LAPD Alone Can’t Fix Skid Row

Tim Leiweke, the Staples Center boss and a major downtown player, marched into a meeting of Los Angeles business leaders Thursday afternoon and told them that if they want skid row cleaned up any time soon, they need to reach for their checkbooks.

Leiweke had been threatening to do this for a couple of months. He doesn’t think a police crackdown alone can get the job done. Residents of the Row, as it’s called, need all kinds of backup services, from drug treatment to supportive housing. And the skid row agencies that are making a difference in people’s lives are constantly strapped for cash.

“We have to step up,” said Leiweke. He was very aware, he said, that the people in the room had been giving generously for years. But now it was time to “dig a little deeper.”

Leiweke reserved his best shots for L.A. County Supervisor Mike Antonovich. He said the supervisor had shamed himself by failing to stand up for a plan to move 250 women and children off skid row and into a facility northeast of the San Fernando Valley called Hope Gardens.

“How in God’s name,” Leiweke bellowed, can Mayor Mike, as he calls himself, get behind people who are saying “not in my backyard? That’s a shame.”

Poverty and lack of affordable housing are countywide problems, Leiweke said. This isn’t just a skid row or a city issue, and everyone has to shoulder the burden.

Antonovich has said he isn’t ready to make up his mind about the Union Rescue Mission’s Hope Gardens proposal, but he has noted opposition by some residents who live a couple of miles from the facility. The former nursing facility in a remote pastoral setting near Kagel Canyon is housing elderly women now, but the hope is to eventually bring in younger moms, who could live there temporarily with their children while attending college and building new lives for their families.

“Shame on him,” Leiweke said of Antonovich’s silence on the project. “They need to allow us to get these kids out of harm’s way.”

Antonovich spokesman Tony Bell told me his boss is still awaiting county review of the Hope Gardens proposal before weighing in, so it’s possible the knuckle-dragging supervisor will come to his senses. Leiweke clearly thought a public flogging might help the cause. His caustic remarks brought more than a few cheers, as well as an endorsement from Central City Assn. chief Carol Schatz.

“If you’re not going to allow it in your own house,” she said of the NIMBYism that quickly wells up when proposals are made to house the homeless outside of downtown, “you have no business condemning us” for a skid row cleanup that some critics have called too aggressive.

I’ve got no problem with the stepped-up crackdown on dealers and thugs. But police should play supporting rather than leading roles. So far, though, the uniformed battalions are rolling out a lot more rapidly than comprehensive services that can make a lasting difference.

There’s general agreement on the Row that somewhere around 1,500 people are now plopped on sidewalks, and anybody who’s been out there knows the majority of them are mentally ill, addicted, destitute or some combination of the three. It’s no picnic for them, and it’s certainly no picnic for business owners who understandably don’t care to skip over puddles of urine.

But what to do?

We can shoo them away, but they’ll just settle elsewhere.

We can arrest them, jam them through the courts and stuff them into overcrowded jails, but that’ll cost a fortune.

It would be much smarter to create the necessary drug and alcohol rehab programs, mental health services and, most importantly, the kind of housing that combines those types of programs under one roof.

L.A. Councilwoman Jan Perry said at the meeting that about 575 such supportive-housing units should be open by the end of this year, and she hopes twice that figure will be in play over the next two or three years.

But as Leiweke pointed out, if we wait for government to solve all the problems downtown, we could be waiting forever. He announced that his company, AEG, was writing a $250,000 check to the Midnight Mission, and he had a tear in his eye as he saluted Midnight spokesman Orlando Ward, who sat in the audience.

Ward, who offered a wave of appreciation, lived on the street for a while, working through an addiction problem. At the Midnight, he introduced Leiweke to others who were trying to rebuild their lives, and the Staples Center exec became convinced that jobs, housing and support services are not just the humane response but the smart business response.

He said AEG and its foundations have given $10 million to a host of groups, including Para Los Ninos and Inner-City Arts. Leiweke had told me earlier that when AEG completes L.A. Live -- the sports/entertainment extravaganza next to Staples Center -- he’ll keep some jobs open for skid row recovery cases.

Schatz noted that lots of her members, including Union Bank of California Chairman Bruce H. Corbin, have written hefty checks for many years. But Schatz and others seem to support Leiweke’s challenge.

“I think everybody is trying to do as much as they can, but Tim’s view that we do need to do more is very true,” said Kent Smith, executive director of the L.A. Fashion District, a business improvement organization. “And I think we all feel that this is not just a matter for the LAPD to deal with.”

Smith said he especially appreciated Leiweke’s call for a certain supervisor to do the right thing.