In an alley behind South Hill Street, several homeless people rummaged through trash cans last week, drinking beer and tending to their cardboard encampment.
Typical activities for L.A.’s Skid Row, but the problem is, the alley is several blocks northwest of Skid Row boundaries.
The happenings last week behind Loft Appeal, a South Hill Street furniture store, highlight a growing concern expressed by downtown businesses, property owners, and civic leaders: In recent months the homeless population has spread to areas outside the usual borders of Skid Row, downtown’s homeless neighborhood.
“We cannot walk out of our back door without either seeing someone urinating, defecating or shooting drugs,” said Rich Reams, co-owner of the 903 S. Hill St. furniture store. “We’ve had customers attacked, and car doors kicked in. The number of tents is way more than six months ago.”
The spread of the Skid Row homeless population along with its attendant drug use and dealing, public defecation and prostitution is being blamed on an April ruling by the Ninth Cicuit Court of Appeals in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union over the city’s tactics for policing the homeless.
The ruling stated that police could not prohibit the homeless from camping on streets so long as there were not enough beds in shelters to house all the homeless.
In effect, the ruling gave the homeless the right to sleep on sidewalks anywhere. That changed a past practice in which homeless were more or less allowed to camp within Skid Row but not outside of it.
According to several local businesses and officials, the homeless began camping outside of Skid Row after the ruling. Problems have gotten so pronounced that they are threatening the revitalization of downtown, which has seen the construction of thousands of condo units and other development in recent years, including the areas near Skid Row.
“We are doing something incredible down here. This renaissance has benefited the entire city and brought in millions of new tax revenue,” said Carol Schatz, president of the Central City Association.
“But if we want the renaissance to continue we have to provide the same quality of life that people can find in other middle class neighborhoods in Los Angeles,” she said.
“It’s unconscionable for this kind of problem to exist in the second largest city in the country. It wouldn’t be tolerated in New York or Chicago. We have to fix it because we don’t want people to live in these conditions.”
Homeless migration
The police department defines Skid Row as the area stretching from Seventh Street to Third Street, and from Alameda Street to Los Angeles Street. But business and property owners outside of it along Hill Street, Broadway, South Spring Street, and South Main Street say that over the last five months they have been hurt by the spread of the homeless.
Alex Moradi, whose ICO Development LLC owns the 314-unit Pacific Electric Lofts building, says that in the last four months about 25 units have been vacated by renters at the 610 S. Main St. building because of “community and neighborhood” concerns.
“This is certainly a result of the (court) decision,” said Moradi, who is a member of the Fashion District Business Improvement District, a property-owner coalition. “We’ve seen the (homeless) people become a lot more aggressive such that they wave news articles about (the court decision) in the business improvement district security or police officers’ faces saying, ‘You can’t keep me out of there.’ ”
L.A. Central Division Capt. Andrew Smith said that LAPD statistics compiled through a complete canvassing of downtown show that the number of encampments has nearly tripled in the Skid Row area since the April court decision.
On Feb. 21, the LAPD statistics showed 1,345 homeless people living on the streets of Skid Row and 187 tents. On July 25 the police found 1,527 people and 539 tents. Finally, Sept. 18 numbers show 1,876 homeless and 518 tents.
Pacific Investments LLC president Izek Shomof owns four apartment buildings with about 800 units at South Sixth and South Spring streets, and several renters have moved out recently. At his 626 S. Spring St. building, units that face South Main Street are now vacant.
“People see through the windows drug and crime activity and move out,” Shomof said.
In an attempt to help, L.A. County District Attorney Steven Cooley announced last week that he planned to have his prosecutors make Skid Row “stay away” orders standard for homeless convicted of drug offenses as a way of reducing drug usage and dealing in the area.
More brazen
In the meantime, though, downtown property owners are pursuing their own security strategy. Farhad Yousefzadeh, president of the Historic Downtown Los Angeles Business Improvement District and a property owner on South Broadway, said that the district will unveil a beefed-up private security force this month.
The district security force will get a patrol vehicle. Currently the district’s 12 security team members ride bicycles. The district also will expand the hours that the security forces patrol.
“Our security forces are inundated with these problems; it just creates havoc for them,” Yousefzadeh said.
“What I observe is that things have become a little more brazen. On Broadway there were always certain issues, and since April things were a lot more in your face. Shoppers are walking on Broadway and harassed. People are conducting drug deals in front of business establishments.”
However, not everyone in the area agrees with the assessment that the homeless problem has worsened in the zone outside of Skid Row.
Florence Herve Commereuc, co-owner of Angelique Caf & #233;, at 840 S. Spring St., said that while some homeless people have always asked her patrons for food or money, the situation has gotten no worse recently.
Ronny Bensimon, president of Dearden’s Home Furnishings, said that he hasn’t noted any real uptick in violence or drug activity near his South Main Street store, though he has noticed more discarded hypodermic needles in an adjacent parking lot.
What’s more, Claudia Escobar, who works at Evelyn’s Jewelry on South Broadway, said that she thinks the commercial thoroughfare that caters to Latinos has gotten cleaner.
“You used to see people selling drugs here,” Escobar said.
Whose fault?
In any case, an ACLU official disputed the notion that his organization’s lawsuit caused Skid Row to spread out.
Mark Rosenbaum, the ACLU of Southern California’s legal director, said any enlargement of Skid Row is “the direct result of the city’s policy, which criminalizes (the homeless) instead of looking at them as domestic violence victims, as kids, and as the mentally disturbed.
“They are demonizing them a policy that focuses on criminalizing the homeless is a demonizing policy,” Rosenbaum said. “There isn’t a city in this country that hasn’t dealt with homelessness by social policy.”
Recently, LAPD Police Chief William Bratton and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa negotiated a compromise with the ACLU that would have allowed people to set up encampments at night but would have also allowed police to clear them out by day.
However, that agreement was rejected by the City Council on Sept. 20 at the urging of downtown business interests who opposed any legalization of public encampments.
Since then, the LAPD has added 50 more patrol and undercover narcotic officers to police the Skid Row area as part of rollout known as the Safer City Initiative.
