Leadership on Skid Row
Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley has moved forcefully and appropriately to rescue the city’s program to preserve low-cost Skid Row housing.
His forceful leadership is obviously needed as business interests, understandably enough, increase pressure to drive out the poor people in this, the last section of the central city that is not fully redeveloped for commercial purposes.
His move is consistent with the city’s commitment in 1976 to preserve at its center this low-cost housing. The policy has proved effective in contrast with the moves of many other major cities to disperse the Skid Row population. Decentralization can only result in the neglect of the housing needs and of the special services required to serve the special population, including the large numbers of those needing mental-health help.
According to one study, housing for 500 low-income persons was lost last year alone through the demolition of single-room-occupancy hotels, and demolitions affecting an additional 8,000 to 10,000 units are pending. So the mayor has called for an extension of the six-month moratorium on demolitions, already approved by the City Council, to provide all the time necessary for the Planning Commission to work out a program to maintain the housing.
This is not a problem for the city alone. The county bears the basic responsibility for paying the price of housing for the indigent people who depend on Skid Row for shelter. But unless the city preserves the stock of housing now available in the single-room-occupancy hotels, there will be a further worsening of homelessness.
The Community Redevelopment Agency has played an imaginative role in the past in the Los Angeles experiment to preserve Skid Row, but it appears to be changing course and shifting to the side of those who would disperse the residents and enhance the area’s commercial development. That is wrong. The city’s elected officials must have the last word in redirecting the CRA, and its resources, to make sure that continued commercial development is not at the expense of Skid Row housing.
