History of Skid Row - 7
Skid Row daycare center 1981.
Containment questions
Going back to the question of containment, there was a recognition that the Central City East area should be looked at as a place in which services were delivered, rather than one that had firm boundaries that people should not be penetrating out from. That has evolved as some of the neighborhoods around evolved. Particularly, there is a growing conflict between the reemergence of the Little Tokyo area to the northand the Central City East area. There is a lot of uncertainty in terms of public policy, and a lot of conflict in terms of public policy between an effort to revitalize the Historic Core to the westand bringing new business activity into the largely vacant historic buildings there while sustaining the very low-income populations that are in Central City East and how to treat the two adjacent neighborhoods.
Going southward there is some level of conflict with the garment industry,although it's mitigated by kind of a warehouse band between the two districts. There is more conflict with the flower marketbecause they're right in the middle of an area affected by a large street-person presence. And there is the continuing issue, particularly over health, with the food industry that is generally east and southeast of the heart of Skid Row and clearly within the boundaries of Central City East, generally east of Towne Avenue.
The other side of the containment question -- and that's kind of a shorthand term that other people have coined for it, that's not what it was designated by public policy leaders -- is that when the idea was set forth to maintain services and housing units in the Skid Row area, it was done recognizing that historically there was a large concentration of very low income individuals there, and that uprooting them was neither sane nor sensible. The decision to concentrate services was made in a context that said that there also needed to be a decentralized regional approach to the problems and needs of low-income and homeless populations. The answer to a homeless person in northeast Los Angeles County shouldn't be a need to be taken downtown, or from Venice to be taken downtown, or from San Pedro to be taken downtown, but that the downtown population merited services adapted to its own size and needs. But, in fact, that's largely the way it has operated for most of the time since the policy was adopted. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority is in the process of taking a look at some attempt to regionalize its services, but the bottom line is that the not-in-my-backyard response to the delivery of social services geographically is very strong in much of the county, and it is weakest and has been historically most tolerated downtown. And for that reason a lot of services end up downtown almost by default, even though there is a need for them to be in other parts of the region. That's an issue that also will be coming to the fore as time goes on.
I think that the big issues that need to be dealt with right now are the continuing issues of residential/industrial conflict, the question of families and children, and the appropriate level of delivery of services in this area, as opposed to what's available elsewhere in the region. If there were dispersed services there would be less reason for all the population to be attracted to downtown. In essence you would “turn off the tap” of new entries and you'll have a stabilized population in the area. These are probably the three major questions that are the table right now.
That's kind of a very quick overview. I'm sure I left a lot of gaps along the way. If there are questions or things like that, I can try to fill in some of them.
Going back to the question of containment, there was a recognition that the Central City East area should be looked at as a place in which services were delivered, rather than one that had firm boundaries that people should not be penetrating out from. That has evolved as some of the neighborhoods around evolved. Particularly, there is a growing conflict between the reemergence of the Little Tokyo area to the northand the Central City East area. There is a lot of uncertainty in terms of public policy, and a lot of conflict in terms of public policy between an effort to revitalize the Historic Core to the westand bringing new business activity into the largely vacant historic buildings there while sustaining the very low-income populations that are in Central City East and how to treat the two adjacent neighborhoods.
Going southward there is some level of conflict with the garment industry,although it's mitigated by kind of a warehouse band between the two districts. There is more conflict with the flower marketbecause they're right in the middle of an area affected by a large street-person presence. And there is the continuing issue, particularly over health, with the food industry that is generally east and southeast of the heart of Skid Row and clearly within the boundaries of Central City East, generally east of Towne Avenue.
The other side of the containment question -- and that's kind of a shorthand term that other people have coined for it, that's not what it was designated by public policy leaders -- is that when the idea was set forth to maintain services and housing units in the Skid Row area, it was done recognizing that historically there was a large concentration of very low income individuals there, and that uprooting them was neither sane nor sensible. The decision to concentrate services was made in a context that said that there also needed to be a decentralized regional approach to the problems and needs of low-income and homeless populations. The answer to a homeless person in northeast Los Angeles County shouldn't be a need to be taken downtown, or from Venice to be taken downtown, or from San Pedro to be taken downtown, but that the downtown population merited services adapted to its own size and needs. But, in fact, that's largely the way it has operated for most of the time since the policy was adopted. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority is in the process of taking a look at some attempt to regionalize its services, but the bottom line is that the not-in-my-backyard response to the delivery of social services geographically is very strong in much of the county, and it is weakest and has been historically most tolerated downtown. And for that reason a lot of services end up downtown almost by default, even though there is a need for them to be in other parts of the region. That's an issue that also will be coming to the fore as time goes on.
I think that the big issues that need to be dealt with right now are the continuing issues of residential/industrial conflict, the question of families and children, and the appropriate level of delivery of services in this area, as opposed to what's available elsewhere in the region. If there were dispersed services there would be less reason for all the population to be attracted to downtown. In essence you would “turn off the tap” of new entries and you'll have a stabilized population in the area. These are probably the three major questions that are the table right now.
That's kind of a very quick overview. I'm sure I left a lot of gaps along the way. If there are questions or things like that, I can try to fill in some of them.
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
