Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff. Laurena
Speaker 1: volebam Here. Tourists from around the world travel to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles to visit Disneyland, stroll the Hollywood Walk of Fame,
Speaker 1: take in world class museums, and watch the sunset from
Speaker 1: the piers and beaches. What they might not see is
Speaker 1: skid Row, a neighborhood comprising fifty city blocks in the
Speaker 1: heart of downtown LA. It's just a fourth of a
Speaker 1: square mile or a single square kilometer, but an estimated
Speaker 1: eight to eleven thousand people lived there in precarious, houseless,
Speaker 1: or near houseless conditions at any given time. Some two
Speaker 1: to three thousand residents live in a tense city of tarps, blankets,
Speaker 1: and boxes. Others live in shelters and the few remaining
Speaker 1: single room occupancy hotels. The most fortunate have many apartments
Speaker 1: in new or renovated buildings built by nonprofits like these
Speaker 1: skid Row Housing Trust. The current population of skid Row
Speaker 1: is predominantly black and male, but there are increasing numbers
Speaker 1: of women and children. Veterans make up about twenty percent
Speaker 1: of residents. LA has the highest percentage of any major
Speaker 1: metropolitan city in the United States of people experiencing chronic
Speaker 1: houselessness that is, having been unsheltered for over a year,
Speaker 1: or having experienced four such episodes in the past three years,
Speaker 1: a plus having some kind of physical or mental disability.
Speaker 1: But how did Skidrow get this way? Why does an
Speaker 1: entire neighborhood in one of the world's wealthiest states remain
Speaker 1: walled off from the rest of the city and home
Speaker 1: to such a high concentration of people struggling with economic
Speaker 1: hardship along with coexisting issues related to, for example, mental
Speaker 1: and physical health and substance misuse. It's a long and
Speaker 1: messy story, but today let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: skid Row. The first neighborhood to bear this name was
Speaker 1: in what's now Seattle, Washington, back in the eighteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Lumber was the lifeblood of colonist era Seattle. In logging camps,
Speaker 1: a skid road was the name for a path carved
Speaker 1: out of the forest on which teams of oxen would
Speaker 1: dragfeld logs over to a sawmill. In Seattle, most of
Speaker 1: the saw mills were down near the water, and logs
Speaker 1: would be slid or skidded down from first hill on
Speaker 1: steep streets lubricated with baking grease or salmon oil to
Speaker 1: make the logs slide more easily. The area near the
Speaker 1: saw mills along the skid Road was populated by lumberjacks
Speaker 1: and mill workers, who often spent their pay at the
Speaker 1: saloons and brothels that sprung up to entertain them. This
Speaker 1: less than family oriented district also became known as skid row,
Speaker 1: and throughout the nineteen hundreds, the nickname began to be
Speaker 1: applied to any city neighborhood that housed the down and out.
Speaker 1: For example, in New York City City in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, the Bowery became a sort of last stop
Speaker 1: for men down on their luck. By the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: it took on the name skid Row. Around that time.
Speaker 1: There were skid rows in dozens of American cities, but
Speaker 1: the most famous, the one that's endured in the same
Speaker 1: location for over a century, is skid Row in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in eighteen sixty nine, and
Speaker 1: its final West coast destination was in San Francisco. In
Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies, Los Angeles convinced the railroads to extend
Speaker 1: the line down to southern California, being home to productive
Speaker 1: orchards and vineyards. The railroads needed a level surface to
Speaker 1: lay the tracks, so they chose a path along the
Speaker 1: Los Angeles River and built the first freight depots nearby.
Speaker 1: The farms drew seasonal workers to the LA area to
Speaker 1: pick and pack the crops, and more workers to load
Speaker 1: the trains, all young single men. For the article of
Speaker 1: this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with
Speaker 1: Donald Spiweck, the former Deputy Chief of Operations and Policy
Speaker 1: at the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los
Speaker 1: Angeles and a historian of skid Row. He said all
Speaker 1: of these transitory workers needed places to live, and the
Speaker 1: area around the train stations began to fill in with
Speaker 1: small hotels, bars, and other facilities to serve them. These
Speaker 1: would be the founding institutions of the neighborhood that would
Speaker 1: become skid Row. By the turn of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: oil had been discovered in LA bringing even more young
Speaker 1: men out to work the oil fields and the shipping yards.
Speaker 1: Around the same time, the temperance movement was in full swing,
Speaker 1: and the first charitable missions popped up in the area.
Speaker 1: To save lost souls from the bars and brothels and
Speaker 1: give those who needed it a place to stay. The
Speaker 1: next couple decades brought the automobile industry and then the
Speaker 1: film industry to LA, transforming what had been a sleepy
Speaker 1: hour cultural outpost into an economic boom town. The railroads
Speaker 1: advertised Los Angeles as a tropical paradise, and more Americans
Speaker 1: moved west to find their fortunes. Then came the Great
Speaker 1: Depression and the dust Bowl that ravaged Midwestern farms, spurring
Speaker 1: even more economic migration westward. But there wasn't enough work
Speaker 1: in LA, and the hardest hit slept in train cars
Speaker 1: and encampments down by the rail yards, or rented rooms
Speaker 1: in the dilapidated single room occupancy hotels. Spivak explained that
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties saw the beginning of a permanent underclass
Speaker 1: living in the hard luck Los Angeles community that would
Speaker 1: become skid Row. During World War II, the Korean War,
Speaker 1: and Vietnam, LA was the city of departure and return
Speaker 1: for tens of thousands of soldiers. Some of them came
Speaker 1: home with PTSD and or physical injuries that made returning
Speaker 1: home difficult. In skid Row, they found a new home,
Speaker 1: and some found that alcohol and other substances are more
Speaker 1: accessible than professional medical treatment. By the nineteen sixties, skid
Speaker 1: Row was a downtrodden and dangerous place, and its existence
Speaker 1: in the heart of Los Angeles had scared away businesses.
Speaker 1: The city knew something needed to be done to save downtown,
Speaker 1: so it began enforcing stricter housing standards for these single
Speaker 1: resident hotels in skid Row. From the mid sixties to
Speaker 1: the mid seventies, roughly half of them were demolished in
Speaker 1: the name of urban renewal, seven five hundred units of
Speaker 1: temporary housing, but not all of them. Spidik said, Unlike
Speaker 1: most other cities that were using urban renewal to clear
Speaker 1: and demolish their skid Row neighborhoods, LA made a conscious
Speaker 1: decision not to do that in nineteen seventy six. Instead,
Speaker 1: the public policy was that there should be a place
Speaker 1: for extremely low income persons to be able to live.
Speaker 1: The policy was humanitarian on one hand in that it
Speaker 1: preserved a place of the city for the poorest and
Speaker 1: most marginalized residents, as well as the charities and social
Speaker 1: organizations that served them, but it wasn't entirely altruistic. It
Speaker 1: was called the containment strategy because its goal was to
Speaker 1: contain this population within the fifty blocks of skid Row
Speaker 1: and two Spivik said discourage them from wandering through the
Speaker 1: rest of downtown. By concentrating low income housing and services
Speaker 1: in skid Row, the city could attract investors to develop
Speaker 1: other parts of downtown. The official name of the skid
Speaker 1: Row neighborhood is Central City East. It's bordered by a
Speaker 1: Little Tokyo to the north, the Fashion District to the south,
Speaker 1: the Arts District to the east, and the Historic Core
Speaker 1: to the west. Starting in the nineteen nineties, these surrounding
Speaker 1: downtown neighborhoods began to attract investment and revitalization. Industrial warehouses
Speaker 1: were renovated as lofts and live work play spaces. Old
Speaker 1: banks and retail storefronts became boutique hotels and restaurants. As
Speaker 1: those surrounding neighborhoods gentrified, developers began to eye skid Row
Speaker 1: as the next opportunity for investment, but the city has
Speaker 1: stood firm and denied requests from developers to turn skid
Speaker 1: Row into another gentrified neighborhood with unaffordable housing. Spivik said
Speaker 1: the city's policy is still that the city has an
Speaker 1: obligation to make sure there is a substantial amount of
Speaker 1: extra low income housing and accompanying social services in skid Row.
Speaker 1: There are many government and independent organizations that helped serve
Speaker 1: the community in different ways, such as prevention in the
Speaker 1: form of rent relief, tenant protections, housing assistance and interim housing,
Speaker 1: mental and physical health care including harm prevention and substance
Speaker 1: recovery programs, assistance with basic resources like food, laundry and showers,
Speaker 1: help finding education and jobs to get people back on
Speaker 1: their feet. And resources to help make the community a
Speaker 1: safe and vibrant place like recreation and pet areas, and
Speaker 1: wellness activities like yoga. It's not an easy set of tasks.
Speaker 1: The aforementioned skid Row Housing Trust shuttered in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three among mismanagement and financial troubles. The Los Angeles Police
Speaker 1: Department hasn't always been adept. It's striking the right balance
Speaker 1: between keeping skid Row safe and making life even harder
Speaker 1: for the people living there. For those Skidbrow residents who
Speaker 1: live on sheltered life is a daily struggle. A speedk
Speaker 1: thinks that skid Row should continue to exist into the future,
Speaker 1: but quote, it shouldn't be the only destination. Los Angeles
Speaker 1: County is four thousand square miles, that's ten thousand square kilometers.
Speaker 1: Skid Row is fifty city blocks. You can't serve the
Speaker 1: entire county wide need for housing and homeless services in
Speaker 1: a single fifty block neighborhood. There really does need to
Speaker 1: be a decentralization of services. In twenty twenty one, the
Speaker 1: US District Court judge in Los Angeles ordered the city
Speaker 1: to immediately find housing for all houseless people in skid Row,
Speaker 1: starting with women and children, but the ruling was overturned
Speaker 1: by an appeals court. This civic said that other cities
Speaker 1: in LA County have stepped up to offer their own
Speaker 1: low income housing and other support, namely Long Beach, Glendale, Pasadena,
Speaker 1: and Santa Monica, but the other locales are still quote
Speaker 1: very resistant. If you are interested in finding resources around
Speaker 1: LA or getting involved with helping people find them, the
Speaker 1: La County Homeless Initiative has lots of information at homeless
Speaker 1: dot La County dot gov. Today's episode is based on
Speaker 1: the article A Short History of skid Row on housetf
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Written by Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffboards dot com
Speaker 1: and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.