Reality on the Streets

Some of the people who do business in the Skid Row area of Los Angeles have picked the wrong answer to the question of what to do about the homeless men and women on their doorsteps--the people who sleep on the sidewalks, set bonfires to keep warm and often mutter menacingly at passers-by. The answer lies in aiding the programs that seek to help those people help themselves. It does not lie in suing to block such a project, but that is just what the Central City East Assn. has done.

At issue is a zoning variance that the city granted for the Los Angeles Men’s Place to rehabilitate a building on San Pedro Street in a light-industrial area. The proposed center would provide housing for several dozen men and women until they can find permanent homes. It would contain a convenience store, a commercial laundry and a coin-operated laundry that would provide needed services for people in the area as well as jobs that would help the homeless mentally ill start getting back onto their feet.

The people at LAMP, as it is known, feel strongly that they could help some of the very individuals whose presence so bothers local business people if they could only stabilize their lives by offering a decent place in which to live and some means of self-support. The organization has a track record through the daytime program that it operates on San Julian Street. It has won rare city and county cooperation to back the project, and it has raised private money and secured some state support. If the project is held up in court for anylong period, the money will be spent elsewhere.

The project planners considered other sites for their center. One adjacent to the current LAMP operation cost more money than the planners had, and required earthquake-safety work as well; another wasn’t for sale. It’s not as if this project will attract new droves of the down-and-out into the area; the proposed site serves the homeless mentally ill where they already are.

The Central City East Assn. suit claims that the City Council, in voting unanimously for the zoning variance, didn’t follow city law. Variances, the lawsuit says, can be granted only if they do not adversely affect the city’s general plan and don’t injure nearby property. The group also claims that the city did not properly evaluate the environmental impact of the project.

This is an obnoxious, obstructive suit. It is a perversion of the environmental-impact process; the impact of the project can only be beneficial. The suit claims concern with the increased level of police and ambulance services that would be needed in the area, when in fact the project aims at trying to reduce the number of people whose presence requires such services.

The suit says that the businesses in the area will be adversely affected because they won’t be able “to continue to attract qualified individuals to work in a clean, healthful and safe working environment.” One way to provide that environment, for all who live and work in the area, is to help groups that are trying to cure the problem rather than continuing to resist reality.