History of Skid Row - 5
Volunteers of America Men's Service Center, 1964.
Street population
While all of these efforts were going on, there was and there continues to be a population that lives outside of the residential units. There's a street population and there’s been a street population for probably as long as there have been streets in this part of town. That has caused continuing conflicts with other parties in the community, not the least of which is the conflict that's caused because a substantial portion of the industrial base in this area is food based. You have some very significant health issues with regard to food industries when you have a population living on the streets in close proximity that doesn't have sanitary facilities. So that became a major point of conflict, and one that has not yet been fully resolved.
The second area of conflict is simply that we're dealing with a relatively small geographic area. We're dealing with an area of about 50 city blocks. The priority, from the public sector perspective, for almost the entire period since we began operating in this area in the late 1970’s has been on the stabilization of the residential base. There were substantial objections from local property owners leading to some lawsuits over efforts to expand the number of residential units. One of the resolutions was the only place in which there could be expansion of the number of residential units was west of San Pedro Street, but east of San Pedro Street there could only be replacement on a one-for-one basis of any unit that was removed. So, there was not to be any expansion of the residential numbers in that latter area, but there could be relocation and consolidation of units to maintain a residential base and potentially provide for some industrial expansion. As I said, that was a result of a number of legal challenges.
Today, there are approximately 6,500 residential units in the Central City East area. After the redevelopment program was established, there was a substantial reduction in the rate of demolitions, and by and large there have not been substantial reductions in the stock since the early 1980’s. And to this point (late 1998), about 50% of the stock has been rehabilitated and brought under management of one or another nonprofit organization. So, there has been some substantial improvement of the housing stock. There has also been an expansion of the delivery of services that included, among other things, the creation of emergency and other shelter beds.
Back in the early 1980’s, there was a recognition that there was a population living on the streets for whom moving into a permanent residential facility wasn't in the cards, at least in the short term, and that the street population exceeded the capacity of available shelter facilities. That led, first, to a volunteer program sponsored by the unions to create a temporary shelter. That temporary shelter at one point was located on the parking lot at the southeast corner of Sixth and San Pedro Streets. That emergency shelter, and others that followed, were responses to growing public recognition that there was population that was unhoused at all. The response started with shelters that were only night time shelters. There was no provision of any facilities for people who were in a shelter bed at night, and not everybody was ever given a shelter bed. But there was originally no provision for what people did during the day.
Over the last several years there has been a recognition that you need to provide 24-hour facilities, and you need to provide more than simply a bed. A number of the shelter facilities now have gone to 24-hour operation. But numerically, we probably have not met the total need, in terms of what the population of the area would demand.
We're facing now a couple of additional challenges. One is that there still is about 50% of the housing stock that needs to be stabilized. We're facing this at a time when funds to carry those programs out are becoming harder and harder to find. There also is, because of the recession and other changes in society, less willingness on the part of the private sector to provide funds for social service organizations. Fund raising is becoming more and more difficult. So, there are, at least in many operations, cutbacks in services because of shortage of funds.
While all of these efforts were going on, there was and there continues to be a population that lives outside of the residential units. There's a street population and there’s been a street population for probably as long as there have been streets in this part of town. That has caused continuing conflicts with other parties in the community, not the least of which is the conflict that's caused because a substantial portion of the industrial base in this area is food based. You have some very significant health issues with regard to food industries when you have a population living on the streets in close proximity that doesn't have sanitary facilities. So that became a major point of conflict, and one that has not yet been fully resolved.
The second area of conflict is simply that we're dealing with a relatively small geographic area. We're dealing with an area of about 50 city blocks. The priority, from the public sector perspective, for almost the entire period since we began operating in this area in the late 1970’s has been on the stabilization of the residential base. There were substantial objections from local property owners leading to some lawsuits over efforts to expand the number of residential units. One of the resolutions was the only place in which there could be expansion of the number of residential units was west of San Pedro Street, but east of San Pedro Street there could only be replacement on a one-for-one basis of any unit that was removed. So, there was not to be any expansion of the residential numbers in that latter area, but there could be relocation and consolidation of units to maintain a residential base and potentially provide for some industrial expansion. As I said, that was a result of a number of legal challenges.
Today, there are approximately 6,500 residential units in the Central City East area. After the redevelopment program was established, there was a substantial reduction in the rate of demolitions, and by and large there have not been substantial reductions in the stock since the early 1980’s. And to this point (late 1998), about 50% of the stock has been rehabilitated and brought under management of one or another nonprofit organization. So, there has been some substantial improvement of the housing stock. There has also been an expansion of the delivery of services that included, among other things, the creation of emergency and other shelter beds.
Back in the early 1980’s, there was a recognition that there was a population living on the streets for whom moving into a permanent residential facility wasn't in the cards, at least in the short term, and that the street population exceeded the capacity of available shelter facilities. That led, first, to a volunteer program sponsored by the unions to create a temporary shelter. That temporary shelter at one point was located on the parking lot at the southeast corner of Sixth and San Pedro Streets. That emergency shelter, and others that followed, were responses to growing public recognition that there was population that was unhoused at all. The response started with shelters that were only night time shelters. There was no provision of any facilities for people who were in a shelter bed at night, and not everybody was ever given a shelter bed. But there was originally no provision for what people did during the day.
Over the last several years there has been a recognition that you need to provide 24-hour facilities, and you need to provide more than simply a bed. A number of the shelter facilities now have gone to 24-hour operation. But numerically, we probably have not met the total need, in terms of what the population of the area would demand.
We're facing now a couple of additional challenges. One is that there still is about 50% of the housing stock that needs to be stabilized. We're facing this at a time when funds to carry those programs out are becoming harder and harder to find. There also is, because of the recession and other changes in society, less willingness on the part of the private sector to provide funds for social service organizations. Fund raising is becoming more and more difficult. So, there are, at least in many operations, cutbacks in services because of shortage of funds.
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
