November 21, 2025 • 11 mins
In downtown Los Angeles, the 50-block neighborhood called Skid Row is home to thousands of low-income people who live in tents, run-down hotels, and other temporary shelters on a permanent basis. Learn how Skid Row came about (and has persisted) in such a wealthy place in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/skid-row.htm
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff. Laurena
volebam Here. Tourists from around the world travel to Los
Angeles to visit Disneyland, stroll the Hollywood Walk of Fame,
take in world class museums, and watch the sunset from
the piers and beaches. What they might not see is
(00:23):
skid Row, a neighborhood comprising fifty city blocks in the
heart of downtown LA. It's just a fourth of a
square mile or a single square kilometer, but an estimated
eight to eleven thousand people lived there in precarious, houseless,
or near houseless conditions at any given time. Some two
to three thousand residents live in a tense city of tarps, blankets,
(00:47):
and boxes. Others live in shelters and the few remaining
single room occupancy hotels. The most fortunate have many apartments
in new or renovated buildings built by nonprofits like these
skid Row Housing Trust. The current population of skid Row
is predominantly black and male, but there are increasing numbers
(01:08):
of women and children. Veterans make up about twenty percent
of residents. LA has the highest percentage of any major
metropolitan city in the United States of people experiencing chronic
houselessness that is, having been unsheltered for over a year,
or having experienced four such episodes in the past three years,
(01:28):
a plus having some kind of physical or mental disability.
But how did Skidrow get this way? Why does an
entire neighborhood in one of the world's wealthiest states remain
walled off from the rest of the city and home
to such a high concentration of people struggling with economic
hardship along with coexisting issues related to, for example, mental
(01:50):
and physical health and substance misuse. It's a long and
messy story, but today let's talk a little bit about
skid Row. The first neighborhood to bear this name was
in what's now Seattle, Washington, back in the eighteen fifties.
Lumber was the lifeblood of colonist era Seattle. In logging camps,
(02:12):
a skid road was the name for a path carved
out of the forest on which teams of oxen would
dragfeld logs over to a sawmill. In Seattle, most of
the saw mills were down near the water, and logs
would be slid or skidded down from first hill on
steep streets lubricated with baking grease or salmon oil to
make the logs slide more easily. The area near the
(02:35):
saw mills along the skid Road was populated by lumberjacks
and mill workers, who often spent their pay at the
saloons and brothels that sprung up to entertain them. This
less than family oriented district also became known as skid row,
and throughout the nineteen hundreds, the nickname began to be
applied to any city neighborhood that housed the down and out.
(02:58):
For example, in New York City City in the late
eighteen hundreds, the Bowery became a sort of last stop
for men down on their luck. By the nineteen forties,
it took on the name skid Row. Around that time.
There were skid rows in dozens of American cities, but
the most famous, the one that's endured in the same
location for over a century, is skid Row in Los Angeles.
(03:23):
The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in eighteen sixty nine, and
its final West coast destination was in San Francisco. In
the eighteen seventies, Los Angeles convinced the railroads to extend
the line down to southern California, being home to productive
orchards and vineyards. The railroads needed a level surface to
(03:43):
lay the tracks, so they chose a path along the
Los Angeles River and built the first freight depots nearby.
The farms drew seasonal workers to the LA area to
pick and pack the crops, and more workers to load
the trains, all young single men. For the article of
this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with
(04:03):
Donald Spiweck, the former Deputy Chief of Operations and Policy
at the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los
Angeles and a historian of skid Row. He said all
of these transitory workers needed places to live, and the
area around the train stations began to fill in with
small hotels, bars, and other facilities to serve them. These
(04:26):
would be the founding institutions of the neighborhood that would
become skid Row. By the turn of the twentieth century,
oil had been discovered in LA bringing even more young
men out to work the oil fields and the shipping yards.
Around the same time, the temperance movement was in full swing,
and the first charitable missions popped up in the area.
To save lost souls from the bars and brothels and
(04:49):
give those who needed it a place to stay. The
next couple decades brought the automobile industry and then the
film industry to LA, transforming what had been a sleepy
hour cultural outpost into an economic boom town. The railroads
advertised Los Angeles as a tropical paradise, and more Americans
moved west to find their fortunes. Then came the Great
(05:13):
Depression and the dust Bowl that ravaged Midwestern farms, spurring
even more economic migration westward. But there wasn't enough work
in LA, and the hardest hit slept in train cars
and encampments down by the rail yards, or rented rooms
in the dilapidated single room occupancy hotels. Spivak explained that
(05:34):
the nineteen thirties saw the beginning of a permanent underclass
living in the hard luck Los Angeles community that would
become skid Row. During World War II, the Korean War,
and Vietnam, LA was the city of departure and return
for tens of thousands of soldiers. Some of them came
home with PTSD and or physical injuries that made returning
(05:57):
home difficult. In skid Row, they found a new home,
and some found that alcohol and other substances are more
accessible than professional medical treatment. By the nineteen sixties, skid
Row was a downtrodden and dangerous place, and its existence
in the heart of Los Angeles had scared away businesses.
(06:18):
The city knew something needed to be done to save downtown,
so it began enforcing stricter housing standards for these single
resident hotels in skid Row. From the mid sixties to
the mid seventies, roughly half of them were demolished in
the name of urban renewal, seven five hundred units of
temporary housing, but not all of them. Spidik said, Unlike
(06:42):
most other cities that were using urban renewal to clear
and demolish their skid Row neighborhoods, LA made a conscious
decision not to do that in nineteen seventy six. Instead,
the public policy was that there should be a place
for extremely low income persons to be able to live.
The policy was humanitarian on one hand in that it
(07:04):
preserved a place of the city for the poorest and
most marginalized residents, as well as the charities and social
organizations that served them, but it wasn't entirely altruistic. It
was called the containment strategy because its goal was to
contain this population within the fifty blocks of skid Row
and two Spivik said discourage them from wandering through the
(07:27):
rest of downtown. By concentrating low income housing and services
in skid Row, the city could attract investors to develop
other parts of downtown. The official name of the skid
Row neighborhood is Central City East. It's bordered by a
Little Tokyo to the north, the Fashion District to the south,
(07:49):
the Arts District to the east, and the Historic Core
to the west. Starting in the nineteen nineties, these surrounding
downtown neighborhoods began to attract investment and revitalization. Industrial warehouses
were renovated as lofts and live work play spaces. Old
banks and retail storefronts became boutique hotels and restaurants. As
(08:11):
those surrounding neighborhoods gentrified, developers began to eye skid Row
as the next opportunity for investment, but the city has
stood firm and denied requests from developers to turn skid
Row into another gentrified neighborhood with unaffordable housing. Spivik said
the city's policy is still that the city has an
obligation to make sure there is a substantial amount of
(08:34):
extra low income housing and accompanying social services in skid Row.
There are many government and independent organizations that helped serve
the community in different ways, such as prevention in the
form of rent relief, tenant protections, housing assistance and interim housing,
mental and physical health care including harm prevention and substance
(08:55):
recovery programs, assistance with basic resources like food, laundry and showers,
help finding education and jobs to get people back on
their feet. And resources to help make the community a
safe and vibrant place like recreation and pet areas, and
wellness activities like yoga. It's not an easy set of tasks.
(09:19):
The aforementioned skid Row Housing Trust shuttered in twenty twenty
three among mismanagement and financial troubles. The Los Angeles Police
Department hasn't always been adept. It's striking the right balance
between keeping skid Row safe and making life even harder
for the people living there. For those Skidbrow residents who
live on sheltered life is a daily struggle. A speedk
(09:43):
thinks that skid Row should continue to exist into the future,
but quote, it shouldn't be the only destination. Los Angeles
County is four thousand square miles, that's ten thousand square kilometers.
Skid Row is fifty city blocks. You can't serve the
entire county wide need for housing and homeless services in
a single fifty block neighborhood. There really does need to
(10:05):
be a decentralization of services. In twenty twenty one, the
US District Court judge in Los Angeles ordered the city
to immediately find housing for all houseless people in skid Row,
starting with women and children, but the ruling was overturned
by an appeals court. This civic said that other cities
in LA County have stepped up to offer their own
(10:27):
low income housing and other support, namely Long Beach, Glendale, Pasadena,
and Santa Monica, but the other locales are still quote
very resistant. If you are interested in finding resources around
LA or getting involved with helping people find them, the
La County Homeless Initiative has lots of information at homeless
(10:49):
dot La County dot gov. Today's episode is based on
the article A Short History of skid Row on housetf
Works dot com. Written by Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is
production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffboards dot com
and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(11:12):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey Brainstuff. Laurena
volebam Here. Tourists from around the world travel to Los
Angeles to visit Disneyland, stroll the Hollywood Walk of Fame,
take in world class museums, and watch the sunset from
the piers and beaches. What they might not see is
(00:23):
skid Row, a neighborhood comprising fifty city blocks in the
heart of downtown LA. It's just a fourth of a
square mile or a single square kilometer, but an estimated
eight to eleven thousand people lived there in precarious, houseless,
or near houseless conditions at any given time. Some two
to three thousand residents live in a tense city of tarps, blankets,
(00:47):
and boxes. Others live in shelters and the few remaining
single room occupancy hotels. The most fortunate have many apartments
in new or renovated buildings built by nonprofits like these
skid Row Housing Trust. The current population of skid Row
is predominantly black and male, but there are increasing numbers
(01:08):
of women and children. Veterans make up about twenty percent
of residents. LA has the highest percentage of any major
metropolitan city in the United States of people experiencing chronic
houselessness that is, having been unsheltered for over a year,
or having experienced four such episodes in the past three years,
(01:28):
a plus having some kind of physical or mental disability.
But how did Skidrow get this way? Why does an
entire neighborhood in one of the world's wealthiest states remain
walled off from the rest of the city and home
to such a high concentration of people struggling with economic
hardship along with coexisting issues related to, for example, mental
(01:50):
and physical health and substance misuse. It's a long and
messy story, but today let's talk a little bit about
skid Row. The first neighborhood to bear this name was
in what's now Seattle, Washington, back in the eighteen fifties.
Lumber was the lifeblood of colonist era Seattle. In logging camps,
(02:12):
a skid road was the name for a path carved
out of the forest on which teams of oxen would
dragfeld logs over to a sawmill. In Seattle, most of
the saw mills were down near the water, and logs
would be slid or skidded down from first hill on
steep streets lubricated with baking grease or salmon oil to
make the logs slide more easily. The area near the
(02:35):
saw mills along the skid Road was populated by lumberjacks
and mill workers, who often spent their pay at the
saloons and brothels that sprung up to entertain them. This
less than family oriented district also became known as skid row,
and throughout the nineteen hundreds, the nickname began to be
applied to any city neighborhood that housed the down and out.
(02:58):
For example, in New York City City in the late
eighteen hundreds, the Bowery became a sort of last stop
for men down on their luck. By the nineteen forties,
it took on the name skid Row. Around that time.
There were skid rows in dozens of American cities, but
the most famous, the one that's endured in the same
location for over a century, is skid Row in Los Angeles.
(03:23):
The Transcontinental Railroad was completed in eighteen sixty nine, and
its final West coast destination was in San Francisco. In
the eighteen seventies, Los Angeles convinced the railroads to extend
the line down to southern California, being home to productive
orchards and vineyards. The railroads needed a level surface to
(03:43):
lay the tracks, so they chose a path along the
Los Angeles River and built the first freight depots nearby.
The farms drew seasonal workers to the LA area to
pick and pack the crops, and more workers to load
the trains, all young single men. For the article of
this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with
(04:03):
Donald Spiweck, the former Deputy Chief of Operations and Policy
at the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los
Angeles and a historian of skid Row. He said all
of these transitory workers needed places to live, and the
area around the train stations began to fill in with
small hotels, bars, and other facilities to serve them. These
(04:26):
would be the founding institutions of the neighborhood that would
become skid Row. By the turn of the twentieth century,
oil had been discovered in LA bringing even more young
men out to work the oil fields and the shipping yards.
Around the same time, the temperance movement was in full swing,
and the first charitable missions popped up in the area.
To save lost souls from the bars and brothels and
(04:49):
give those who needed it a place to stay. The
next couple decades brought the automobile industry and then the
film industry to LA, transforming what had been a sleepy
hour cultural outpost into an economic boom town. The railroads
advertised Los Angeles as a tropical paradise, and more Americans
moved west to find their fortunes. Then came the Great
(05:13):
Depression and the dust Bowl that ravaged Midwestern farms, spurring
even more economic migration westward. But there wasn't enough work
in LA, and the hardest hit slept in train cars
and encampments down by the rail yards, or rented rooms
in the dilapidated single room occupancy hotels. Spivak explained that
(05:34):
the nineteen thirties saw the beginning of a permanent underclass
living in the hard luck Los Angeles community that would
become skid Row. During World War II, the Korean War,
and Vietnam, LA was the city of departure and return
for tens of thousands of soldiers. Some of them came
home with PTSD and or physical injuries that made returning
(05:57):
home difficult. In skid Row, they found a new home,
and some found that alcohol and other substances are more
accessible than professional medical treatment. By the nineteen sixties, skid
Row was a downtrodden and dangerous place, and its existence
in the heart of Los Angeles had scared away businesses.
(06:18):
The city knew something needed to be done to save downtown,
so it began enforcing stricter housing standards for these single
resident hotels in skid Row. From the mid sixties to
the mid seventies, roughly half of them were demolished in
the name of urban renewal, seven five hundred units of
temporary housing, but not all of them. Spidik said, Unlike
(06:42):
most other cities that were using urban renewal to clear
and demolish their skid Row neighborhoods, LA made a conscious
decision not to do that in nineteen seventy six. Instead,
the public policy was that there should be a place
for extremely low income persons to be able to live.
The policy was humanitarian on one hand in that it
(07:04):
preserved a place of the city for the poorest and
most marginalized residents, as well as the charities and social
organizations that served them, but it wasn't entirely altruistic. It
was called the containment strategy because its goal was to
contain this population within the fifty blocks of skid Row
and two Spivik said discourage them from wandering through the
(07:27):
rest of downtown. By concentrating low income housing and services
in skid Row, the city could attract investors to develop
other parts of downtown. The official name of the skid
Row neighborhood is Central City East. It's bordered by a
Little Tokyo to the north, the Fashion District to the south,
(07:49):
the Arts District to the east, and the Historic Core
to the west. Starting in the nineteen nineties, these surrounding
downtown neighborhoods began to attract investment and revitalization. Industrial warehouses
were renovated as lofts and live work play spaces. Old
banks and retail storefronts became boutique hotels and restaurants. As
(08:11):
those surrounding neighborhoods gentrified, developers began to eye skid Row
as the next opportunity for investment, but the city has
stood firm and denied requests from developers to turn skid
Row into another gentrified neighborhood with unaffordable housing. Spivik said
the city's policy is still that the city has an
obligation to make sure there is a substantial amount of
(08:34):
extra low income housing and accompanying social services in skid Row.
There are many government and independent organizations that helped serve
the community in different ways, such as prevention in the
form of rent relief, tenant protections, housing assistance and interim housing,
mental and physical health care including harm prevention and substance
(08:55):
recovery programs, assistance with basic resources like food, laundry and showers,
help finding education and jobs to get people back on
their feet. And resources to help make the community a
safe and vibrant place like recreation and pet areas, and
wellness activities like yoga. It's not an easy set of tasks.
(09:19):
The aforementioned skid Row Housing Trust shuttered in twenty twenty
three among mismanagement and financial troubles. The Los Angeles Police
Department hasn't always been adept. It's striking the right balance
between keeping skid Row safe and making life even harder
for the people living there. For those Skidbrow residents who
live on sheltered life is a daily struggle. A speedk
(09:43):
thinks that skid Row should continue to exist into the future,
but quote, it shouldn't be the only destination. Los Angeles
County is four thousand square miles, that's ten thousand square kilometers.
Skid Row is fifty city blocks. You can't serve the
entire county wide need for housing and homeless services in
a single fifty block neighborhood. There really does need to
(10:05):
be a decentralization of services. In twenty twenty one, the
US District Court judge in Los Angeles ordered the city
to immediately find housing for all houseless people in skid Row,
starting with women and children, but the ruling was overturned
by an appeals court. This civic said that other cities
in LA County have stepped up to offer their own
(10:27):
low income housing and other support, namely Long Beach, Glendale, Pasadena,
and Santa Monica, but the other locales are still quote
very resistant. If you are interested in finding resources around
LA or getting involved with helping people find them, the
La County Homeless Initiative has lots of information at homeless
(10:49):
dot La County dot gov. Today's episode is based on
the article A Short History of skid Row on housetf
Works dot com. Written by Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is
production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffboards dot com
and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(11:12):
you listen to your favorite shows.
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