Homeless Sanctuary in Downtown Los Angeles: What's so appealing and scary about Skid Row, home to 20 homeless people

Skid Row is perhaps the most famous homeless and shelterless area in the world. 50 blocks in the center of Los Angeles are a kind of poverty reserve. There are a huge number of shelters and other social assistance institutions concentrated here, as well as, according to some estimates, tens of thousands of people who live right on the sidewalks, in tents or other temporary shelters. It is not surprising that a walk through such an area is a rather extreme activity. However, a blogger with the nickname lyot4ik walked along Skid Row with a camera and shared his impressions on the platform Picabu. There you will find many photos, and we give his slightly combed story about the "homeless sanctuary" in the heart of Los Angeles. Further - in the first person.

Photo: Msphotographic | Dreamstime.com

The smell of urine and hopelessness

Words cannot describe this area. It is curious that people park their cars and walk past the "ghouls" with a cup of coffee without any embarrassment. Even fashionable ladies in expensive shoes deftly maneuver between piles of human feces hurrying to a business meeting. The area smells of urine, unwashed heels and hopelessness.

The racial composition is completely international, but there are more blacks and guests from the South. There are both complete stoners and visually ordinary people. The saddest thing is the little children. Some look like Filipino street beggars. But there are also quite well-groomed ones, in clean clothes.

There are also different ways of organizing camping life. They live in cars (running and not), in tourist tents, homemade shelters made of galoshes and sticks, or, like Cheburashka, in orange boxes. There are also complete ascetics: they sleep right on the sidewalk at +10 Celsius.

Basically, the poor guys don't pay attention to people (and people don't pay attention to the poor guys). There are many inadequate mutterers - fidgets.

On the subject: Newsom orders the removal of all homeless encampments in California

Gold and Railways

This area hasn't changed much in the last 100 years, I suppose. So I'll start from afar. In 1781, Los Angeles was founded by the Spanish during an expedition from Mexico City. Forty years later, Mexico declared independence from Spain, but a quarter of a century later, the state of California came under U.S. control. However, local Spanish families were allowed to keep their land and property.

In 1849, gold was discovered here and a huge influx of people came to California. The promises made to Mexican families had to be broken. Land, houses, and property went to the newly arrived Makhnovists. The dispossessed Mexican families formed their own village in the Skid Row area.

In 1869, the Governor of California and owner of the transcontinental railroad drove the golden spike into the ground at the opening ceremony of the road connecting East and West.

The construction involved 15 workers, most of whom were Chinese, who had come specifically to replace the striking Irish and Italians. In response, they committed a series of pogroms and arson attacks in Chinese quarters.

The transcontinental railroad went to San Francisco, and from there it was a stone's throw to Los Angeles. It was easier to lay the road on the flat land, so they built the railroad along the Los Angeles River, right to Skid Row, where they built the station.

At the time, it was used to transport agricultural products. Seasonal industry required a huge number of seasonal workers. Demand creates supply - and for them, a large number of cheap hostels, doss houses and hostels were built right next to the station. Young hot boys needed libraries, brothels, pubs and casinos. A deeply religious nation overnight opened a number of churches, temperance societies and houses of theology in the area.

Oil, cars and cinema

In 1890, oil was discovered in the Los Angeles area, and a little later the automobile industry began to develop here, and the city became the second largest center of mechanical engineering after Detroit.

Then came the filmmakers. In 1910, the first film was shot in the village of Hollywood. California is really very diverse in its landscape: there is an ocean, mountains, deserts - shoot whatever you want.

To meet the needs of the new production facilities, workers flocked here from all over the country. It was necessary to add shelters.

It so happened that the railroad office in the United States at that time was the largest owner of land in the country and also the largest developer. The railroad began to promote Los Angeles and California as "paradise on earth", where the temperature was comfortable and the land was cheap (compared to old America on the east coast).

Wars and the Great Depression

In 1889, the United States began a war to liberate the Philippines. Heroes were sent to war from Skid Row. Barracks and transit points were built for the soldiers.

In 1914, this area became one of the transit points for sending soldiers to World War I. More barracks were built for them.

Then, in 1929, the Great Depression began. There is an opinion that the image of a "sunny paradise on earth" was deliberately promoted by large landowners in the central states in order to voluntarily "drive" the excess of mouths to the neighbors. At that time, a tractor could replace a couple of dozen working hands, and was more profitable financially than renting out land for a bucket of potatoes to Tom Sawyer's family.

Whether this is true or not, a lot of people from the central states rushed to California in search of a better life. Some were indeed lucky, but most were not. The large influx of workers caused a collapse in the rates of seasonal agricultural work, which provoked many clashes between workers. Locals carried out pogroms in the camps of migrants, contemptuously calling them "okies" (from the state of Oklahoma, whose population suffered more than others from the depression).

The number of homeless and vagrants increased dramatically. There were even more flophouses in Skid Row. It was the "heyday" of the area, which was spreading in all directions. The residents of these flophouses were mostly single white men who had failed to fit into the market. The abundance of bars exacerbated the problem of alcoholism.

It so happened that the end of the Great Depression coincided with the beginning of World War II. The Skid Row area again became a transit point. More barracks were built for the soldiers. World War II was followed by the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and with them the boom of the military industry began - just keep up with the shipment of cartridges/guns/airplanes. Accordingly, even more workers came.

From white alcoholics to colored drug addicts

California was considered a southern, and therefore segregated, state at the time. Black workers were settled "behind the garages," where the land was cheaper. Including around the troubled Skid Row.

Former religious organizations reoriented themselves from the fight for sobriety to military personnel. Fortunately, wars generously provided them with both fresh recruits and veterans with disabilities and leaky flasks.

As a result, white war invalids could live with black poor fellows in doss houses and eat from the same bowl in charity kitchens for the poor. One bad thing is that while the first one was fighting, the second one could take his job. Hence, fights and pogroms again.

About 60 years before that, a chemist from Bayer's company very successfully mixed ingredients and invented heroin. And it, along with grass, LSD and other crap, became a substitute for traditional whiskey for local drunks. As a result, the portrait of a typical city dweller changed from a white male alcoholic to a black crack smoker.

Social tensions were growing. Local junkies began to put pressure on local businessmen, and the city administration suddenly noticed a negative increase in tax collection per square meter. The situation had to be saved!

New standards of quality of life were introduced. Over the course of a decade (from 1965 to 1975), about half of the shelters closed. The number of beds was reduced from 15 to 000. The homeless moved under the bridges, but did not stop using drugs.

Large-scale restructuring

It was during these years that the middle class, which had risen on the back of post-war industrialization, began a movement to preserve the "historical beauties of California." New homes could not be built here! Real estate prices, therefore, skyrocketed.

The number of families unable to afford a mortgage also began to grow, and owners of apartment buildings raised rents. The situation reached a dead end.

Well, changes were needed. A large-scale redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles began. Skyscrapers rose in place of old houses. However, when it came to Skid Row, it suddenly became clear that up to 95% of social projects and shelters for the poor in the city were concentrated in this area. They did not dare to demolish them, because otherwise all the crime would flow from here into the city. And they wanted to isolate the problem.

So the official policy became: do not close the social shelters and kitchens, but do not build new ones either. And law enforcement officers clearly explained to locals that it was not worth leaving the area. And the tactic worked! Since then, tent cities magically rarely cross the boundaries of the blocks allocated for them, and the rest of the city has become a fashionable and prestigious place.

Colored drug addict and single mother

And then suddenly the crisis of 1990 happened. Entire neighborhoods built for workers were left without work and marginalized. Taxes were cut; social programs, state schools, kindergartens began to close. As did access to social elevators.

The portrait of the typical Skid Row resident (a drug-addicted man of color) has been supplemented by another figure – a single mother. New flophouses are needed, but there is no place to build them. Here, artists paint masterpieces for big money in a red-brick former factory building, offices and skyscrapers have been built there… Urbanists call this phenomenon “gentrification” – when the price of land and real estate “squeezes” insolvent elements away from the “development bubble”. After all, hipster lofts can be rented out for much more than flophouses.

But homeless mothers with children do not calm down and arrive on an industrial scale. The worsening migration crisis, the stagnating economy - all this adds to the difficulties. A problem arises - mothers with children are not allowed to go to shelters, but they need to be helped somehow, especially since they wander the streets and spoil the view of the city.

Thus, Skid Row became a haven for all the hungry, homeless, drug addicts, psychopaths, thugs, illegals. Strictly speaking, they should build help centers and clinics all over the city, but... there is nowhere. After all, such establishments will lower the prestige of expensive areas, reduce the amount of taxes and generally add problems.

Google says there are 75 homeless people in Los Angeles, with Skid Row accounting for about 000. The rest are spread evenly throughout the city. True, you won't see homeless settlements in the areas of truly wealthy citizens, while in middle-class neighborhoods, tent camps are a regular occurrence.

Read also on ForumDaily:

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How homeless people live in the USA: a difficult story of one man

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