Skid Row’s Frustrated Families

Outrage and fear came to a head for Maria Martinez the day her 6-year-old daughter picked up what she thought was a balloon and began blowing it up. It was a used condom.

Horrifying but hardly uncommon in the skid row hotel on the edge of downtown Los Angeles where Martinez’s struggling family has lived for years.

Fed up with drug deals in the hallways and hookers plying their trade in adjoining rooms, Martinez--poor, uneducated and with limited English skills--decided to take on City Hall.

Through friends, she heard of an activist organization, the United Coalition East, that was working to improve conditions on the row. She joined several other residents and filed a complaint with the city, demanding that officials use zoning laws and building codes to crack down on businesses that are magnets for criminals.

But 12 months later, the hookers and drug dealers remain.

Martinez and her friends believe that city government is not responding because they are poor and live in a slum.

“Many times when I leave my room, people in the halls will ask if I have anything to sell and will harass me or push me around when I say no,” Martinez said. “Would they allow such things in a better neighborhood?”

Experts say belief in such a disparity is not unfounded.

“It is obviously true, almost axiomatic, that quality-of-life issues are treated differently, depending on where you live,” said USC professor Michael Dear, who also directs the Southern California Studies Center. “People with more avenues, more wealth, more clout tend to get attention more quickly than those without those avenues.”

Even some groups from more affluent neighborhoods that have successfully battled city government agree. “The more upscale the community, the more noise is made,” said Don Schultz, president of the Van Nuys Homeowners Assn. “Enforcement in L.A. is almost nonexistent unless you have political pull.”

Officials contend that they are not ignoring Martinez and her neighbors. They say that similar complaints from around the city have overwhelmed the bureaucracy.

The numbers of nuisance complaints and the time and resources devoted to them have grown exponentially in recent years. Residents in poor neighborhoods such as Pacoima, Pico-Union, Hollywood and South-Central also are fighting to clear out abandoned buildings, clean up trash-strewn streets and rein in liquor stores and motels that cater to drug addicts and prostitutes.

But since Martinez and her group filed their complaint, the city has acted in other districts, cracking down on businesses as varied as a music store in the Mid-Wilshire area, a food distribution center in the West Adams district, a cabaret near Griffith Park and an airport-area supper club.

It would be hard to imagine an area more in need of code enforcement than skid row.

To outsiders, the 50-square-block hub of downtown is a place for the homeless, for unattached men and women who are alcoholics, drug addicts and mentally ill.

It is also a home to families. They live there because rents are cheap and it is close to entry-level jobs spawned by the garment and toy industries nearby. Ninth Street School is easily accessible to families that must walk or use public transportation.

A Neighborhood of Urban Ills

Martinez has lived in a small boarding room on 7th Street for 12 years with her husband, Rolando Cervantes, and daughters Elvia, 15; Gladys, 9; and Fatima, 6.

Martinez occasionally works selling peanuts at the Coliseum. Her husband works nearby on 4th Street, unloading trucks in the toy district. They pay only $240 monthly for their cramped room and use the bus to get around.

Each afternoon, Martinez picks up Gladys and Fatima and escorts them home from the Ninth Street School, a short trek that is a panorama of urban ills.

On a recent day, they passed a hooker in a tight white dress and spiked heels mingling with friends in a doorway. Along Gladys Street, the smell of human waste was strong.

Martinez and her family live next to a liquor store on one side and a nightclub, a hangout for transvestites, on the other.

At 3 p.m. the street is filled with men, some with backpacks on their way to or from work, but most hanging or staggering around the liquor store entrance, coming and going with bottles in small brown bags.

Martinez has complained repeatedly to her landlord about drug sales in the building and hookers who knock on doors to sell their services. Martinez has pictures of shared bathroom and shower stalls crusted with dirt and fungus and ankle-deep in used condoms.

The family’s most frightening experience occurred last summer when Elvia, a Roosevelt High School sophomore, was assaulted by a drunk in one of the bathrooms down the hall from their first-floor room.

She managed to pull free and ran back to her room. Her stepfather fought briefly with the man before he fled. The family filed a police report but heard nothing more.

Conditions led a nearby merchant, Edward Nassar, to develop a unique irrigation system. He rigged a series of pipes and hoses on the rooftop of his business at 5th and Wall streets, so that a wall of water gently cascades down the side of the building as if it were a fancy Bunker Hill fountain. Only the intent is to wash away the overpowering stink of urine.

Other merchants have rigged rooftop sprinkler systems designed to spray the sidewalk and induce loiterers to scatter.

Nassar blames a bar across the street for most of his problems.

“They sell beer to the transients; they see them drink it all, their eyes are red and they are selling them more beer,” he said. “There are a lot of fights; the police are always here. They have knives, they fight. I go to the city, nobody cares.”

Still No Hearings After a Year

City officials say they do care.

“No one in any part of the city should have to put up with behavior that makes their life a living hell, and the fact that it’s skid row or South-Central has no bearing at all,” said Robert Janovici, chief of the city’s zoning administration agency, which is charged with enforcing public-nuisance laws.

The agency, which operates out of the city’s planning department, is one of those obscure bureaucracies that can have a huge impact on everyday life. When a resident, civic group or official complains about a public nuisance such as drugs, prostitution, loitering, public drunkenness, vandalism or illegal parking, the zoning administrator can determine if there is a significant problem and hold a public hearing where the city can set new conditions under which a business must operate.

If the problems are not solved, the zoning agency can order a business closed. Businesses that have had their permits revoked have the right to appeal to the City Council. The process can take up to 15 months.

But sometimes things move faster, as they did in a San Fernando Valley area that was not far from middle-class, single-family homes and apartments.

That was the highly publicized 1994 investigation launched by former Councilman Marvin Braude of 11 motels along a strip of Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys that were alleged to be meccas for prostitutes. Within four months, five of the motel owners were slapped with restrictions and told to clean up their act.

Martinez and her neighbors are struggling to learn how to accomplish the same thing for skid row, but have had no success.

They filed formal nuisance complaints against 11 hotels, markets and liquor stores alleging a range of practices that go beyond loitering and noise and include lewd conduct, open prostitution, drug sales, violent behavior and even deaths, when bodies were untended for hours.

They do not want the businesses closed, but have asked the city to require security guards and cameras, additional lighting, trash cleanup, limits on sale of alcohol and other conditions.

They have waited a year, but no hearings have been held on their grievances and no controls placed on the businesses.

“The city has the tools to deal with these problems, but for some reason they’re just not doing it,” said Zelenne Cardenas, who works with Martinez at the United Coalition East Prevention Project, an alcohol and drug treatment program with offices on skid row.

Cardenas said the businesses named in the neighborhood’s complaint are crime magnets and that the owners have done virtually nothing to make improvements. The neighbors have documented their charges with firsthand horror stories, pictures, videos and signed petitions. The Los Angeles Police Department’s Central Division, which patrols skid row, has compiled a list of 10 businesses alleged to be nuisances, roughly corresponding to the list submitted by the coalition.

The division last year made 600 narcotics arrests alone on the row. Officer Calvin Hill, who patrols the area and has worked with the coalition, said he makes between 20 and 40 arrests weekly. The alleged nuisance businesses are a source of much of the illegal activity, he said.

“If we could get the people on the list to [cooperate], it would almost put us out of business,” Hill said.

Take the example of Jack’s Market on East 5th Street. From January 1997 to April 1998, police compiled more than 100 reports of crimes or arrests there, including use and sales of narcotics, robbery, misdemeanor battery, assault with a deadly weapon and a dead body; or the San Julian Hotel on San Julian Street, where police reports included assault, robbery, prostitution, battery and a dead body.

Many of the targeted business owners defend themselves as hard-working entrepreneurs. They argue that they provide needed services in a tough area and say they have attempted to make improvements, such as increasing lighting, installing gates and posting “No Loitering” signs.

“Most of the activity happens outside, not in our hotel,” said Rick Patel, who with his family owns the San Julian Hotel. “We’ve been working with the police, but this is skid row and there’s only so much we can do. We call the cops at 3 a.m. when there’s a ruckus outside and as soon as they move them on, they’re back again.”

Liquor Stores Called Easy Targets

Larry Adelman, an attorney for Jack’s Market owner Jack Simone, said stores that sell liquor are easy political targets.

Adelman, who also represents the California Beverage Merchants, said Jack’s Market “is one of the most responsible operators I’ve ever dealt with and goes out of its way to make sure alcohol is not being sold to minors, that it’s not sold to an obviously intoxicated person.”

Zoning administrator Janovici said that drawing a direct link between criminal activity and a legitimate business is not simple. His office is dependent on other agencies, such as the Department of Building and Safety and police for information, he said, and he is still waiting for comprehensive crime reports and corroborating evidence on the skid row locations before proceeding.

“We’ve consulted with [the city attorney] and our intent is to deal with the problem locations in a comprehensive manner, not to bring a series of individual actions,” said Janovici. “We’re really dependent on the Police Department right now. It’s taken longer than we wanted, and we’re not pleased about that.”

System Outdated, Officials Concede

City Atty. James Hahn said his office has worked to improve conditions around the city, including skid row.

Cardenas and other activists say, however, that most of the city attorney’s abatement efforts are centered on cleaning up drugs in residential neighborhoods.

And officials concede that the current abatement system is outdated.

“They are not turning a deaf ear, but they are stretched to the breaking point in how they respond,” Hahn said during a recent meeting of Valley homeowner groups in Sherman Oaks.

Fernando Tovar, a deputy to Councilman Richard Alatorre, said backlogged nuisance cases number more than 1,800 in Alatorre’s district, which skirts part of skid row. Tovar said his office is aware of the problems and is working on them.

Councilwoman Rita Walters, who represents skid row, said Jack’s Market “has been a problem from Day 1 and we would love to shut them down.”

“I would give my right arm to close every one of them, but according to the city attorney’s office we don’t have the authority without going through a long, long process,” she said.

The City Council is considering a proposal that would authorize the city attorney’s office, the police, and the planning and building and safety departments to hire additional staff to work only on nuisance cases.

Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas sponsored the nuisance abatement motion. But he does not believe city agencies have shown bias against poor neighborhoods in their enforcement.

“The process seems to be structured to protect property owners no matter how flagrant their actions are, and that’s all over the city,” he said.

In the meantime, Maria Martinez and her neighbors wait for the system to work for them. They have already paid a price.

“I feel like the city is not protecting me,” she said quietly. “I’d like to see the drug dealers and the prostitutes go and I’m waiting for the city to tell them they can’t do that in my home.”