Drive-By Fixes Not Enough for Skid Row

People often ask me if things are better or worse on skid row than they were last October, when I spent a solid week exploring the grimy nether land east of downtown Los Angeles. To get the answer, I spent parts of Saturday and Sunday nights out there, checking on recent reports of chaos and doom.

The word in some quarters was that drug dealing was out of control and that encampments had grown in number from 100 to 500, largely because police were backing off after a federal court decision in April banned police from rousting people sleeping on the street.

Downtown resident Brady Westwater toured with me over the weekend and said dealers have taken over entire streets, menacing residents and shop owners. Carol Schatz of the Central City Assn. said the owner of a loft building told her that a dozen tenants had moved out because of deteriorating conditions on the street.

But skid row is a place where everyone has an agenda, so it’s not surprising that I also heard claims that not much has changed of late, and that police were rousting homeless people as they always have, herding them to the outskirts of the row.

My own take? Based on last weekend, which was surprisingly quiet, and months of once- or twice-weekly visits, things are not significantly better or worse overall than they were last fall. So why is my phone ringing off the hook, with city officials, care providers, business leaders and others offering their two cents worth?

Because there’s been a lot of bickering behind the scenes, and everyone’s in spin mode. As it turns out, I’m not the only one trying to nail down a reasonable version of the truth.

Last Thursday at 5 a.m., a carload of heavyweights toured skid row to see what’s happening nearly one year after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined me on the streets and vowed to get control of a place that LAPD Chief Bill Bratton called “the worst situation in America.”

Villaraigosa and Bratton were along for the pre-dawn ride, along with City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo and Torie Osborn, special advisor to the mayor on homelessness. Osborn said the group watched as heroin addicts awoke sweaty and desperate, eager to start the day with a breakfast injection. But they had to wait, because dealers scrambled when they saw the entourage of cops and politicos.

The tour group had two specific points to consider. One is a proposal the mayor will release next month calling for 50 additional police officers, mostly on foot and bicycle, to patrol skid row and crack down on major drug dealers. The plan also calls for high-intensity street lights and video cameras to discourage crime.

The other issue in play is the ruling that said police can’t roust campers if no shelter beds or other services are available to them. Police have argued that they were handcuffed by that decision and that the number of skid row encampments has tripled as a result.

Osborn says that under a proposed compromise backed by Villaraigosa and Bratton, the tent villages would be allowed overnight but would have to be cleared out by day. Details are still in the works.

Fine. Work them out and get on with it. But all the players involved deserve a good public flogging for wasting so much time trying to tweak policing strategy and so little time addressing the most glaring needs on skid row.

There aren’t enough rehab programs for the huge number of addicts.

There aren’t enough mental health services for all the chronically ill people.

There aren’t anywhere near enough of the supportive housing programs that could begin to make a real difference.

Would all of that be expensive? Yes, but much more cost-effective than throwing millions at the symptoms of problems that are never addressed. And all of these services have to be scattered around the county, rather than concentrated on skid row, which already has too many people to worry about.

Skid row is a corral for all the public policy failures of the last several decades, and what do we get now, almost a year after a spotlight was shined in every crack and crevice? Endless dickering over the issue of whether police can arrest people in tents.

“There’s no Marshall Plan,” Osborn admitted to me over lunch Monday, saying the mayor is trying to put one together.

Villaraigosa knows what’s needed, Osborn said, but has to have more help from the county and the state to make it happen.

Good luck. You’d need a red-hot poker and two miracles to get city and county officials working together on these problems.

Last week I toured the Hope Gardens facility in Sylmar with Andy Bales, executive director of the Union Rescue Mission on skid row. He’s in the process of moving elderly women off the row and into the lovely former retirement home in the middle of nowhere. But there’s no telling whether he’ll be able to move several dozen children out there too, along with their moms.

It all makes perfect sense, with the plan calling for the moms to take college courses and work toward self-sufficiency. But a few hill-dwellers moaned and whined a couple of miles away in Kagel Canyon, and now the rescue mission may have to battle Mike Antonovich and other L.A. County supervisors to get those kids out of harm’s way and into Hope Gardens.

Nonsense like this gives Tim Leiweke hives. Leiweke runs Staples Center and is building the L.A. Live sports/entertainment extravaganza downtown, and he was worked up last week about all the chatter over police strategy and the spray-washing of sidewalks.

Naturally, he agrees that shop owners and residents shouldn’t have to step over bodies to go about their day. But Leiweke, who volunteers at the Midnight Mission and has been known to take his checkbook with him, said business people ought to quit yammering about the snail’s pace of recovery on skid row and start demanding and supporting programs that can make a lasting difference in people’s lives.

Following up on that theme, Westwater noted that in the case of two people he and I helped off the streets earlier this year, our advocacy and support were key. Westwater suggested that social, business and religious groups organize volunteers to take on the same task.

Not a bad idea. And it could be a great opportunity for Cardinal Roger Mahony -- who hasn’t exactly distinguished himself in certain other matters -- to seek redemption here.

Mahony should climb into the pulpit of the Rog Mahal, a stone’s throw or two from skid row, and call upon his flock, in every corner of the archdiocese, to volunteer just an hour or so a week, making someone’s life a little better.

So how is skid row?

Still hurting. Still waiting for us to turn it around.

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Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com and read previous columns at www.latimes.com/lopez