By Liam Dillon, Doug Smith | LA Times
Thirty years ago, when the Produce Hotel fell into disrepair, a newly formed nonprofit, the Skid Row Housing Trust, acquired and rehabilitated the turn-of-the-century building, restoring the brick facade and preserving 100 rooms for formerly homeless residents.
This story was repeated hotel after run-down hotel in the 1980s and ‘90s as homelessness advocates and civic leaders poured money and energy into saving the old single-room occupancy hotels in Skid Row — first built for itinerant railroad and agricultural workers — fearing that their collapse would force thousands onto the streets.
Now two generations later, livability and financial problems once again have thrown the SROs, which have tiny individual rooms and shared bathrooms, into disarray. Housing and health code inspectors have found clogged toilets, cockroaches, filthy hallways and broken windows in the Produce and similar, if not worse, conditions at dozens of other properties.
But this time, Mayor Karen Bass’ administration, nonprofit owners and service providers don’t want to save the SROs. Instead, they’d like to see them gone — demolished or gutted in favor of new buildings with private facilities for every tenant.
“Ideally, they need to be replaced,” said Carlos VanNatter, an executive with the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles. “These are old, turn-of-the-century buildings. They used to be flophouses. It’s not an ideal living situation for a chronically homeless person to be in.”
Read more at: LA Times
