Skid Row Hotels

Re “5 Skid Row Hotels Are Ordered to Clean Up,” Sept. 24:

Twenty-five years ago, the city of Los Angeles developed a policy to deliberately preserve its skid row. Since then, millions of dollars have been spent to improve housing and the quantity and quality of services in the area. We have succeeded in attracting over 10,000 people who now live in the 40-square-block skid row--mostly very poor and disabled.

I applaud zoning administrator Daniel Green’s concern about the area. I fear his lack of knowledge of the complex human, social and economic issues we who work and live here face. The hotels, particularly the Simone, are not responsible for crime in this area. The hotels are home for most of the people who live in them. And most of the people who live in them would not have a home if these hotels become inaccessible through rent increases, entry restrictions (fingerprinting, photographs) and 24-hour security guards.

LAMP, based in skid row, provides life support services to 500 adults with mental illness, many of whom live in the hotels. Sixty-five of those have a permanent home in LAMP-owned and -managed buildings. Each one of them cares about the neighborhood and invests in its being safer and cleaner. Green suggests there is a “laissez-faire attitude that prevails in the area.” He cannot be further from reality. The lives of our people, agencies and businesses depend on constant vigilance and stamina in the face of poverty, neglect, disease, stigma, discrimination and an ill-conceived/implemented drug war.

MOLLIE LOWERY

Executive Director, LAMP

Los Angeles