History of Skid Row - 4
200 block of East 5th.
The early 1970’s – Stabilizing the neighborhood
In the early 1970’s, the City came to the conclusion, after having adopted the redevelopment program for Bunker Hill (which also had a great deal of displacement associated with it) that there needed to be a redevelopment program for other portions of downtown Los Angeles, including most of the central business district and the Skid Row area. Having gone through the experience in Bunker Hill with the displacement that occurred there5, and having to some degree gone through the displacement in this area as a result of the afore-mentioned code enforcement, one of the big issues that came up during the discussion of the Central Business District Redevelopment Plan was, what would be the appropriate direction to take in the Central City East area -- Skid Row. There was a great deal of debate at that time as to whether Los Angeles should follow the direction that most other major cities were taking, which was to demolish Skid Row and see where people end up, but in any event to get rid of it -- which, I believe, was actually part of the community plan in the 1970’s era -- or do something to stabilize it.
The decision was made with the adoption of the redevelopment plan in 1975 that the program in Central City East would be to try to stabilize it, create and maintain a base of low-income housing and the delivery of social services following a policy that was subsequently referred to as a “Policy of Containment.” The containment idea was not so much that you put a fence around Skid Row to keep people in, but you designate an area in which facilities and services will be encouraged to centralize and exist because you have a population in the area that needs the facilities and needs the services. The area that is referred to is Central City East -- bounded by roughly Third Street on the north, Seventh Street on the south, Alameda Street on the east and Main Street on the west. There were two primary things to take place in that area. One was the preservation and appropriate expansion of residential facilities (for the most part the single room occupancy hotels in the area) and social services, and the other was to provide for industrial growth to take place in the area.
The Redevelopment Plan was adopted in 1975 and there was litigation over the plan’s implementation that delayed any action for a couple of years. A stipulated judgment was executed in 1977 that allowed implementation of the redevelopment plan to go forward. One of the first actions was to begin to create mechanisms to stabilize the housing in the area. That included providing funds to begin to acquire, rehabilitate and then sell to nonprofit organizations a number of the single room occupancy (SRO) hotels and some of the other institutions that existed in the area, and to begin to deliver into the area a basic net of amenities. These included two parks that serve the area, about a third of an acre each, one at Sixth and Gladys Streets, and one at Fifth and San Julian Streets. These were the first efforts to introduce some kind of public amenities, if you will, into the area, coupled with a program that tried to identify among all of the SRO units what were called “priority intervention” areas, that is, areas in which there were clusters of hotels where it made sense to try to create some type of residential neighborhood because there were substantial numbers of hotels there. The first cluster was the one around Fifth and San Julian Streets, where the park is.
The first couple of hotels to be acquired and rehabilitated were in that immediate area (the Ross and the Panama among them) to begin to create a neighborhood of some sort by providing for some stabilization of the existing base of housing. The first couple of units were done with private owners. It became fairly early apparent that it was very difficult to find private owners who were both able to carry out a rehabilitation and maintain and operate a quality building. So, in the early 1980’s the direction moved to the creation of the Single Room Occupancy Housing Corporation, a semi-independent non-profit entity set up by the Redevelopment Agency. The corporation’s responsibility was, focusing on the Priority Intervention areas, to acquire a substantial number of the SRO hotels, rehabilitate them (or in some cases where they were beyond rehabilitation, replace them) and then operate them under a managed quality program that also provided services and guarantees of affordable rents. Later on additional nonprofit organizations came in. A second program was to try to consolidate a number of the social services into, in essence, the heart of the Central City East area to make them more easily accessible to the local population.
A three fold effort
One of the largest rehabilitation projects and one that had a great impact in terms of the street activity was the conversion of the El Rey Hotel at Sixth and San Pedro Streets into the Weingart Center. That had been one of the most notorious hotels in terms of being the center of crimes. My recollection is a statistic like there were more homicides that took place in that hotel than took place virtually in the rest of downtown together. So, it was a very substantial criminal hot spot in the area, and is now one of the most important centers for the delivery of health and other services.
The effort in the area, then, was then three-fold. One, to try to stabilize the residential base by funding the acquisition, rehabilitation and quality operation of SRO hotels. Two, along with that, to attract and consolidate social services into locations that were physically proximate to where the population was. Three, to retain and expand the industrial base in the area.
In the early 1970’s, the City came to the conclusion, after having adopted the redevelopment program for Bunker Hill (which also had a great deal of displacement associated with it) that there needed to be a redevelopment program for other portions of downtown Los Angeles, including most of the central business district and the Skid Row area. Having gone through the experience in Bunker Hill with the displacement that occurred there5, and having to some degree gone through the displacement in this area as a result of the afore-mentioned code enforcement, one of the big issues that came up during the discussion of the Central Business District Redevelopment Plan was, what would be the appropriate direction to take in the Central City East area -- Skid Row. There was a great deal of debate at that time as to whether Los Angeles should follow the direction that most other major cities were taking, which was to demolish Skid Row and see where people end up, but in any event to get rid of it -- which, I believe, was actually part of the community plan in the 1970’s era -- or do something to stabilize it.
The decision was made with the adoption of the redevelopment plan in 1975 that the program in Central City East would be to try to stabilize it, create and maintain a base of low-income housing and the delivery of social services following a policy that was subsequently referred to as a “Policy of Containment.” The containment idea was not so much that you put a fence around Skid Row to keep people in, but you designate an area in which facilities and services will be encouraged to centralize and exist because you have a population in the area that needs the facilities and needs the services. The area that is referred to is Central City East -- bounded by roughly Third Street on the north, Seventh Street on the south, Alameda Street on the east and Main Street on the west. There were two primary things to take place in that area. One was the preservation and appropriate expansion of residential facilities (for the most part the single room occupancy hotels in the area) and social services, and the other was to provide for industrial growth to take place in the area.
The Redevelopment Plan was adopted in 1975 and there was litigation over the plan’s implementation that delayed any action for a couple of years. A stipulated judgment was executed in 1977 that allowed implementation of the redevelopment plan to go forward. One of the first actions was to begin to create mechanisms to stabilize the housing in the area. That included providing funds to begin to acquire, rehabilitate and then sell to nonprofit organizations a number of the single room occupancy (SRO) hotels and some of the other institutions that existed in the area, and to begin to deliver into the area a basic net of amenities. These included two parks that serve the area, about a third of an acre each, one at Sixth and Gladys Streets, and one at Fifth and San Julian Streets. These were the first efforts to introduce some kind of public amenities, if you will, into the area, coupled with a program that tried to identify among all of the SRO units what were called “priority intervention” areas, that is, areas in which there were clusters of hotels where it made sense to try to create some type of residential neighborhood because there were substantial numbers of hotels there. The first cluster was the one around Fifth and San Julian Streets, where the park is.
The first couple of hotels to be acquired and rehabilitated were in that immediate area (the Ross and the Panama among them) to begin to create a neighborhood of some sort by providing for some stabilization of the existing base of housing. The first couple of units were done with private owners. It became fairly early apparent that it was very difficult to find private owners who were both able to carry out a rehabilitation and maintain and operate a quality building. So, in the early 1980’s the direction moved to the creation of the Single Room Occupancy Housing Corporation, a semi-independent non-profit entity set up by the Redevelopment Agency. The corporation’s responsibility was, focusing on the Priority Intervention areas, to acquire a substantial number of the SRO hotels, rehabilitate them (or in some cases where they were beyond rehabilitation, replace them) and then operate them under a managed quality program that also provided services and guarantees of affordable rents. Later on additional nonprofit organizations came in. A second program was to try to consolidate a number of the social services into, in essence, the heart of the Central City East area to make them more easily accessible to the local population.
A three fold effort
One of the largest rehabilitation projects and one that had a great impact in terms of the street activity was the conversion of the El Rey Hotel at Sixth and San Pedro Streets into the Weingart Center. That had been one of the most notorious hotels in terms of being the center of crimes. My recollection is a statistic like there were more homicides that took place in that hotel than took place virtually in the rest of downtown together. So, it was a very substantial criminal hot spot in the area, and is now one of the most important centers for the delivery of health and other services.
The effort in the area, then, was then three-fold. One, to try to stabilize the residential base by funding the acquisition, rehabilitation and quality operation of SRO hotels. Two, along with that, to attract and consolidate social services into locations that were physically proximate to where the population was. Three, to retain and expand the industrial base in the area.
Photograph from the Los Angeles Times photographic archive, UCLA Library. Copyright Regents of the University of California, UCLA Library.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States
