Skid Row

I went to Skid Row with Desiree, et al, last night to feed the homeless. [Incidentally, I remember asking my third grade teacher whether "Skim Row" were the place where they kept the cows that make "skim milk."] Everyone gather together at D's house (in Cerritos—yay!) where two of the approximately 16 volunteers prepared the food, while the rest of us played games, chatted, and shared the bandwidth from D's wifi—then subsequently gripe to each other about how slow the connection is.

Tonight's menu is pretty much the same as the menu every other night that Desiree and company go to feed the homeless: spaghetti with marinara sauce, bread, bananas, hot tea, juice, and water. There are also granola bars and Hershey's chocolate bars (quite a hot commodity!) to pass out to people who request them.

We arrived at a pre-arranged location, a spot where the regulars were already waiting for our vans. Most of the customer's come, pick up their food, and leave, but one or two stick around through the whole evening to chat. When I wasn't passing out bananas, I listened in to the their stories, and asked a few questions. One man, for example had been a music instructor and orchestra director for a high school, and later a junior college, but lost his job about five years ago. When he couldn't make rent, he lost his home as well, and has been living on the streets ever since. He looked like pretty much like all the others whom we served last night. I wonder how many of them are just as educated, gifted, and intelligent as he is.

The philosophizing of man in particular caught my attention. "You guys should come more than once a month," he began, apparently aware that Desiree schedules the visits about that frequently. I understood this as a charge to serve the homeless with a greater sense of urgency. It felt good to be appreciated, good to be needed, and a small feeling of pride arose in my breast, but he continued, "coming once a month, that's no sacrifice. Coming every day, or three times a week, that's a sacrifice. People who come on Christmas day: that's no sacrifice. Coming every day other than Christmas, that's a sacrifice. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate whatch y'all are doin' down here, but you need to come more often, that's alls I'm sayin'." There was more to his argument (like his rationale explaining why we should hand out small allotments of cash to those who ask)^*, but that's pretty much the gist of what I overheard between my distributions potassium-boosts. (Incidentally, probably 60% of my customers mentioned that bananas are a good source of potassium upon receiving their yellow, peelable parcels.)

A part of me felt he didn't really appreciate what we were doing. Although I am blessed beyond measure never to have needed a handout, I really could not conceive of being homeless, receiving a free hot meal, then telling the hand that fed me that it wasn't being sacrificial enough. Then after taking a step back, I realized that much of my shock at his comments stemmed from the contrast with my expectations of him: I had expected him to be grateful, beholden even, to us. Ashamed at my condescension and holier-than-thou attitude, I then began to agree with alot of what this man had to say. It was pretty easy for us to spare one Sunday evening a month to make the food, go down there and distribute it; coming nightly, or even thrice weekly, would be a much greater sacrifice on our parts. Living among them (à la Mother Theresa, or Jesus himself) would be even greater. "Maybe we should come often. Maybe we should do more," I told myself.^†


*Desiree has a strict rule about this. It isn't that she's afraid of what our customers might do with the money (at least she does not enumerate that among her reasons), but being a pretty visible group known to bring even small quantities of cash to Skid Row after dark is just not safe. (And I agree with her.) Before embarking on our trip, we were all instructed to leave cash and valuables are her house—they were not even to be taken aboard the vans. She attributes the safety of her trips so far to that fact that we have a reputation for helping the community, and a reputation for never having anything valuable to steal.

†For more excellent coverage on the issue of homelessness, check out KPCC's special two day feature on the topic. Or, see the Economist's city update for Los Angeles:

An age-old problem
A police campaign to deal with the city's homeless problem is proving both effective and controversial. Los Angeles has more homeless people than any other American city: estimates range from 60,000 to 120,000 (if you count people staying with friends). The federal government reckons that LA has almost twice as many homeless people as New York. Until recently, the homeless were allowed to loiter on LA’s sunny streets. But that changed when William Bratton, the police chief, launched a “Safer City Initiative” to reduce crime and urban blight. After bringing the campaign to MacArthur Park and other parts of the city, in September Mr Bratton gave the central police precinct 50 extra officers to help clean up Skid Row, mainly by arresting people for drug dealing and petty crimes such as littering. Missionaries accompany the officers, urging the homeless to join their drug-treatment programmes. The result has been impressive: police claim the number of people sleeping rough in Skid Row fell from 1,800 in September 2006 to just 800 in February. Crime in downtown Los Angeles is now at 1940s levels.
But not everyone is pleased. The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the initiative in court on the grounds that officers are mistreating the homeless. In late February the group asked a US District Court judge to limit the police’s power to search and detain the homeless without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.
See related article: “On the skids”, February 8th 2007.