Gladys and E 5th

Written with a frustrated mind, and an aching heart.

A clothing company I work for has just experienced a financial dip, and has moved from its glamorous office in LA’s hip Arts District to a warehouse on East 5th Street. On the first job after they had downsized, I got out of my Uber on Gladys and 5th in full makeup, my cream leather bag slung loosely on my shoulder, my sunglasses placed flirtatiously on my head. To my horror I was half an hour early, completely lost, and in a world I had only seen on television. I was standing on Skid Row, outside a locked gate, desperately trying to get hold of my boss. I walked both ways around the warehouse site, cursing and swearing like a sailor as I noticed growling and mocking kissing noises as I walked past the makeshift homes on the street. Panic started to rise into my throat after twenty minutes as my attire seemed to have attracted some unwanted attention, and I had become the one-woman 9am show of Skid Row. I stood and looked around, taking in the mess in front of me. Finally, the iron gates of the warehouse started to open like the golden gates of heaven, and a woman who had been setting a trash can on fire across the street yelled at me: “don’t worry, little white girl, you’re home now”.

The guilt that I felt in that moment has stuck with me for a month, ashamed of my cream leather bag, and about the fact that I was about to make half my month’s rent for being a glorified clothes hanger for a few hours. Have I been that spoilt? Has my upbringing and education allowed me to forget that places like Skid Row exist? And is this degree of homelessness necessary?

East 5th Street - location of warehouse

An article in the Los Angeles Times calls homelessness “a national disgrace”, and outlines a six-part editorial which describes the efforts being made to combat homelessness in Los Angeles. It also highlights the seemingly insurmountable problems which these efforts face. The most interesting question it attempts to answer is “How can a place with 58,000 homeless people continue to function?". Between 2013 and 2017, Los Angeles saw a 46% increase in homelessness. This is an absurd figure, especially as it is clear from looking at the positive trend of the USA’s GDP that as a country, we now have more money than ever before.

Angelenos are angry and afraid of the potential decline of the surrounding neighbourhoods as the problem in areas such as Skid Row continues to grow. However, with financial figures like those above, is there any argument that our leaders are not letting us down by glossing over the problem without getting their hands dirty?

Paul Thornton, writer for Los Angeles Times poses that the problem is the lack of accountability for homelessness. He explains that nobody seems to be “in charge”. There are many committees trying to do something, but no single party who is totally responsible for the thousands of bodies on the streets of LA. He says: “you’ll learn nothing by attending a meeting of the body charged with ending homelessness or hearing the report from the homelessness czar — the point person reporting directly to both the city’s mayor and the county Board of Supervisors. That’s because there is no committee and no czar with sole responsibility for ending homelessness. Or rather, there are many committees and many sub-commanders, which is almost the same as there being none at all.” The lack of responsibility for the homeless population in Los Angeles is the main problem. We leave them alone, allowing them to have their own community, which in turn becomes “comfortable” to them. I have felt this effect myself, slightly less shocked every time I go to work on Gladys and 5th, a fraction of my horror disappearing as I become used to conditions in which these people live. It is ignorance, and denial of a growing problem which endangers society, not just on Skid Row, but in Koreatown, Century City, Compton, and many more “tent cities”.

It is astounding to me that we value human life so little to allow these conditions to persist. After just thirty minutes standing on the corner of East 5th, I already felt the effects of my own unconscious ignorance to this problem. We all know about Skid Row, but how well do we really know Skid Row? There a three main reasons for decline to homelessness, substance abuse and addiction, mental illness, and bad luck. If you knew me, you’d know that I suffer from the latter, so you could be visiting me in my very own cardboard box over there in a couple of years. My point is, the idea of homelessness has become less abstract to me, and has become something I encounter in a very real way twice a month, for a millisecond in my journey between the doors of my Uber, and the safety of the warehouse, and it shakes me to my very core.