Drive-By Fixes Not Enough for Skid Row
People often ask me if things are better or worse on skid row than they were last October, when I spent a solid week exploring the grimy nether land east of downtown Los Angeles. To get the answer, I spent parts of Saturday and Sunday nights out there, checking on recent reports of chaos and doom.
The word in some quarters was that drug dealing was out of control and that encampments had grown in number from 100 to 500, largely because police were backing off after a federal court decision in April banned police from rousting people sleeping on the street.
Downtown resident Brady Westwater toured with me over the weekend and said dealers have taken over entire streets, menacing residents and shop owners. Carol Schatz of the Central City Assn. said the owner of a loft building told her that a dozen tenants had moved out because of deteriorating conditions on the street.
But skid row is a place where everyone has an agenda, so it's not surprising that I also heard claims that not much has changed of late, and that police were rousting homeless people as they always have, herding them to the outskirts of the row.
My own take? Based on last weekend, which was surprisingly quiet, and months of once- or twice-weekly visits, things are not significantly better or worse overall than they were last fall. So why is my phone ringing off the hook, with city officials, care providers, business leaders and others offering their two cents worth?
Because there's been a lot of bickering behind the scenes, and everyone's in spin mode. As it turns out, I'm not the only one trying to nail down a reasonable version of the truth.
Last Thursday at 5 a.m., a carload of heavyweights toured skid row to see what's happening nearly one year after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined me on the streets and vowed to get control of a place that LAPD Chief Bill Bratton called "the worst situation in America."
Villaraigosa and Bratton were along for the pre-dawn ride, along with City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and Torie Osborn, special advisor to the mayor on homelessness. Osborn said the group watched as heroin addicts awoke sweaty and desperate, eager to start the day with a breakfast injection. But they had to wait, because dealers scrambled when they saw the entourage of cops and politicos.
