L.A. Cityscape in Warehouse Area
Your article frightened me with its illustration of the bizarre subculture thriving in the city’s warehouse district. Its seedy night life rife with transients and criminals showed how close “Blade Runner” is to becoming a reality for L.A.
The warehouse district, with its steel-shuttered produce, wholesale storerooms and loading docks, conducts over $3 billion a year in business. It is one of the leading distribution centers in the United States. However, it is plagued by swarms of transients who assault the district’s cache of produce and merchandise.
I feel that there are always enough resources to fight a problem if one simply searches hard enough. Resources can be mustered among the city and the businesses. These resources can then be used to help transients instead of combatting them. The city can provide job training, counseling centers, drug rehabilitation clinics and other self-help programs. The businesses can have the transients work for them instead of against them. If we are powerless to stop the spread of urban decay, then the warehouse district will be a glimpse of our own communities to come.
ALAN SAM, Los Angeles
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