Opinion: Who’s trashing Skid Row?

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Much of the street garbage that plagues Skid Row is dumped, it turns out, not by the homeless people who have been the focus of city “clean-up” efforts, but instead by many of the same businesses that have been urging the city to protect them from the area’s drug dealing and human waste. That’s what Jeff Isaacs, chief of the city attorney’s criminal and special litigation unit, told the Police Commission at its November 14 meeting.

Isaacs said police and prosecutors have repeatedly warned merchants in the area also known as Central City East that they are violating state and city laws when they throw boxes and other garbage on the sidewalk and in the street, in the apparent belief that city street cleaners will handle their trash in the course of sweeping up after the homeless.

This time, Isaacs told the commission, prosecutors really mean it when they say they will start citing and prosecuting the merchant dumpers.

But the garbage issue is complex, like pretty much every issue springing from Skid Row. The city is responsible for licensing the businesses that open up there, and a license is supposed to be granted only with proof that the merchant has garbage pick-up service. Many don’t. It’s the city’s responsibility to monitor compliance. But for years, oversight has been lax, and merchants have gotten used to trashing the street.

Meanwhile, under the Safer Cities Initiative that recently brought 50 new LAPD officers to Skid Row, arrests of transients have risen sharply. Many have personal belongings, often in shopping carts. So what happens to the carts? Do the police have to warehouse them? They’re running out of space, Isaacs told the commission. So “abandoned” belongings mingle with the garbage. The Business Improvement District could pick it up (a BID official says the organization already picks up 10 tons of garbage a day), but why should it do the city’s work? And besides, who wants to be sued for throwing out a cart that someone will later claim contained their glasses, their dentures, or other vital personal property?

So the trash piled up. Central City East Association Executive Director Estela Lopez warned the City Council of a mounting public health crisis in an area already plagued with staph infections and streets that do triple duty as thoroughfares, beds and toilets. New training for LAPD officers has curbed the problem a bit.

Meanwhile, the City Council went into closed session on Tuesday to consider a new settlement in the ACLU lawsuit over the city’s sidewalk sleeping ordinance. But instead of a new settlement, council members and their staffs were buzzing about a three-page letter sent the night before by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa that seemed to throw in the towel, at least for now. Instead of settling now, as the mayor had been urging the council to do, he called for continuing negotiations and adopting a new law that would limit enforcement of the anti-sleeping ordinance to daylight hours only—not just in Skid Row, but citywide.