Making Mean Streets Clean

The street-cleaning crew’s orange vests and yellow dump trucks are the only splashes of color on a rainy skid row morning. The workers rake up soggy bagels, paper plates, athletic socks and foam cups into a huge pile.

A skip loader noisily swallows the trash and spits it into the dump truck. The crews then head off to another skid row spot identified by police earlier that morning--a narrow brick alley that often doubles as a movie set.

It is a notorious dumping ground for merchants and the homeless. More often than not the alley is littered with packing materials, drug paraphernalia, food containers and human excrement.

After the skip loader scoops up heaps of garbage, a street sweeper makes a pass, its large, circular brooms swirling dirty water into the air.

The cleanup ritual is repeated every weekday for three hours, part of a program that began a decade ago. But the debris continues to accumulate in increasing amounts, making the tough life on some of the city’s grittiest streets even tougher.

“It’s a mess, and that’s not right,” said Tracy Hickson, 30, who lives in an area hotel.

Skid row is taking a two-pronged approach to gaining the upper hand on its mounting piles of trash.

First, people who live and work there are personally tackling the problem with a grass-roots cleanup program scheduled for Friday, when residents will take to the streets with brooms and shovels.

But they also hope to find better ways of choking off the stream of trash at its sources. As the bagels, cups and paper plates collected by the skip loader indicate, much of the trash comes from humanitarian efforts to feed hungry people.

Residents know that what they call a “tornado” or “snowstorm” of trash is a defining image for their neighborhood east of downtown, where about 14,000 people live. That trash, residents and officials say, stymies revitalization efforts and gives the impression that the neighborhood has given up.

“The neighborhood needs to be treated with respect,” said Bud Hayes, whose firm manages 16 hotels in the area. “These people have a right to safe, clean, and healthy streets.”

Many residents have always done what they can to make their streets clean and healthy, bringing their own brooms to help street maintenance workers collect trash.

“People here are always trying to clean up,” said Caeser Kelly, a tenant organizer and longtime resident. “Otherwise the problems would be even worse.”

Trash is a major frustration for skid row residents, many of whom do not know who to contact about the problem, according to a 1997 survey conducted by United Coalition East, a community organization.

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If Kelly and his allies at the coalition are successful, residents will turn to their own efforts as a first step with the cleanup scheduled for Friday. That project is an effort to mobilize the area’s population. If it is successful, organizers hope to make it a regular monthly event.

“We want to get people motivated about caring about the community,” said Anthony Ramirez, the cleanup’s coordinator.

But those volunteers may find themselves fighting what some residents accept as a fact of life.

“What difference does it make if trash gets left behind?” said Michelle Ruiz, 32. “It’s scattered everywhere anyway.”

As a bearded man sweeping up trash on Palmetto Avenue put it: “We try to keep the place clean, but some people are filthy.”

The trash has any number of sources--from illegal dumping to the natural consequences of so many people living on the streets.

“Think of how much debris you create at home,” said Gene Scott, director of the city’s Bureau of Street Maintenance. “You can put it in a container and when it’s full, take it out. People here generate the same amount, but they’re living on the streets.”

One of the biggest sources of trash is the generosity Angelenos show for the down and out. Those programs serving hundreds of meals a day from vans, trucks and other vehicles present special problems, officials say.

When missions are closed or have limited meal service on weekends, these mobile providers are in even greater demand along Towne Avenue, Fifth, San Julian and San Pedro streets.

After the meals are served, foam cups, packaging, paper bags and plastic wrap are often scattered for blocks--the detritus of charity.

One such program is run by members of Los Angeles’ Paradise Baptist Church; they cook about 500 chicken dinners for the homeless once a week. Along with hot food, church members serve up prayer and spiritual counseling.

What the group doesn’t offer is trash cans.

“Most people just take the food and leave,” said the Rev. Randy Vincent. Requiring or even asking recipients to clean up could lead to volatile confrontations, he said.

On a recent Sunday morning, a Westside financial firm served more than 600 turkey dinners and brought along its own trash cans. Some recipients helped clean up the immediate area afterward. But a few blocks away, pigeons flocked to discarded plates piled with peas and carrots.

In recent months, the Community Service Roundtable, a coalition of 25 Skid Row agencies, has also tried to tackle the trash issue. Progress has been slow.

“It’s a people issue,” said Joan Sotiros, of St. Vincent’s Cardinal Manning Center, a round-table member. “These groups have a need to feed the hungry. But they should also make a commitment to picking up.”

Skid row activist Alice Callaghan dismisses the garbage problem as trivial, saying it merely masks other more serious issues the homeless face.

“Businesses don’t want feeding in the streets,” she said. “They don’t want the homeless to be visible.”

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Some agencies in the area have suggested that mobile food providers donate their supplies to a pantry, or increase their efforts to clean up. And those churches and other organizations that prepare food could work out of established facilities, such as Catholic Workers, agency heads say.

Catering trucks serving film crews also contribute to the problem. Those trucks often give leftover food to homeless people who gather to watch the cameras roll, although officials recommend that it be given to a mission or community kitchen. The trash from those leftovers often winds up on the sidewalk, in the gutters or fluttering down alleys.

Councilwoman Rita Walters said her staff is exploring ways to deal with the trash left behind by feeding programs. But simply contacting those Good Samaritans can be difficult, she said.

“How to get arms around it?” said Walters, whose 9th District encompasses part of skid row. “How do you know what corner, what day, what time? We have no way knowing who these people are.”

County Health Department officials have taken action against businesses with trash on their premises--regardless of the source--issuing citations that could lead to fines up to $1,000.

But those fines are a two-edged sword and nearly led to the departure of at least three Japanese firms last year. Police officers and Little Tokyo residents, who didn’t want the companies to leave, volunteered to clean up the properties. Those efforts warded off additional citations, said Officer Pete Foster, who helped organize the cleanup.

Because the trash comes from so many different sources, officials said, more than one approach will be needed to clean it up. Walters said the city is making an effort to address the problem with the weekday street-sweeping program.

“I don’t know how much more frequent the cleaning can get,” she said. “The city is doing as much as it can do.”

Still, some business owners wonder if more can be done.

“Everything is allowed here,” said Tracey Lovejoy, director of the Central City East Assn., a coalition of 50 companies. “It’s no-man’s land. Would this be happening at Pershing Square? The same laws should be enforced here.”

If they are not and garbage is allowed to pile up, “it makes people fear the neighborhood,” said Paul Rossi, program manager of the Los Angeles Homeless Authority. “They don’t even want to drive through. There’s no respect for the people.”