LA Weekly Takes a Look at Skid Row

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — Sam Slovick has a story on Skid Row in this week's issue of the LA Weekly titled, "Down on Main Street." It's good alt-weekly irreverence, but it paints an interesting picture of the conflict between market-rate developers and those who want to secure Downtown's building stock for SRO's.

“Why would anyone want to live on Main Street?” [Alice Callahan] asks, and though I know I wouldn’t mind a nice little crib on Main Street, I keep quiet as a church mouse so she won’t slap me on the knuckles with a ruler. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s not an area that’s gonna change anytime soon. If enough [other development] happens, it would seem to me that the people living at Fourth and Main are gonna say, ‘So let’s see . . . I want my Disneyland, Manhattan experience, but why do it at Fourth and Main, when I could go a few blocks away and be able to go in and out of my house, have friends visit me?’”

Alice has sat on the board of Skid Row Housing Trust from Jump Street and has a reputation as a force to be reckoned with. She is a tenacious, pug-nosed little Canuck disguised as a candy striper in a clean-pressed blue-and-white-striped blouse and navy skirt.

“More than one-third of all the housing on Skid Row is on Main Street,” she informs me, “which is why the development that’s happening on Main Street is so problematic. We have been unable to buy any building on Main Street since [Tom Gilmore] started doing what he did.”

I'll leave out the commentary and just let you go read it for yourself.