by MN Gordon, Acting Man:

There are places in Los Angeles where, although the sun always shines, they haven’t seen a ray of light in over 100-years.  There’s a half square mile of urban decay centered on the Union Rescue Mission at 545 South San Pedro Street, where depravity, chaos, addiction, insanity and archaic diseases multiply and ricochet about like metastatic cancer.

One of LA’s modern-day Hoovervilles in San Pedro Street…  In 2015 it was reported that Union Rescue Mission CEO Reverend Andy Bales had caught three different bacterial infections from merely walking around in the area. One of the infections rendered him unable to ever walk again (doctors eventually had to amputate his foot, which had fallen prey to flesh-eating bacteria). In short, this is not exactly the most hygienic and healthy environment. [PT]

Photo credit: Mike Blake / REUTERS

Here, at Skid Row, some 10,000 zombies live within massive homeless encampments among spoils of garbage, feces, rats, and rot.  With little reprieve, they roll around on a filthy ground cover composed of fragmented concrete, glass, stone, and gravel. Diseases that flourished in the Middle Ages, like typhus and flesh eating bacteria, infect these street dwellers – and those who try and help them – with remarkable efficiency.

Take Reverend Andy Bales, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission.  He’s a man with a big heart and a personal commitment to action.  His late father and grandfather lived homeless in a tent for many years.

Awhile back, while passing out water bottles to those he serves, Rev. Bales contracted three different deadly bacteria – E. coli, strep, and staph.  Sadly, this cocktail of toxic microorganisms relentlessly attacked his body, consuming his flesh. For Rev. Bales, his encounter brought him to an important choice: Your leg or your life?

Most days he now gets around in his wheelchair… propelling it up and down the street wearing bike gloves. Occasionally, he wears a prosthetic.  Still, with a warm heart and special wisdom, Rev. Bales continues on his rescue mission. Earlier this year, and after much field research, he offered the following insight:

“This place is like a Petri dish for disease.”

Reverend Andy Bales today, minus his right foot. [PT]

Photo credit: Danny Liao

We suppose District 14 council member José Huizar, the city official representing Skid Row, would agree. However, since a throng of FBI agents raided his office late last year, he has been fairly distracted. Go figure!

Gold old District 14 council member José Huizar (D), reportedly the “richest politician in downtown LA”, currently under investigation for corruption (along with other City Hall dwellers), harassment and assorted other allegations is no stranger to controversy – back in 2010 he was already hard-pressed to “explain the disappearance of $1.5 million from the Eastside pollution control fund”. Considering the degree of pollution in and around skid row, it definitely seems the fund didn’t keep it under control much. [PT]

Photo via Los Angeles Downtown News

Giant Shams

Skid Row, however, is merely the center of LA’s burgeoning homeless population.  Spanning to the east through the San Gabriel Valley and south to Long Beach, cities you have never heard of and would never go to, are jumbled together like shipping containers on Terminal Island…

East LA, Temple City, El Monte, South El Monte, La Puente, Pomona, Vernon, Maywood, Commerce, Huntington Park, Bell, Cudahy, Bell Gardens, South Gate, Lynwood, Paramount, Compton, Gardena, Lawndale, Hawthorne, and many, many more. Mass homelessness, crime, and degeneracy prevail throughout these cities.  At last count, per the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, LA County was home to precisely 58,936 homeless people.

This army of indigents, roaming about the LA LA land paradise, has become a significant embarrassment for local and state leaders.  But rather than unwinding restrictive development codes and stifling business policies, which have tied developers and small businesses in knots for decades, officials are attacking homelessness the only way they know how. With big programs and big dollars – piled on the backs of taxpayers and businesses, as they flee the state.

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