They call Los Angeles the City of Angels, but it seems that even here, within the five-by-ten-block area of Skid Row, the city contains an entire cosmology-angels and demons, sinners and saints, plagues and treatments.
Skid Row is the epicenter of L.A.'s addiction crisis.
The reality is that Los Angeles has adopted a policy of containment: construct enough "Supportive housing" to placate the appetites of the social-services bureaucracy, distribute enough needles to prevent an outbreak of plague, and herd enough men and women into places like Skid Row, where they will not disrupt the political fiction that everything is okay.
Mark Casanova, executive director of Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles, has been working with addicts on Skid Row since 1985.
Despite a steady expansion of harm-reduction services, last year was the deadliest on record for Los Angeles County, with meth-related overdose deaths up more than 1,000 percent from 2008, claiming Skid Row as its epicenter.
The people working here-the administrators, the addiction counselors, the medical teams-are making heroic efforts to keep people alive, but no one has figured out how to reduce addiction and fundamentally alter the trajectory of life on Skid Row.
Progressives have rallied around the slogan "Housing First" but don't confront the deeper question: And then what? It's important to understand that, even on Skid Row, approximately 70 percent of the poor, addicted, disabled, and mentally ill residents are already housed in the neighborhood's dense network of permanent supportive-housing units, nonprofit developments, emergency shelters, Section 8 apartments, and SRO hotels.
https://www.city-journal.org/skid-row-los-angeles
Skid Row is the epicenter of L.A.'s addiction crisis.
The reality is that Los Angeles has adopted a policy of containment: construct enough "Supportive housing" to placate the appetites of the social-services bureaucracy, distribute enough needles to prevent an outbreak of plague, and herd enough men and women into places like Skid Row, where they will not disrupt the political fiction that everything is okay.
Mark Casanova, executive director of Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles, has been working with addicts on Skid Row since 1985.
Despite a steady expansion of harm-reduction services, last year was the deadliest on record for Los Angeles County, with meth-related overdose deaths up more than 1,000 percent from 2008, claiming Skid Row as its epicenter.
The people working here-the administrators, the addiction counselors, the medical teams-are making heroic efforts to keep people alive, but no one has figured out how to reduce addiction and fundamentally alter the trajectory of life on Skid Row.
Progressives have rallied around the slogan "Housing First" but don't confront the deeper question: And then what? It's important to understand that, even on Skid Row, approximately 70 percent of the poor, addicted, disabled, and mentally ill residents are already housed in the neighborhood's dense network of permanent supportive-housing units, nonprofit developments, emergency shelters, Section 8 apartments, and SRO hotels.
https://www.city-journal.org/skid-row-los-angeles
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