Skid Row "It is the poor man's underworld; a cross-section of American futility, the place where men who have lost hope go after they have jettisoned their dreams." ~ Hal Boyle, Evening Independent

In any great metropolitan city there will be areas where the wealthiest, the most prosperous people get to live. They will all conglomerate in this one part of the city in order to bask in their luxury with other people who have similar financial resources to play with. When they think of the less fortunate, if they do at all, it will be in short bursts, usually around the holidays when they donate a dollar or last season's coat to a drive hosted by their company, club, or favorite charity. In this same metropolis, there will be a less advantageous part where the middle class dwells. These homes will not be as fancy and their job titles will be simpler too, but they will live in a reasonable amount of comfort. They too will think about the less fortunate only sporadically. Near them, but not too near, will be the low-income areas of the metropolis where people barely live. They get by because the adults work several jobs at all hours of the night, the children go relatively unsupervised, and they spend a great deal of time worrying about how they got into their current situation and how they can possibly get out. Yet, even these folks have it better than some. There is a roof over their heads, even if that roof leaks and the doors remain unlocked. There are parts of the metropolis where people come together when they have nowhere else to go. The city of Los Angeles, California has a mythological quality to it. For more than a century it has been associated with movie stars, with sunshine, with great prosperity for all. It is the orange groves and the Pacific Ocean and a chance for anyone to come from nothing and come out on top. Unfortunately, myth and reality seldom coalesce and this is certainly the case in Los Angeles, colloquially referred to by the initials L.A or the nickname "The City of Angels." Some people become stars in L.A. And some do not. Many come because it is warm; the sunlight serving to heat them when they have not other means of warmth. Skid Row in Downtown Los Angeles has been a haven for the homeless, not only of L.A. But for all downtrodden men who seek anywhere they might find a sense of hope and a feeling of humanity again.

Before there were movie studios or big businesses located in Southern California, the area was primarily agricultural. Up and down the coast were tracts of farmland with orchards and fields full of produce. Transient laborers would travel from farm to farm seeking work. The railroads along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe line built stations so they could easily ship produce from one town to the next (Brightwell). In addition to farmhands, there were also railroad workers who needed places to sleep, among other necessities. When there was no work to be had, these laborers would stay in little towns that sprung up and now dotted the landscape from one side of California to the other. Business-minded individuals provided services to these men, including a place to say, a means of cleansing themselves, providing something to eat or drink, and often someone to keep him company for the night, all of which cost him money. Often it would cost him all of the money he had earned. As a direct result of the laborers being in the area, the increased population in the United States, and the continual need for produce and agricultural products, industry came to California. Factories sprung up and, with them, more jobs.

Over time, more people would come to these little areas, including transient farm and railroad laborers, unemployed homeless individuals, and anyone else who was considered unsophisticated and unsuitable to live in the more respectable areas of Los Angeles. By the 1930s, part of what had become downtown L.A. had been populated in large numbers by these marginalized people, including a large number of homeless people looking for someplace to simply exist (Wild 152). During the heights of the Depression, men from all over the country came to California in search of employment and a chance to rebuild his life. Some were unable to find such a chance and wound up in places like Skid Row, a square mile and half of the great city. Skid...

It is the mile that takes up land bordered by Main Street on its west side, Third Street on the north, Alameda on the east, and Seventh Street on its south side. One of the major reasons for the decline of downtown Los Angeles was the attractiveness the city had to people from other parts of the country. When the population of a city grows, so must the borders of that city. Unfortunately, by the 1940s, the city had grown so large that suburbs were needed and built on the land surrounding Los Angeles. The better businesses and the more financially-benefitted people moved out of the downtown region and into other parts of the city, leaving the poor and the other marginalized populations of Skid Row behind, now without any means of employment or suitable means to reach places of employment.
The Los Angeles Police Department, like many metropolitan police departments, was less than happy to have this large population of transients located in the limits of their great city. Being an area which features accommodations for the marginalized and which does not judge people too harshly for their vices of choice, such a location tends to invite a large amount of crime. Alcohol consumption and drug abuse tend to lead to acts of violence, either because the person intoxicated no longer has their inhibitions or because they need to commit the violence in order to get their next fix. Police departments in big cities have used this as an excuse to harass the populations and clear the area if possible. Like these police departments, the LAPD tried to remove this group from the area. In fact, police raids on Skid Row were numerous and frequent, seldom making even a dent on the crime rate or the population of homeless in the area. On June 4, 1947, police chief C.B. Horrall ordered a blockade raid of Skid Row, culminating in the arrest of 351 people. At the time between, 8,000 and 9,000 transients were living in the Skid Row region. Reporter Hal Boyle wrote for The Evening Independent in 1947. He reported that the raid had successfully removed several wanted criminals as well as many vagrants, who had been threatened with 180 days in jail as an alternative to leaving town. Boyle wrote, "Old-time residents however, believe Skid Row will remain a civic sore until the area is completely rebuilt. The prostitutes and crooks have always come back after previous raids" (10). As it has turned out, those residents were correct. Nearly seven decades later, Skid Row is still a bastion of crime and an unsafe place for most people to call home. After dark, it is difficult to find people on the street, unless they have no choice.

Approximately a decade later, the city of Los Angeles made another attempt to revitalize Skid Row and, by extension, hopefully remove some of the less savory characters from the area. Since strong-arming had not worked, the city passed measures in 1956 to clear out buildings which had fallen into disrepair and had been condemned. Many of the buildings targeted for demolition were hotels and apartment buildings which were essentially tenements. Unsurprisingly, the owners of these buildings were not willing to give up their ownership or agree to the demolition of their property without a fight. Most of their efforts lost and by 1960, nearly 90% of the buildings in Skid Row had been destroyed (Sibley 1). An unfortunate consequence of the destruction of so many homes was the displacement of even more people in the area already overburdened by the homeless. The city constructed buildings which were up to code, at least at the time. It did not take long for even these new buildings to fall into disrepair and, as Los Angeles expanded in other directions, less concern was given to the individuals who had to live in Skid Row. Finally, in 1975, the city passed their Redevelopment Plan which included a policy for containing the homeless problem of Los Angeles within a confined location, namely Skid Row. According to Donald Spivack of the Community Redevelopment Agency of Los Angeles:

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…