ABSTRACT
Perhaps nowhere in North America are homeless people so numerous and so concentrated than on the streets of downtown Los Angeles. In a county where an estimated 88,000 people are homeless on any given night, approximately 13,000 of those are in downtown.1 City and county policies over the past thirty years sought to contain the homeless in Skid Row, a twelve-block radius that now includes fifty-five social service agencies. Until recently, the single-room occupancy (SROs) and Skid Row hotels made up over 50 percent of the downtown housing stock.
