In 2019, billionaire E. Stanley Kroenke, whose company owns the recently-constructed SoFi Stadium in the Southern California city of Inglewood, proudly boasted that without the stadium the city would remain "devoid of hope with no aspiration for the future." For residents like 57-year-old Dawn Toftee, however, the stadium has only made life in Inglewood more difficult.
Toftee, who has lived in a tent outside of SoFi Stadium for two years, was one of roughly a dozen unhoused residents whose homes were forcibly removed by California's state transit police on January 24, according to reporting by the Guardian. A representative from the transit agency CalTrans alleged that their camp presented a "safety issue" for the tens of thousands of tourists set to touch down in Inglewood for the Super Bowl this weekend — and their removal offered the city a chance to clean up its public spaces. CalTrans could not confirm whether anyone displaced received housing, shelter, or other services, according to the Guardian.
