Skid Row’s Changing Face

Saturdays are play days at the slice-of-pie-shaped park carved into a corner at 5th Street and San Julian in downtown Los Angeles.

On those days, the usual clusters of ragtag, idle men give way to the bounding energy and laughter of children, who emerge with their mothers from the seedy hotels and crowded shelters of skid row.

More and more, women and children are a distinct presence in this forbidding pit of urban L.A., a notorious 50-square-block area that is the home of last resort to many of the city’s most afflicted, tormented and destitute souls.

With limited emergency services available in surrounding communities, police departments, legal aid workers and social agencies routinely refer homeless women and families downtown, often miles from their own neighborhoods.

They are people like Amy Visgar, 31, and her 7-year-old son, Brandon, who found themselves homeless when Visgar could not afford the rent on her Pomona apartment. After she called several social agencies for help in her community, Visgar and her son were referred to a skid row emergency shelter. Penniless and without even food stamps to rely on, mother and son now eat their meals at rescue missions.

They are people like 18-year-old Cecilia and her two young daughters, on the run from an abusive boyfriend. The young, dark-haired mother, who did not want her last name used, spent several weeks in a Long Beach emergency shelter before she had to leave to make room for another family. She was told to try downtown Los Angeles, she says.

They are people like Joyce Lee, an articulate, soft-faced 59-year-old mother of two grown sons who has lived in a skid row mission for four years, one of a series of unforeseen “transitions” in her life.

“One never thinks, ‘One day I’m going to find myself living in a rescue mission on skid row,’ but unless you are well-cushioned, it can happen,” she said.

Women Caught in Downward Spiral

The feminization of skid row is a phenomenon that has emerged mostly in the last two years, fueled by cutbacks in welfare benefits, the lingering impact of the recession on low-income working families and other factors, said experts.

The problem is not limited to Los Angeles. Cities from Boston to Denver reported more families requesting emergency housing in the past year.

No one knows the exact numbers of homeless women and children who inhabit skid row, but providers say they appear to be growing. A study commissioned by Los Angeles’ Union Rescue Mission reported a 228% jump from 1995 to 1997 in the number of nights women requested emergency housing.

The mission, one of the largest emergency shelters in the country, found that it provided more than 64,800 nights of lodging to women and children and served them more than 145,000 meals in 1997. The numbers for 1995, by comparison, were 19,730 nights of lodging and 103,000 meals served to families.

“We’re seeing a significant shift in the character of the homeless population,” said Michael Dear, a USC professor of geography who has studied the urban problems of Los Angeles. “There has been a trend for some years to see an increasing number of women and children on the streets, and downtown remains a reservoir of services.”

But plans by some downtown shelters to expand their emergency facilities to serve this growing population have prompted a furious debate among homeless agencies. The directors of some programs say the efforts attract women and children to an inhospitable and dangerous area.

Indeed, the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency generally will not approve construction of family housing near skid row because of safety concerns and the lack of basic services for families, said CRA Deputy Administrator Don Spivack.

When families do land downtown, most homeless agencies try to relocate them to transitional shelters elsewhere. There are 2,300 beds reserved for families countywide, according to the nonprofit Shelter Partnership. But they are usually full, and relatively few of them are set aside for families who need housing on an emergency basis. Skid row, therefore, has emerged as a hub for families as well as single men.

Officials fear that as more and more women and families flock downtown, it may already be too late to keep them from becoming permanent fixtures.

“The majority of agencies do agree this is not a place, long term, for a family to be housed,” said Spivack. “Once off the street, we need to get them stabilized and get them to someplace more appropriate. But the [interval] before they are resettled gets longer and longer.”

The Union Rescue Mission has about 195 beds for women and children and is planning to add another wing because of rising demand. Other downtown providers are also planning to expand their facilities or offer new programs for women and children.

One agency has started a van service to carry women safely to nearby grocery stores. Another provides a security escort for children to one of the two patches of green space on skid row.

The issue is of rising concern to city officials, as the homeless numbers seem to defy a rebounding economy and hinder efforts to sell downtown Los Angeles as a desirable home for the professionals who work in its office towers.

Mayor Richard Riordan recently ordered a performance review of programs serving the homeless and said the issue is a priority. In a May letter to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which coordinates services for the city and county, Riordan remarked on the need for specialized programs for homeless youth and families.

“It is a clear fact that any Angeleno can one day be homeless,” he wrote.

Los Angeles this year received about $45 million in grants for homeless services. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently announced that it will release $1.1 billion for programs, and Riordan declared that “Los Angeles must be a front-runner in this national competition for funds.”

Indeed, the trend in Los Angeles is part of a national pattern that has seen an explosion of homeless women and families in cities large and small. A 1997 survey of 29 cities, including Los Angeles, by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that families are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population, accounting for 36% of the total nationwide. The vast majority were single women with children, although many intact families are finding themselves living on the streets.

And the causes of homelessness are diffuse, making one cure-all impossible. The survey cited substance abuse, lack of affordable housing and mental illness as major factors.

Falling on Bad Times

In the Union Rescue Mission survey, 45% of the female respondents reported that they were homeless because they lost a job. Homeless advocates also contend that cuts in public assistance are fueling some of the numbers. In California, for example, the monthly level of cash assistance for a family of three in most cases has dropped to $565 from a high of $775 in 1991.

In two-thirds of the cities surveyed by the Conference of Mayors, families may have to be separated along gender lines in order to be sheltered. And many emergency shelters are compelled to turn away homeless families because they lack the resources and space to care for them.

That is what happened to Janice and Jeff Banks, a couple with two small children who say they could find no shelters near their Long Beach home to accommodate them. They finally found room at the Union Rescue Mission, although the family must live in separate quarters, Jeff in the men’s shelter on one side of the facility, Janice, Jalisa, 5, and Khalah, 2, on the other side with the women.

The family lost its home when Jeff, a telecommunications technician, was laid off. They seemed a bit dazed recently as they sat on the grass at San Julian Park in an area removed from the scores of single men who staked out the patches of shade or sat in the covered pavilions playing dominoes.

Nearby rested a large stroller that contained the flotsam of a family in disarray: blankets, a bulging briefcase, toys, bottles of water, clothes, books and papers. As Janice tried to keep an eye on her darting children, she surveyed the bustling scene around the fenced park.

Mostly middle-aged men and a sprinkling of women milled about and spilled over onto street corners. Cars drove by slowly, disgorging people and sometimes boxes of food. One man approached the fence carrying plates of fresh-baked cookies, which Khalah and other children gladly snatched.

The triangle of 5th and San Julian used to be known as Thieves’ Corner because people would use it as a gathering place to fence stolen property for drug money. It still attracts a good share of drug activity, say residents. The park is managed by the nearby SRO Housing Corp., which provides security. And Los Angeles Police Department officers keep a presence, often driving by slowly or parking on side streets.

On a hot, stifling afternoon, most people seemed relaxed.

“I know most people are not here to harm you, but some people are not right in the head,” observed Janice, a young woman with smooth, delicate features and strands of graying hair that exposed her hardships. She added that she is particularly concerned when the men try to chat up her 5-year-old daughter.

So far, the children seem unconcerned, she said. “They’re happy. The little one is too young to really know what’s going on, and for the 5-year-old, anywhere she can lay her head is OK. We try to be calm and not show them any fear.”

On a bench nearby, Amy Visgar seemed almost unnaturally calm, perhaps also betraying a maternal instinct to shield her young son from the fearsome prospects of their plight. But Brandon is old enough to understand.

“It’s been traumatic for him,” Visgar admitted. The two had to move from their home after her boyfriend, Brandon’s father, went to jail. Visgar, a weary-eyed woman with long, cascading brown hair, is reluctant to divulge too many details.

Visgar has no family in the area. She was trying to apply for welfare or food stamps this week, but transportation has been a problem. Until her public benefits are approved, she and Brandon are dependent on the kindness of strangers.

At first, said Visgar, she did not feel very threatened in her new, unfamiliar surroundings. But within a week of arriving at the mission, she had been in a shouting match with another woman who had made an obscene gesture at her son, and Brandon had received his first black eye after accidentally banging heads with a playmate, she said. As her towheaded little boy perched near his mother on the park bench, she observed that he is never far from her side.

“He doesn’t let me out of his sight for a second. He’s mad at the world right now because his dad is in jail and he doesn’t have a home. He’s got a lot of anger and he doesn’t make friends as easy any more.”

Next to Visgar on the bench, a mother started yelling when she saw her son drinking out of another child’s juice bottle. “I don’t have to worry about that with Brandon,” said Visgar smiling. “He doesn’t even drink after me.”

Working for Change

City officials contend that in spite of its image, skid row has undergone a vast turnaround from 10 years ago and has forged a community, of sorts.

“People are entitled to a safe neighborhood, a clean neighborhood where they can live in dignity, and we have endeavored to create a sense of stability there,” said the CRA’s Spivack.

But he added that the area is still far from an ideal family environment.

Joan Sotiros is director of the St. Vincent Cardinal Manning Center, a shelter on the edge of skid row with accommodations for five women and up to 10 children. The center also co-sponsors an after-school program, which has a waiting list, for children who live in the hotels around skid row. But Sotiros said the shelter rarely takes new referrals from families needing housing because “this is skid row, and we are really committed to not having women in this area.”

Bud Hayes, president of SRO Housing Corp., said his board decided that the need for family housing was strong enough to include a future project in its strategic plans. But they have not determined whether to expand in skid row.

“We realize providing a safe, healthy room in an area where you can walk out and get killed is not a good product,” said Hayes. “A safe room in a safe community is our goal.”

At San Julian Park, Brandon, Jalisa, Khalah and the other young children were beginning to become restless as the afternoon waned. The park would close a few hours early for maintenance, meaning the homeless denizens--men, women and children--would have to find some other place to while away the hours before the shelters and missions began serving evening meals.

Lack of privacy and space is one of the hardest aspects of being homeless with children, said Janice as the family headed out of the park--to where, they couldn’t say.

To be a good parent is hard, to remain a good parent when you are penniless and on the streets is harder, said Amy Visgar, who was also headed out with Brandon.

She looked at her son. “I’m not worried he’s going to change, though. He bounces back.”