Sidewalks Are Not for Sleeping

Nearly 11,000 very poor men and women now live on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. If they are lucky, they live in one of the dozen or so newly renovated single occupancy hotels where small, comfortable rooms rent for between $185 and $225 a month. The low rent is all they can afford on a general relief check from the county. They stretch their monthly allotment of $311 by using social services that provide free meals, clothing, medical services and counseling.

But decent rooms are scarce because business pressures have been driving low-cost housing out of downtown. More than 2,000 rooms have been demolished during the past two decades, and no private developers have built apartments to replace them.

Currently a moratorium prevents further demolitions. The city ordinance also buys time for nonprofit developers who try to salvage hotels that have become squalid, drug-infested dumps. That is not easy to do because there are many hurdles to overcome--financing the most important among them. Fires are also common; homeless people and drug-users often break into the boarded-up hotels and other old buildings and light bonfires.

This is probably what caused the fire that did heavy damage a week ago to the empty Leonide Hotel on 5th Street. Although the blaze slowed down the renovation planned by the Los Angeles Community Design Center in partnership with the Chrysalis Center, the nonprofit developers say the housing will be built, one way or another. That’s important, because single-occupancy hotels provide the best source of affordable housing for the many poor, single adults who congregate on Skid Row. They deserve more than a spot on the sidewalk to sleep on.