Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood

Recognizing Skid Row As A Neighborhood was the name given by the Department of City Planning to their section about Skid Row in the official presentation of DTLA 2040 to the Los Angeles Planning Commissioners back in September 2021.

DTLA 2040 (what will Downtown look like in the year 2040) began in 2016 as the process to update the Downtown Community Plan. There are 33 Community Plan areas in Los Angeles and Community Plans set Land Use Policy with the zoning tools to implement the policy.

Skid Row as a nickname for an undefined section of Downtown Los Angeles began in the late 1800’s. Skid Row in a formal sense began in the mid-1970’s when City Hall created the Policy of Containment which set physical boundaries for Skid Row. The essence of the Policy of Containment was that social services for the poor and homeless would be centered in Skid Row, and the old single room occupancy hotels would be renovated as government subsidized housing.

The Policy of Containment for Skid Row was a response to the Eminent Domain/Urban Renewal destruction of the affordable housing in Bunker Hill that happened earlier. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the Department of City Planning sent out an email saying of their 400 staff, about 25% of them work in City Planning specifically for Equity purposes given the damage done to people of color and the poor by previous generations of urban planning.

Alameda Street is the borderline between Skid Row and the Arts District. In 2023, a new nonprofit was formed — Solutions Alameda Coalition. Creating this nonprofit was in response to the plans to save money by building a new railway line called the Southeast Gateway Line that would span 19.3 miles on top of the ground when it ran through Downtown, specifically Alameda Street, rather than below ground which was the original plan. Building on top of the ground is called aerial alignment.

In the Frequently Asked Questions section of the Solutions Alameda Coalition website, here is their answer to this question — What are some issues with an aerial alignment? An aerial alignment will increase traffic, noise, and visual impediments in the middle of the street, and serve as a physical divider of DTLA’s neighborhoods. Specifically, it will reinforce historic redlining practices dividing Skid Row from the Arts District. SAC believes that public transit infrastructure should bring people together, not push people farther apart.

Talking about Skid Row as a form of redlining isn’t just an incorrect use of the word redlining; it’s a toxic use of the word redlining.