A group of downtown Los Angeles civic leaders and residents on Monday said the growing homeless population on skid row is a public health and safety catastrophe and proposed that the city enact an anti-encampment ordinance and other measures to improve conditions.
The Central City Assn., backed by City Council members Jan Perry and Tom La Bonge, Police Chief William J. Bratton and several other advocacy groups, said the number of homeless living in squalor on downtown streets -- many with severe mental illnesses and addictions -- has reached crisis proportions and is threatening downtown's economic revitalization.
Some agencies that provide services to the homeless, however, denounced the plan, saying it was merely another attempt to sweep the streets of homeless people who have nowhere else to go.
Putting an exclamation point on the concerns, Bratton said the concentration of homeless downtown is worse than he has seen in New York or Boston.
According to city counts conducted for the 2000 Census, from 9,000 to 15,000 people live on the streets of central Los Angeles, said Perry, as many as 3,000 to 5,000 of them on the 50 square blocks of downtown's skid row. At the same time, the city is trying to attract new residents to live in renovated loft buildings in the area.
At a news conference at the newly rehabilitated Farmers and Merchants Bank building on skid row's edge, the Central City Assn. and its allies asserted that current ordinances are ineffective in preventing public urination and defecation, camping on sidewalks and aggressive panhandling.
"We are focusing on a portion of the problem that no one has wanted to talk about, those dwelling on the streets who have set up tents and boxes," said Central City Assn. President Carol Schatz. "We need to address that kind of behavior because it takes the streets away from all of us."
Her group is proposing a plan it says will improve the quality of life downtown while also showing compassion for the truly sick and needy.
Besides the anti-encampment ordinance, proposals include:
* Specific city bans on public urination and defecation. The acts currently fall under the category of a nuisance crime, but are rarely prosecuted, say civic officials.
* Creation of an LAPD street-crime patrol with the purpose of catching drug dealers and other criminals who prey on the homeless.
