CRACKDOWN DEMANDED ON SKID ROW CAMPS

Business Group, Officials Say Squalor Is Ruining Downtown. Activists Say
Problem Is Lack Of Beds.

A group of downtown Los Angeles civic leaders and residents on Monday said
the growing homeless population on skid row is a public health and safety
catastrophe and proposed that the city enact an anti-encampment ordinance
and other measures to improve conditions.

The Central City Assn., backed by City Council members Jan Perry and Tom La
Bonge, Police Chief William J. Bratton and several other advocacy groups,
said the number of homeless living in squalor on downtown streets -- many
with severe mental illnesses and addictions -- has reached crisis
proportions and is threatening downtown's economic revitalization.

Some agencies that provide services to the homeless, however, denounced the
plan, saying it was merely another attempt to sweep the streets of homeless
people who have nowhere else to go.

Putting an exclamation point on the concerns, Bratton said the
concentration of homeless downtown is worse than he has seen in New York or
Boston.

According to city counts conducted for the 2000 Census, from 9,000 to
15,000 people live on the streets of central Los Angeles, said Perry, as
many as 3,000 to 5,000 of them on the 50 square blocks of downtown's skid
row. At the same time, the city is trying to attract new residents to live
in renovated loft buildings in the area.

At a news conference at the newly rehabilitated Farmers and Merchants Bank
building on skid row's edge, the Central City Assn. and its allies asserted
that current ordinances are ineffective in preventing public urination and
defecation, camping on sidewalks and aggressive panhandling.

"We are focusing on a portion of the problem that no one has wanted to talk
about, those dwelling on the streets who have set up tents and boxes," said
Central City Assn. President Carol Schatz. "We need to address that kind of
behavior because it takes the streets away from all of us."

Her group is proposing a plan it says will improve the quality of life
downtown while also showing compassion for the truly sick and needy.

Besides the anti-encampment ordinance, proposals include:

- - Specific city bans on public urination and defecation. The acts currently
fall under the category of a nuisance crime, but are rarely prosecuted, say
civic officials.

- - Creation of an LAPD street-crime patrol with the purpose of catching drug
dealers and other criminals who prey on the homeless.

- - A city-financed downtown community court that would review petty crimes
and divert homeless offenders to social service agencies rather than send
them to jail.

- - Audits of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Agency and individual service
providers so they are held accountable for spending government funds
effectively on housing, counseling, job training or other programs.

- - City- and county-funded treatment for recovering homeless drug and
alcohol addicts.

- - Coordination among law enforcement agencies to release prisoners and
parolees back into the communities where they were arrested rather than
dumping them downtown, as is now common practice.

Bratton said he is studying proposals to beef up patrols downtown but made
no commitment.

The new police chief, who is staying in a downtown hotel until he finds a
permanent home, said he and his wife had been accosted by aggressive
panhandlers several times while shopping.

Over the weekend, a man being ejected from a skid row transient hotel was
stabbed to death with an ice pick, Bratton said.

As New York commissioner, Bratton was credited with cracking down on
nuisance crimes such as panhandling and enforcing bans on sleeping on the
streets. "If left unchecked these behaviors destroy neighborhoods, destroy
cities and that's what's happening right outside this door," he said.

Other California cities, such as San Francisco and Santa Monica, are
getting tougher on squalid street conditions associated with some homeless
people.

Some advocacy groups, however, said the Central City Assn. plan fails to
address the lack of shelter beds that leads many homeless to sleep on the
streets and said the group is motived by the economic interests of its members.

"Most addicts and mentally ill are not service-resistant," said Gilbert
Saldate, homeless coordinator for the Tri-City Mental Health agency. "They
want housing and supportive services desperately. What they are resistant
to are the rules, penalties and sanctions that some service providers and
governmental agencies put in their way."

Bob Erlenbusch, executive director of the Coalition to End Hunger and
Homelessness, added: "Our position has always been framed by compassion in
the deepest sense of the word. We defend people's right to sleep outside
when there is no alternative."

But Perry said a downtown redevelopment plan could provide needed money for
shelter, housing and social programs, and she lambasted advocacy groups,
including the Homeless Coalition, that have sued the city to block it.

"I'm very hopeful we'll settle these lawsuits very soon so we can stop
wasting time," said Perry, who called the situation on skid row a
"catastrophe."

"It's neither compassionate nor humane to argue people have the right to
live on the streets in their own waste."