Where an empty sidewalk once was, a barbershop has emerged. The line grows four deep, the patrons whiling away the time with a dice game on the pavement. Not far away, a woman sells plastic cups of cut mango with lime and Tajín, and around the corner a 2Pac-serenaded barbecue is getting underway. A block over, in Little Havana, a bata drums performance draws a crowd.
This is Skid Row, Los Angeles, one of the largest and most maligned unhoused communities in a nation full of them.
If you rely on the many dark documentaries or the majority of published photos and articles covering Skid Row, you could be forgiven for seeing it exclusively as a place of desperate poverty, untreated mental health conditions, drug use and perpetual crisis. That picture is an inseparable aspect of Skid Row, to be sure, but it’s not the only way to understand where I live.
What news watchers might find hard to believe is impossible to ignore if you spend time here: Skid Row is a genuine community. The 50-some blocks east and south of the city center make up one of the most vibrant, social, diverse, interesting and preserved neighborhoods in all of Los Angeles.
In recent decades gentrification has overwhelmingly changed the look and the demographics of swaths of Los Angeles, but Skid Row is still dominated by the low-income and working-class populations that have inhabited it for more than a century.
This long, relatively uninterrupted history has bred creativity, ingenuity and local problem-solving. Art flourishes in Skid Row, manifested in painted murals, drawn portraits and sculptures made from found items. Apart from the factories that call Skid Row home, most of the shops and services target unhoused and marginally housed folks, while informal, street-level businesses — cutting and braiding hair; selling prepared foods, clothing, cigarettes, beer and other everyday items; repairing bikes and vehicles — are run by the unhoused and marginally housed themselves.
The congregation of social service agencies and single-room occupancy housing in Skid Row is here by design — part of a “containment” policy instituted by Los Angeles in the 1970s. The wisdom and motives of that policy can be endlessly debated and critiqued; nevertheless, it undoubtedly contributed to the continuity of Skid Row as a neighborhood.
It’s a patchwork scene — Black, Mexican, Cuban, artist and hustle cultures are deeply established, with large numbers of migrant families from Venezuela, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador adding a new dynamic. In the last year or so, Skid Row’s Towne Avenue on a Saturday might as well be Bogotá or Caracas, filled with the smell of frying arepas and the bouncy, gleeful sounds of cumbia music.
On the street, where people shelter without walls, community is built. My neighbors, who come from vastly different personal and experiential backgrounds, don’t just coexist, they rely on each other for logistical and emotional support, and — in a city with a dearth of public spaces, where isolation is an increasing problem — actually socialize.
Skid Row, unlike a lot of L.A., is a place where people convene organically. Sometimes that happens in planned get-togethers or meetings but more often casually and spontaneously, amid daily tasks and errands, in the kind of happenstance interactions that have formed the fabric of human societies for thousands of years.
In our community, people spend less time in cars and on screens, which means more time on foot, face-to-face, fully present in their surroundings. Neighbors prepare hot Cup O’ Noodles soup for each other when they are sick, and in the case of the families on Towne Avenue, watch each others’ kids. During sanitation sweeps, younger, able-bodied community members help the elderly and mobility-challenged move their tents and belongings. I’ve seen folks give the literal shirt off their back to someone in need.
When I first arrived in Skid Row five years ago, my neighbor “RePete,” now passed, would of his own volition watch my van at night to ensure I was safe while I slept. I’ve stepped between friends and conflict, and had others do the same with me. Indeed, the experiences you have with people here are often searing. Death happens too often. Everyone knows that at some point, they’ll need someone to have their back. And in a community undergirded by trauma and hard times, we may be better at seeing others’ humanity, beyond their character flaws and past mistakes.
Perhaps that explains why many long-time Skid Row residents who obtain interim housing also maintain a tent on the street. It’s where they hang out. It’s where their friends are, where they feel genuinely welcome, cared for.
It’s also not uncommon for folks to leave their interim housing placements and return to the streets full time. They find that a hotel or transitional facility bed is too lonely, too disconnected. The network they’ve leaned on for navigating difficulties and celebrating successes is suddenly too far away, practically inaccessible.
This concept of Skid Row — as an active community and network of care — is largely absent from policy-making discussions about resolving homelessness in Los Angeles. In fact, for those who want to eradicate Skid Row and sweep the city clean of tents, it’s an altogether inconvenient idea.
Of course, Skid Row is a complex place. It would be unwise to romanticize it or disregard its dangers. Nonetheless, if we are to meaningfully and effectively address the unhoused population of Los Angeles, the authenticity and staying power of the neighborhood should not be ignored but rather protected.
For all that it lacks, Skid Row is heartwarming as well as heartbreaking. It gets some things right that other neighborhoods seem to have forgotten. We would be smart to try to learn from those facets rather than stifle them.
Amelia Rayno is co-executive director of Blue Hollywood Street Sanctuary, an outdoor, sidewalk-based community resource center. She lives in her van in Skid Row.