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It’s OK, though, for all of us to be reminded that the way things are is not OK.SkidRow Fashion Week is the fledgling streetwear brand aiming to help people transition out of homelessness in L.A., one T-shirt at a time. Judge Carter didn’t explain how those things should be accomplished, and a temporary shelter can’t heal the permanent damage caused by a lifetime of things gone wrong. Along with limited housing of all kinds, we don’t have nearly enough intensive, customized case management, and we have not yet come to grips with a corrosive meth epidemic - it’s cheap and plentiful, it’s a highly addictive killer, it’s hard to treat - that ratchets up the complexities.
Skidrow la professional#
But I also know from personal experience that you can’t impose magical deadlines on getting everyone off the street because things can get very complicated when addiction and mental illness come into play.Įven when a bed was available for my friend Nathaniel, a talented musician whose ambitions were crushed by mental illness, it took an entire year of repeated efforts by me and professional outreach workers to get him past his fears and apprehensions, and finally move indoors.
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And there is something to be said for shaking a fist, demanding better and trying to speed up the process. I must admit that for years, I’ve been just as impatient and critical of local officials as Judge Carter. And once everyone has a place to stay, however temporary, local government will have more authority to clear the streets of any stragglers, a provision that is already being characterized as criminalization of homelessness. 18 deadline for every current skid row resident to be either in housing or a shelter. He’s also demanding that every woman and unaccompanied child on skid row be housed within 90 days, with a 120-day deadline for families and an Oct. In the same week Mayor Eric Garcetti promised to spend $1 billion on homelessness, the judge is demanding that the money be placed in an escrow account for monitoring. Now skid row is in his sights, but not in a way that seems to fit a thoughtful, overarching plan to address homelessness in the city. I don’t know about you, but I still see plenty of freeway encampments. For reasons I never quite understood, he was particularly worked up for months about encampments under freeways, and insisted that those people be prioritized for services. And he dwells on the disproportionate numbers of Black people among those who have ended up on the streets.Īnd yet, for all the historical perspective, there seems to be no real logic behind Carter’s demands. The judge cites decades of bad public policy decisions, housing discrimination, economic disparity, mental health service failures and institutional racism.
Skidrow la movie#
“All of the rhetoric, promises, plans, and budgeting cannot obscure the shameful reality of this crisis - that year after year, there are more homeless Angelenos, and year after year, more homeless Angelenos die on the streets.”Īnd I’d add that they don’t just die they get seriously ill, they get assaulted, they get forced into prostitution or drug peddling, and they grow old quickly, as if the movie of their lives is on fast forward.Ĭarter, in his 110-page order, displays considerable understanding of how homelessness and skid row happened, and it wasn’t by accident. “Los Angeles has lost its parks, beaches, schools, sidewalks, and highway systems due to the inaction of city and county officials who have left our homeless citizens with no other place to turn,” the judge said. “Let’s call it what it is, a disgrace, that the richest state in the richest nation - succeeding across so many sectors - is failing to properly house, heal, and humanely treat so many of its own people.”Ĭarter commented, as well, on the effect of homelessness on communities and quality of life. I’m not much of a gambler, but I’d bet you that a lot of them are going to simply relocate to another neighborhood somewhere in Los Angeles.Ĭarter’s ruling Tuesday, as part of a lawsuit he is overseeing about homelessness in Los Angeles, made some astute observations as he criticized local and state officials’ failures, often using their own words to make his case against them. And if skid row gets swept clean, where do you think all the people who live there now but aren’t ready or willing to move into temporary quarters, are going to end up?