Angelus News | May 31, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 20

more than one stint as executive
director of the Central City East Association’s
Downtown Industrial District
Business Improvement District.
There are some 45 “BIDs,” as they
are called, throughout Los Angeles,
including eight in downtown alone.
She started the first one back in
1993 in the historical theater district
on Broadway. Their stated purpose
is to enhance safety, maintenance,
economic development, and communication
programs beyond what the
city can provide.
But Lopez said her BID today —
which takes in 49 square blocks from
San Pedro to Alameda streets between
3rd Street to Olympic Boulevard —
has had to take on much more serious
and basic day-to-day responsibilities.
Why? Because it encompasses Skid
Row, home to the largest number of
unsheltered homeless in the nation.
“Our commercial property owners
here tax themselves $2 million annually
for our services, which were never
intended to deal with this human disaster,”
she told Angelus News during a
ride-along last fall, shaking her head.
“The job with business improvement
districts is to make the sidewalks look
nice and empty trash cans. You know,
make the place look inviting. We’re
not supposed to be a response to a
human catastrophe.”
At 6th and Crocker streets, we
approached a blue, tarped tent
stretching 50 feet. One pitbull stood
guard while another dozed. A couple
of young men wearing pressed white
T-shirts over baggy khaki shorts were
standing around smoking.
They were selling a strain of marijuana
laced with more addicting drugs,
Lopez explained. And even though
the combination can make people
violently sick, she said the demand
stays high.
Then Lopez pointed out a brick
storefront with no windows.The small
business, like a lot here, dealt in
textiles, selling to the nearby fashion
district.
The owner, a BID member, has
complained when tents were so close
together he couldn’t make deliveries
or receive buyers. He told her recently
that he came out to ask a guy if he
could make some space because he
had a special delivery coming in.
The guy lifted up his shirt, showing
a pistol stuck in his waistband, and
demanded, “Make me!”
“Now look,” observed Lopez near
San Pedro and 6th streets, looking
out the front windshield at a couple
sprawled on an Army blanket across
the sidewalk between tents.
“Human beings shouldn’t live like
this. People who should be qualifying
for housing, people who should be
getting mental health help are instead
laying on the sidewalk here just
looking to see how they can get their
next high.
“I think mental illness is expressing
itself more openly now, too, because
I see so many people down here who
are just lost. I mean, you can tell
they’re mentally ill. And they’ve found
their way here, I think, to quiet the
voices inside their head. And the drug
dealers are here to service them.”
‘Camping atmosphere’
In November 2016, LA City voters
overwhelmingly approved Proposition
HHH, authorizing $1.2 billion in
bonds to build or rehab 10,000 housing
units for people who are homeless.
Four months later, Los Angeles
County voters passed Measure H, a
quarter-cent sales tax on themselves.
An estimated $355 million a year for
10 years was promised to be raised,
which would provide so-called “wraparound”
services to go with the new
housing and help the homeless transition
into stable, affordable housing.
Those services include mental health
and addiction counseling, money
management, and job counseling.
A different ‘BID’
Lopez said her BID is “far from that
beautification point of what BIDs are
supposed to do.”
With three dump trucks, the Skid
Row BID does pick up between five to
seven tons of trash daily, and her hired
15 formerly homeless street workers
from the job-training Chrysalis Center
sweep the streets regularly.
But much of their time is spent dealing
with crisis calls from local businesses
to clean up feces, urine, and
vomit in front of their establishments
with “targeted” pressure washing from
another truck (not to be confused with
the block-by-block pressure washing
the city’s sanitation department regularly
does).
A private security force of seven
workers often has to go out with them
for protection.
Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Association, has worked on Skid Row for 20
years. “I’m watching people not live on Skid Row,” she said. “I’m watching them die on Skid Row.”
VICTOR ALEMÁN
May 31, 2019 • ANGELUS • 21