HOMELESS STRUGGLE DAILY WITH DARK FORCES

LOS ANGELES - Franklin Davis may be homeless, but he has a spot of
his own along the city's notorious Skid Row.

"I live at Sixth and Maple," the 44-year-old former dispatcher says
as he takes a brief break from panhandling.

Sixth and Maple is a particularly grimy section of the 50 square
blocks of flophouses and seedy stores. It reeks with the smell of
cheap wine and human waste.

But it's not far from a police station, which Davis says make it a
far safer place than most for the makeshift dwelling he has fashioned
from his blanket and a shopping cart.

Safety is a paramount concern for Davis and the estimated 3,000 Skid
Row residents who are too poor, drug addicted or mentally unstable to
find their way into a cheap hotel or homeless shelter.

Earlier this month one of them, a 49-year-old woman, was stomped to
death in an attack that Police Chief William Bratton said highlights
the dangers faced everyday by the homeless.

Still, Smith and many others either shun the shelters or are kept out
of them because they use drugs.

"When you live on Skid Row, it's very tough to stay off drugs," said
Vincent Fuller, 48, a former truck driver. "The minute you step
outside your door you see it, you smell it. ... You can buy a hit for
as little as a dollar."

It was a crack cocaine addiction, Fuller says, that got him thrown
out of a Skid Row hotel and onto the street. He has family in his
native Texas but won't consider asking for help.