It's Cops vs. Volunteers on L.A.'s Skid Row

by Josie Raymond · 2010-10-04 15:10:00 UTC
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How would you handle the desperate homelessness on Los Angeles's Skid Row? Would you do what many community groups do, and go hand out food and clothing to people in need? Or would you cut off this sort of ad-hoc assistance in an attempt to get Skid Row's residents to accept long-term help from shelters, as activists say the police are trying to do?

In response to what they feel is pressure to stop helping, homeless advocates took to Skid Row last week in a food-sharing protest. The "Right to Share Food Extravaganza" served to "exercise and protect our right to share food with our brothers and sisters," according to Michael Hubman, the founder of Right to Share Food and Watercorps, groups which provide food and water to the homeless.

Activists allege that cops and city officials are slowly but surely trying to shut down their efforts with concerns about food safety, personal safety and littering. For example, a five-year-old soup line run by World Agape was shut down over the summer. The LAPD, on the other hand, says the charges are "100 percent false." "What we're for is people doing it in a responsible way," said Officer Deon Joseph, of L.A.'s Safer City Initiative. The initiative has dramatically cleaned up Skid Row in the last few years, though some question its harsh tactics.

Joseph went on to say, "When you give them food in an area where there are so many other resources for foods, you're incentivizing the streets and keeping them on the streets and nearer to their vices, like drugs." On another occasion, he said, "[Volunteers] don't know what happens when they leave. We've had people get stabbed after fighting over clothes. We've had people get sick after eating their food. It's just dangerous and irresponsible." This makes sense. What makes people suspicious, though, is the eager reaction of local business owners who seem more concerned about dirty paper plates and the bugs they attract than the people who ate off them.

These crack-down measures differ from other cities where sharing food with the homeless is criminalized or close to it. Those often serve to keep the homeless out of sight and therefore out of mind. On Skid Row, it's impossible to hide the homeless.

Photo credit: Steve Willis

Josie Raymond is a Change.org editor who has reported from the streets of the South Bronx, written for several magazines that folded (not her fault) and fixed thousands of typos.
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