The Surroundings of Hotel of Death. What happened to Skid Row?
What s up guys! It s Jason here and welcome to my YouTube channel, Company Insight. Like
many of you recently, I ve been scanning Netflix on a weekly basis to see what s new and may
be entertaining. A couple of weeks ago, I saw that Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the
Cecil Hotel also known as Hotel Death Netflix was trending. I decided to tune in, as Cecil
Hotel sounded vaguely familiar. I was instantly captivated at what happened at Hotel Death.
As soon as the series actually started and the story of Elisa Lam was recounted by various
players in the bizarre crime, I realized that I had heard and read about this case before,
just when YouTube was really gaining ground as a media platform. Hearing about the young
woman found mysteriously intact inside of the Cecil Hotel s water tank sparked my interest
in the entire Skid Row area surrounding Hotel Death. I decided to visit Los Angeles for
that very purpose, see Cecil Hotel myself, and find out if Skid Row is really as bad
as it s made out to be. Today, we ll explore the surroundings of Hotel Death in the Rise
and Fall and What happened to Skid Row.
But first, I just need a really quick favor from you. If you wouldn t mind just hitting
that LIKE button for the YouTube algorithm, it would help me out a ton. The more engagement
a video like this gets, the more likely the YouTube algorithm is to push it out to more
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a ton. Thanks again. With that said, let s begin the video.
How Did Skid Row Start?
As it turns out, Skid Row lives up to its reputation for homelessness, drugs, mental
illness, and violence. Located in downtown Los Angeles, the only 4.24 square mile neighborhood
is largely the reason for downtown LA as a whole having a reputation for being seedy
and crime-ridden. While you may think that Skid Row has come about as a result of a tech
boom-fueled rise in the cost of living, the neighborhood has actually been a homeless
mecca since at least the 1930s. Some would argue that the origins of Skid Row began even
earlier, in the late 1800s. So you may wonder why is Skid Row called that? Or what's skid
row mean? At the time in Seattle, there was an actual road named Skid Row, named as such
because loggers would drag or skid fresh logs down the road to the nearest lumber mill,
until the logging boom ended and the term skid row became code for a neighborhood you
didn t want to visit, much less live in.
This inevitably brings us back to the very simple question of, how did Skid Row even
come about in the first place? Perhaps it can be traced back to as early as 1876, when
Los Angeles became the last stop on the recently built Transcontinental Railroad. Just as today
in the United States, many bus and train stops have become sites for vagrants and illicit
activity, the railroad stop in LA became a stomping ground for men who hid in empty train
cars to avoid paying the fare, or simply didn t have money to pay it.
As the population of mostly men engaging in delinquent and criminal behavior increased
on First and Los Angeles, even then known as the Hobo Corner, the Union Rescue Mission
now known as the Mission, the Midnight Mission, and the Salvation Army also set themselves
up near that corner. All three organizations attempted to preach the Christian faith to
those on the lowest rung of society, as well as provide shelter and meals to many. To accommodate
the influx of travelers and settlers to the city, saloons, brothels, and single room occupancy,
budget hotels started popping up around this, conditions in Skid Row did not improve. In
fact, matters took an even worse turn when the Pacific Electric Railway Company opened
another railway station in 1902. Where was this new station located? You guessed it,
in close proximity to Skid Row.
Cementing its Reputation in the 1900s
Nothing helped reduce the problem of crime in the early 1900s. Many transients seemed
to feel a sense of anonymity because there were so many people coming in and out of Los
Angeles, if not the West Coast generally. The government did try to reduce crime by,
for instance, installing street lights and cracking down on homeless transients, in 1906.
Rather than reduce crime, the transients simply moved further east, to modern-day Skid Row.
As the 1900s gained steam and eventually collapsed into the Great Depression by 1930, Skid Row
saw a further injection of single men fleeing their home states to look for work. When they
realized that Los Angeles suffered from the same fate of joblessness as the rest of the
United States, it was often too late. Without savings, family and friends, or job prospects,
the men found themselves on Skid Row, utilizing the Mission and Salvation Army to feed and
house themselves. If not, they slept rough on the streets.
Containment of Skid Row
The downward trajectory of the neighborhood continued despite the post-WWII housing boom
of the 1950s. More missions now joined the scene: Good News, Lower Lights, and the Emmanuel
Baptist. In the 1960s, the city cracked down on the single room occupancy hotels that were
cheaply priced and cheaply maintained; the hotels inattention to fire and safety codes
meant that the city simply shut many of them down. The closure of nearly half of the housing
that Skid Row residents relied on meant that the population on the streets only increased.
Throughout the 60s and the 70s, the city tried to enforce Municipal Code 41.18(d), stipulating
that, no person shall sit, lie or sleep in or upon any street, sidewalk or other public
way. In 1972, the city also envisioned the elimination of Skid Row as part of its overall
Central Business District (CBD) Redevelopment Plan, hoping to improve downtown LA by 1990.
However, this was met with resistance among different residents of the extant CBD; they
perhaps rightly thought that with the end of Skid Row, that previously concentrated
homeless population would spread throughout the entire city. The city government then
decided that while its goal continued to be reducing the Skid Row population, it was better
to contain the area to its current radius. By concentrating social services and charities
within that radius, the Skid Row population had access to basic needs and the violence
and drug addiction among its population could also be contained.
Why did Skid Row get Bigger?
A diverse number of factors increased the countable Skid Row population from the 1970s
onwards. By the late 1970s, previous avenues of middle-class employment in areas such as
manufacturing, gave way to lower wage jobs. White collar jobs in the growing information
and technology economy increased, leading to more well-paid professionals looking for
high-quality housing in the city. The California Mental Health Act of 1967 also rode the overall
anti-institution wave that gripped the country as a result of poor conditions in state-run
mental institutions. The Act allowed governmental authorities to take individuals into custody
for only 72 hours of either a psychiatric evaluation, or encourage them to undergo psychiatric
treatment if they were considered disabled or a danger to others. While the intentions
of the Act may have been well-founded to provide more autonomy to individuals who were wrongly
institutionalized, or institutionalized without their consent, the flipside was that individuals
who truly were mentally or emotionally disabled, or dangerous, were now free to roam the streets.
More often than not, they found themselves on Skid Row, too.
So why did Skid Row get bigger? After all, various communities around Skid Row progressed.
By 1985, just north of Skid Row, Little Tokyo became an eating and shopping destination.
Wholesale businesses to the east of Skid Row began to flourish. To continue to help thriving
communities, then Mayor Thomas Bradley committed to a $100 million bond to reinforce single
room occupancy buildings for earthquake safety, as well as put a moratorium on the demolition
of single-room occupancy buildings. Mayor Bradley also invested in FEMA trailers and
campgrounds for Skid Row s homeless. Despite his best intentions, the attempts to improve
the lives of Skid Row s residents was like putting a band-aid on an amputated limb. Other
City Council members avoided having the trailers established in their districts due to understandable
quality of life concerns, while the campgrounds became so disheveled and dirty from the Skid
Row population, that they were shut down. The attempts to improve Skid Row just kept
on coming, with the next Mayor, Mayor Richard Riodan, installing two dozen portable toilets
in the neighborhood. In 1998, half of them were removed due to similarly unhygienic conditions,
and then had to be reinstalled due to a protest. However, the final straw came in 2006, when
the city government had no choice but to remove all the portable toilets after they were photographed
as being mediums for prostitution. Regardless of what amenities were added to Skid Row,
the reality is that without changing the habits of Skid Row s residents for the better, none
were effective. They fell into disrepair and filth. This shouldn t be surprising since
much of the population is addicted to drugs, where a hit of crystal meth reportedly can
go for as low as $2.
Broken Windows Crackdown & Legal Encampments
In 2006, the seemingly forward-thinking Broken Windows campaign of Police Chief William J.
Bratton, actually unintentionally set-off the expansion of homelessness and lawlessness.
His campaign sought to finally clear the streets of homeless people, arresting them for small
crimes such as jaywalking. They were dutifully arrested for tickets they couldn t pay for,
but were then sent back to Skid Row. Though harsh, the Broken Windows campaign also seemed
to be working in terms of reducing actual violence in Skid Row, even if authorities
couldn t keep every perpetrator in custody permanently. For instance, tighter policing
with the Broken Windows campaign led to approximately 75% less homicides, 42% less major felonies,
and 50% less overdose deaths. Significant progress after years of tolerating relentless
crime and open drug use.
At the same time, the county publicized its plan to build five homeless shelters throughout
the region and dedicate $100 million to do so. While many in the county and the city
did not like Skid Row, they also did not like the idea of having a homeless shelter in their
neighborhood.
How Big is Skid Row?
Either way, the city couldn t win. In 2006, the city of Los Angeles shot itself in the
foot by singing the Jones agreement, which legalized homeless people sleeping on sidewalks
overnight, as long as they were 10 feet from any residential or business entrance between
the hours of 9 pm and 6:30 am. The result? An explosion of urban blight and makeshift
homes almost everywhere within the city limits of Los Angeles. While that rule may be enforced
from time to time, as anyone who has casually driven through LA recently can tell you - the
homeless have set up camp anywhere and everywhere, including near businesses and residential
homes. And the problem hasn t gotten any better since 2006. As of 2020, an estimated 12,000
homeless individuals pass through Skid Row. According to other estimates, about 5,000
semi-permanent residents call the area home.
How dangerous is Skid Row?
So how dangerous exactly is Skid Row, LA? If we dig a bit deeper into some of the statistics
of Skid Row, we can learn quite a lot about the residents based on the causes of death.
The Los Angeles County Department of Health reports that drug and alcohol overdosing was
the biggest cause of death at 27%, closely followed by violence at 24%, heart disease
at 24%, transportation-related injuries at 9% and murder at 6%, and suicide finishing
at 5%. One long-time resident of Skid Row aptly describes the neighborhood as, A society
within a society, the homeless people sell drugs and alcohol to other homeless people.
For activists who claim that the ills of Skid Row residents is largely due to societal failure
to help them, that same long-time Skid Row resident observes that, There s no love for
anybody, there ll be someone who is passed out drunk getting robbed and everyone will
just stand there and say, Ah look they re robbing Jimmy. The dog-eat-dog behavior of
many residents is fueled by drugs and mental illness. Those same conditions fuel the unsanitary
and unsafe conditions of Skid Row.
While other areas of Los Angeles may be a shopper s paradise, Skid Row is a melting
pot of different diseases. How crazy does it get? Well, typhus was almost eradicated
in most developed countries, including the United States. However, as recently as 2018,
167 cases were confirmed on Skid Row. Given the littered needles and abundance of rats
and roaches, combined with no showers and restrooms due to safety reasons, there have
also been cases of tuberculosis, staph, and hepatitis A.
No Easy Solutions
It s incredible how the Hotel Death Netflix took me down the rabbit hole from Cecil Hotel
all the way to understanding the complexities and seriousness of Skid Row. It may be easy
to blame the city and state governments. Or to blame the city residents who wanted to
help the homeless, but not be anywhere near where they actually lived. Or to blame the
residents of Skid Row itself. Perhaps it may be more fruitful for the government and working
city residents to come to a compromise on how to tackle the larger issue of homelessness
that is only highly visible because Skid Row is so concentrated. Put simply, getting rid
of Skid Row itself may not be the issue, but identifying the mentally unstable from the
drug addicts who do want help and those who do not want help, as well as all other categories
of Skid Row residents, may be the first step in taking action to alleviate the underlying
causes of homelessness in Los Angeles.
So with that said, thank you so much for watching my video. There was a significant amount of
research and production that went into making this video possible, so if you wouldn t mind
giving the video a Thumbs Up and leaving a comment in YouTube section below, it would
really help out a lot as this is a brand new Channel. Have you seen Crime Scene: The Vanishing
at Hotel Death? Have you been to Skid Row? Be sure to check out some of my other videos,
like the Rise and Fall of New York and the Rise and Fall and Rise Again of Britney Spears.
Thank you again for watching and stay tuned for another episode of Company Insight next
week.