Homeless Sprawl
The City of Angels struggles to deal with a devil of a place
Skid Row is also a haven for prostitutes, drug addicts, and a rich assortment of criminals. One fifth of the city's narcotics arrests were made on Skid Row in 2005. And Los Angeles jails release 1,600 prisoners a month directly into downtown. There are thousands of parolees, including hundreds of registered sex offenders, living on "the Row," which is also a breeding ground for infectious diseases like AIDS and hepatitis. And because of the availability of so many services, hospitals frequently dump indigent patients there. Similarly, cities all over Los Angeles County, now the homeless capital of the nation with 90,000 transients, point their street people in the direction of Skid Row.
But that's starting to change, albeit slowly. Los Angeles is in the midst of a sweeping downtown revitalization that is headed Skid Row's way. Spurred by huge developments like the Staples Center arena, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and the upcoming $1.8 billion Grand Avenue project, downtown has become a giant construction zone. From the lofts in the historic Rosslyn Hotel to the apartments of the converted Pacific Electric Building-both on the fringes of Skid Row-more than 7,000 new housing units have been added to downtown since 1999, with many more in the works. Martini bars and trendy bistros are moving in. The area is starting to feel, well, hot. "We have managed against all odds to make this happen," says Carol Schatz of the Central City Association, which represents more than 400 local businesses and has been instrumental in fueling downtown's rebirth. "But we believe we could have even more downtown investment ... if it weren't for the Skid Row problem."
Enter Bratton, who has a bit of experience with urban disorder. As New York police commissioner, he was instrumental in taking back Times Square from prostitutes and street swindlers and making way for its commercial rebirth. He also cleared Gotham streets of the windshield-washing "squeegee men" who would materialize at traffic lights to ambush unwitting drivers. Relying on the "broken windows" approach to policing-stop the small crimes first and it will be easier to prevent big ones-the NYPD stepped up arrests in Times Square for crimes like littering and loitering. Residents started walking the streets again, and businesses began to flourish.
Stay the course. Skid Row, OK, is not Times Square. The LAPD, by any measure, is vastly understaffed. And while the city of L.A. has begun to set aside more money for the homeless, New York outspends L.A. in that area by more than 10-fold. But Bratton's approach is essentially the same: Reduce the crime on Skid Row and clean the place up, and then there's at least a foundation in place to tackle the underlying causes of homelessness-theoretically, anyway. "This city has turned a blind eye to the scale of the Skid Row problem, because it was out of sight and out of mind," Bratton told U.S. News. "But it's in full view now."
In September, Bratton added 50 more cops to the 350-person Central Division, which includes most of Skid Row. Serious crimes dropped almost immediately and are now down 18 percent for the year. There have been more than 3,000 arrests since September, the vast majority for felony narcotics charges. "'The Show,'as they call it down here, is over," says Captain Smith. "The drugs, drinking, prostitution, and hanging out by the campfire with your buddies is finished." Since September, the LAPD has also been walking a legal tightrope by enforcing a sidewalk sleeping ban during the day, which means that tents and other improvised shelters must be collapsed from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. The number of people sleeping on the street dropped from 1,876 in mid-September to under 1,200 in December. It's a start. The streets are now cleaner, and the sidewalks, once so crowded with tents and cardboard cities that they were impassable, are clear. Many homeless people have complained of being hassled, and homeless advocates have accused the cops of harassment. But others are thankful. "It's better this way, safer, and you can walk on the sidewalk," said Frank (who didn't want his last name used), who says he's been on the street for 2
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