Skid Row Dilemma: Killer on Streets but ‘No Room in the Inn’

The homeless of Los Angeles’ Skid Row--four of whom have been shot to death as they slept outdoors in the past month by a suspected serial killer--face a dilemma, activists said Thursday.

Transients in the downtown area have been warned by police and Skid Row agencies to get off the streets at night to avoid becoming the killer’s next victim. But activists for the homeless point out that there are only 3,000 shelter beds available for the estimated 15,000 men and women of Skid Row.

“If we can’t (get inside), they tell us to band together in groups,” homeless activist Ted Hayes complained Thursday. “We did. We put up Justiceville, and they bulldozed it.”

Shantytown Closed

Justiceville--a plywood and cardboard shantytown established by Skid Row transients--was closed last year when city and county officials concluded that it fostered squalor and attracted criminals.

According to Hayes and others at a news conference held in Skid Row on Thursday, the homeless face a no-win situation in the latest rash of unsolved murders on some of downtown Los Angeles’ toughest streets.

“I’m not down here by choice,” one transient in his early 20s said. “I want to help myself, but I can’t do it alone.”

While the intensified police efforts to catch the killer are welcomed, long-term solutions to the plight of the transients are more important, representatives of several homeless groups said.

More emergency shelters and beds, financed by Los Angeles city and county governments, are needed, Denise Williamson, an administrative assistant with the Homeless Health Care Project, said at the news conference in Skid Row Park at 6th and Gladys streets.

“These people are outdoors for the same reasons that Jesus Christ was born in a stable,” she said. “There’s no room in the inn.”

Criticism Called Unjustified

Such criticism, say public officials who have grappled with the problems of Skid Row, is not justified. For example, officials at the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency said it finances or provides about a third of all emergency shelter beds in the downtown area.

“We also are preparing about 500 more beds,” said Al Santillanes, a redevelopment agency project manager.

And officers at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Central Division in the heart of Skid Row have generally looked the other way while as many as 300 transients sleep each night at Skid Row Park. Under city ordinance, there is a curfew in the park between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.

The park--a barren patch of ground littered with sofas, cardboard boxes and trash--has also become a sore point in the debate over Skid Row.

Santillanes said the park will be closed for about six months, beginning Nov. 15, for a $300,000 improvement project to make it a safer place for transients and to discourage illegal activity, including drug selling. The agency, which owns the land, agreed to the project after police and area businessmen complained about the mounting violence there.

Among the planned improvements is an experimental sprinkler system that will intermittently come on during the curfew hours, he said.

Project Criticized

Williamson criticized the project, saying it will prevent park regulars from sleeping there after dark.

“They say it’s for the betterment of the community, so drug dealers won’t go there,” she said. “The people who sleep there are the community. Where are they going to go?”

Santillanes acknowledged that the sprinklers will discourage many transients from sleeping there.

“The park has become a gathering spot for drug dealers and prostitutes,” he said. “It wasn’t like that several years ago. The sprinkling system is an experimental idea, and we’ll take a long look at it. It’s a tough situation, but we have to take a stand somewhere.”

Police, meanwhile, reported no new leads in the murders. Four transients in the past three weeks have been shot in the back of the head, apparently with a small-caliber weapon, in isolated places in the downtown area.