Commentary: On Skid Row, it's been decades of frustration. Will the next mayor have a plan?

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Set us as preferred On my way through Skid Row to meet up with Estela Lopez, things looked pretty much as they did when I spent time there more than 20 years ago and first heard the promises that things would be better soon.Tents lined some of the sidewalks, making them unpassable.Some people wore the damage of physical or mental disease, addiction, poverty, or all of the above.

Outreach workers with ID lanyards strode through the trash-strewn landscape like lifeguards working against endless tides of fresh emergencies.When I arrived at Lopez’s office in the 700 block of Crocker Street, where she runs a business improvement district on behalf of 600 or so beleaguered merchants, she had just completed a tour of the neighborhood with John McKinney, a candidate for city attorney.She held a note card in her hand and shared some numbers, telling McKinney that by her latest count, 131 of the 702 streetlights in the district were out, 27 children were living on Skid Row, and 72 RVs were parked in the area.“I came out here because I think this symbolizes the greatest failure in government,” McKinney said.“I think it’s the result of bad law and bad policy.

I think it’s the result of a lack of leadership and indifference to the way people are living out here.To me, it’s completely untenable.”But will anything ever change?It’s a question two people in particular need to address, and I’ll get to that in a minute.A lot of people I trust and admire work tirelessly to make a difference on Skid Row, and they’re always eager to share the success stories of those who move through and move on.

(I’ve got a column on that coming up soon.) California The case was so inhuman, the outrage was understandable.The long-standing problem is that Skid Row is both a social service center and a mecca of drugs and other vices, with ...