Why Skid Row Has Become L.A.’s ‘Dumping’ Ground

To understand how the streets of downtown Los Angeles have become a depository for drug addicts, parolees and homeless people, just look through the logs of the skid row detox center run by the Volunteers of America.

In the last month alone, dozens of police cruisers from as far away as Carson and Venice have pulled up to the center’s doors on Crocker Street near 5th Street, bringing with them more than 150 intoxicated homeless people. The drop-offs have come from nine law enforcement agencies besides the Los Angeles Police Department, according to the records reviewed by The Times, but also from various LAPD divisions, including Hollywood, Pacific and West L.A.

A block away at the Union Rescue Mission, social workers say ambulances and taxis regularly drop people at their doorstep from hospitals, healthcare centers and even retirement homes. Although critics might denounce such actions as dumping problems in downtown Los Angeles, the reality, according to police, social workers and community activists, is more complicated.

Skid row has the county’s largest concentration of services for homeless people and those with drug and alcohol addictions.

This makes it a place of last resort for agencies dealing with people who have been released from jail, hospitals or other institutions and have nowhere else to go.

For decades, few questioned the arrangement -- largely because that section of downtown had long been home to single-room-occupancy hotels and charity groups that attracted transients.

But in recent years, the neighborhoods around skid row have been at the center of a major revitalization, as long-abandoned office buildings have been converted into luxury lofts and condos. Now, with units in the shadow of skid row going for as much as $700,000, some residents and city officials say they are tired of the area being a dumping ground for the region’s problems.

The people brought downtown might arrive for treatment, said LAPD Assistant Chief George Gascon, but “sooner or later, they are going to leave. Where do you think they are going to go?”

The LAPD raised the issue of “dumping” the homeless downtown two weeks ago. Central Division Capt. Andrew Smith told The Times that he saw two sheriff’s deputies un-handcuff a mentally ill homeless man and attempt to leave him on a skid row street. Smith also cited four other suburban police departments that his officers said they had observed leaving people downtown, though the agencies deny the accusations.

In the 11 years that Darryle Lewis worked as a police officer for the Metropolitan Transportation Agency, it was routine for him and his colleagues to place homeless people they found riding trains and buses at centers on skid row, he said.

“We knew that if we got someone who was indigent, you couldn’t leave them on the streets,” said Lewis, who now works for the LAPD.

More often than not, he said, they took people to the Weingart Center, a social services facility on skid row, because it “rarely turned anyone away.”

John King, president and chief executive of the center, said he and other providers “don’t dwell upon ‘How did you get here?’ ” But, he added, “we don’t think it’s appropriate for people from all over the county to be dropped down here.”

The Weingart Center is one of more than a dozen facilities for homeless and addicted people along skid row. Entry logs from some of these facilities, along with interviews with officials who run the agencies, suggest that many of the people who come for services arrive from far-flung parts of the county.

Take the Volunteers of America detox center. Almost every day between Sept. 2 and Oct. 3, law enforcement officers from 16 LAPD divisions and at least nine other agencies arrived at the shelter with people needing its services.

Most of the drop-offs from the LAPD came from the Rampart Division, which over the last two years has received credit for cleaning up MacArthur Park, once known for its homeless people and drug problems.

Other agencies that delivered people to the detox center included the Los Angeles General Services Department police, Los Angeles schools police, Maywood police, Montebello police, Alhambra police, Los Angeles airport police and Los Angeles County police. At least a dozen people were left by the Sheriff’s Department, with at least one from the Lynwood station.

Because the detox center is funded by the county’s Alcohol and Drug Program Administration, it accepts clients from any law enforcement department in the county, said Jim Howat, the group director for homeless services in Los Angeles.

The Volunteers of America detox center is charged with helping addicts but does not have any legal authority to hold them. Of those dropped off by law enforcement, Howat said, “their main interest is, how do they get back to where they were.”

But it appears that at least some of the people dropped off in the last month remained in and around downtown -- and some went on to be arrested for alleged crimes.

A 34-year-old man was taken to the facility Sept. 5 by L.A. County police officers. The man, who had a history of burglary, spousal abuse and public intoxication charges, was arrested by the LAPD’s Southwest Division two days later on suspicion of residential burglary, according to police records.

A 52-year-old man was dropped off at the detox center Sept. 12 by the LAPD’s Southeast Division. The man had prior convictions for driving while intoxicated and driving on a suspended license. Less than four hours after being dropped off, he was arrested by the LAPD’s 77th Division, records show, though the exact charge was unclear.

But police are not alone in taking people to skid row.

At the Union Rescue Mission, Scott Johnson said his shelter receives two to three drop-offs a week from private ambulances and taxis. Those clients include homeless people discharged from hospitals and the elderly being ousted from nursing homes because of a lack of money, he said.

“The ambulances pull up, escort people in and leave,” said Johnson, director of program services at the mission.

Often, those dropped off still need medical care that the mission cannot provide. “So we end up calling an ambulance back,” Johnson said.

Other people don’t meet the facility’s criteria for admission, which include the ability to take care of themselves and refrain from violence.

The agencies “are using us a crutch,” he said. “They know we know who to contact.”

Three weeks ago an ambulance arrived at the mission with an ill man in a wheelchair.

“We don’t have the staff” to help a paraplegic, Johnson said, so the mission could not admit him. Instead, Johnson said, the facility helped him for a brief time and then referred him elsewhere.

Many service providers on skid row say they doubt that the situation will change unless the county establishes more services in other areas.

But there have been significant stumbles along the way toward a regional solution. A county task force -- titled Bring L.A. Home -- is more than a year behind in its aim to present a comprehensive 10-year plan for moving what has been estimated at 80,000 homeless people in the county off the streets and into housing.

Tom Gilmore, the downtown developer credited with starting the loft boom, said the issue is less about how the people get to skid row there than effectively serving them.

“The system is exploding, and what’s happening is this notion that everybody is going to have to do something,” he said.

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Agencies

Some police agencies and LAPD divisions that dropped off people at the Volunteers of America detox center downtown between Sept. 2 and Oct. 1, and the number* dropped:

LAPD Rampart Division, 19

LAPD Central Division, 15

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, 12

LAPD Hollywood Division, 10

LAPD Wilshire Division, 9

LAPD Pacific Division, 6

LAPD Southeast Division, 6

LAPD Hollenbeck Division, 6

LAPD Newton Division, 5

LAPD Southwest Division, 5

Source: Volunteers of America detox center logs

Los Angeles Times

* Note: Many of those attributed to the LAPD did not specify the division.