Theory: Citizens give up certain freedoms and pay taxes with the core understanding that the government will protect them from harm. When the government knowingly creates or tolerates conditions that hurt law-abiding citizens while they fulfill their duties, it destroys the reason people congregated in cities.
Violence by Omission: Political theorists have long recognized that violence isn't just active harm—it can be the deliberate withholding of protection. When leaders know their policies enable crime against citizens but continue those policies anyway, they become complicit in that harm. Then there's the violence of not funding essential city services, just ask the victims of the Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires.
Selective enforcement as oppression: When government resources favor some groups over others—like in the Red Barn example, where resources go to temporary housing while businesses flee due to repeated crimes—it creates a two-tiered system that benefits certain populations at the expense of others.
Economic Violence: Policies that knowingly drive out businesses, destroy property values, allow homes to be pillaged and robbed, make neighborhoods unlivable, and cause real financial harm to citizens who have no option but to leave, which many cannot afford. As the local economy declines, discretionary funds run dry, and essential services are cut. This speeds up the decline of infrastructure, police, and fire services, and reduces funds meant to help the less fortunate citizens of LA, effectively dismantling the fragile safety net for the 75,000 unhoused who have garnered special privileges like catch and release and free housing for life.
However, this differs from direct political violence in that:
- It operates through institutional failure rather than active aggression.
- It often claims humanitarian motives, even when outcomes are destructive.
- Citizens retain some democratic remedies, though these may be ineffective. Elections don't seem to matter because they appear to be rigged to get the desired candidate into the right seat. A glaring example of this is Governor Newsom's redistricting proposal, known as Proposition 50, where the ruling elite intends to perpetuate their electoral majority and disenfranchise anybody who might have a different opinion.
The Red Barn situation illustrates this perfectly: residents did everything "right"—they organized, lobbied, and succeeded in saving their community institution, only to watch their own government's policies make that victory meaningless. When democratic participation becomes futile against ideological and institutional malfeasance, and governance harms the very people it serves, it crosses into institutional warfare against the citizenry.
(Eliot Cohen has been on the Neighborhood Council, served on the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, is on the Board of Homeowners of Encino, and was the president of HOME for over seven years. Eliot retired after a 35-year career on Wall Street. Eliot is a critic of the stinking thinking of the bureaucrats and politicians that run the County, the State, and the City. Eliot and his wife divide their time between L.A. and Baja Norte, Mexico. Eliot is a featured writer for CityWatchLA.com.)
