Residents of LA’s notorious Skid Row talk survival amid ODs, gangs and dead rats in the walls
Oct. 3, 2023
More than 4,400 homeless people live in Skid Row. Los Angeles’ notorious 54-block downtown Skid Row area is a no-go zone for most people.
Just blocks from the city’s financial district, luxury apartments and five-star hotels, it is a dangerous place where street gangs process and sell drugs and over half of its 4,600 residents are unhoused — the largest such population in the US.
While a majority of those in Skid Row live in tent encampments, cars or various homeless shelters, around 2,500 people are being transitioned into 29 residences operated by the Skid Row Housing Trust.
Accompanied by a police escort, The Post was able to get a rare glimpse into everyday life in one of the most impoverished corners of the US and was confronted with block after block of drug users, largely untreated mentally ill people and lawless behavior.
Residents opened their homes and told us how fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid, is ruining lives and how drug overdoses have become an everyday occurrence.
Cory Patterson lives in one of the single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings in Skid Row. He’s sober but said he’s had to get used to drug deals and crimes in his building, which have only gotten worse since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cory Patterson, who lives at the Lincoln
SRO with his foster dog, Taco, said residents like himself deal with
daily chaos and drug dealing while living on Skid Row.
Cory Patterson with his foster dog,
Taco. Patterson said mold has been growing on his walls at the SRO where
he lives in Skid Row, while his neighbors constantly smell dead rats
rotting in the walls.
“[The dealers] mix fentanyl with rat poison, roach sprays and whatever else and then they sit there, laughing and watching to see what happens to people [when they take it],” Patterson told The Post.
“It’s intense and malicious. They mix these bad things on purpose and give it to some transgender women who are willing to take any drug. They are literally using them as guinea pigs.”
Some formerly homeless like Patterson live in nearly 200-square-foot rooms in one of the SRO buildings and share bathrooms with other residents.
While the SROs — mostly decades-old former hotels — provide some respite, many who are battling with mental health crises and drug addiction can quickly get thrust back into criminal activity living there.
Patterson said mismanagement has been going on for years. He said roaches and other critters are a common problem in most of the 29 city-run buildings, along with mold and the smell of dead rats decaying in the walls. Pieces of the rotted ceiling even crumbled and fell on one of his neighbors.
Senior lead officer Deon Joseph (left)
tries to help subdue a woman who appeared to be in a full-blown mental
health crisis and would not get out of a busy road in Skid Row on Sept.
27, 2023. Joseph said the hope is to get her admitted to a psychiatric
hospital because he says she is not safe in Skid Row.
Senior lead officer Deon Joseph said the
introduction of fentanyl in Skid Row’s drug supply has made things more
deadly. Addicts have become more desperate chasing the high, leading to
more property and violent crimes, he said.
Patterson also alleges those hired to manage and secure the buildings are often on drugs or dealing themselves.
“We had night clerks smoking meth with the residents in the offices,” Patterson said. “We finally got rid of them, but when the receivership was taking over, we had a manager overdose from drugs he bought from the janitor.”
Los Angeles Police Department officers who walk the dangerous Skid Row beat also told The Post that criminal activity and deaths have skyrocketed since fentanyl was introduced into the main drug supply by drug cartels and street gangs that control the area.
“There are gangs who are pretending to be homeless and use the tent encampments to sell fentanyl and other drugs,” LAPD senior lead officer Deon Joseph told The Post.
“Bloods and Crips [two Los Angeles gangs] have been here for about 30 years, and over time, it’s become a more sophisticated operation.
Fentanyl has become more prevalent in
Skid Row since the COVID-19 pandemic. The drug is often mixed with other
drugs such as cocaine, meth and other chemicals, cops said.
“While the operation hasn’t changed, the huge difference is how deadly it has become because of fentanyl. The sheer number of overdoses, violent crimes related to dealing and guns have become more prevalent.
“The cocaine and heroin epidemics were bad enough, but you mix that with fentanyl, there are now even more overdose deaths. It’s probably the worst I’ve ever seen in over 20 years.”
Fentanyl is around 50 times stronger than heroin and a minute amount can easily lead to an overdose, even for experienced users. Overdose numbers have exploded in Skid Row, according to the latest data obtained by The Post.
Fentanyl was found in the systems of 66 people who fatally overdosed in 2021, almost tripling the number for the previous year, 23, according to the latest numbers from LA County Public Health and the county Coroner’s Office. In comparison, 49 people died from cocaine overdoses in 2021 while 60 died from methamphetamine.
Los Angeles Police Department officers
who regularly patrol crime-riddled Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles said
they expect more deadly run-ins with violent street gangs that are
distributing fentanyl-laced drugs.
Fatal overdoses can involve more than one drug as dealers are “cutting” fentanyl into heroin, cocaine and other narcotics, Joseph said.
The Post went on a ride-along with Joseph, and within 15 minutes, a homeless woman ran up to the patrol car screaming that she had been assaulted by her partner. Another woman, who seemed to be experiencing a drug-induced mental breakdown, walked aimlessly into rush-hour traffic.
Joseph intervened, but after 10 minutes of trying to calm the woman, he called for backup. Four officers responded and eventually detained her as she screamed, “Please stop! Let go! Take the handcuffs off!”
Joseph told The Post the woman was a prime candidate for mental health intervention, like so many others who could be seen drugged and passed out on the sidewalks.
Drug dealing, human trafficking, sexual assaults and other violent crimes occur at all hours of the day and through the night, the veteran officer said.
A man sleeps inside one of the hundreds of tents that block the sidewalks in Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles.
The senior lead officer said the
notorious Bloods and Crips street gangs have a “gentleman’s agreement”
and operate in territories in crime-riddled Skid Row. Homeless men and
women who live on the streets often become casualties during drug deals,
he said.
Of the near 5,000 homeless people who live in Skid Row, 44% are considered “chronically homeless,” according to the latest data released by the Los Angeles Homeless Services. About 56% of the homeless population are black and 24% Latino, the report said.
The number of homeless people in the whole of Los Angeles County increased by 9% to an estimated 75,518 people, according to the latest count, conducted in June.
Over the years, Joseph said, he has seen drugs distributed by Bloods, Crips and Cuban cartels in the various tents littered all over Skid Row, adding that the ruthless illegal narcotics business knows no bounds.
“I’ve seen security guards letting the drug dealers into the buildings,” the veteran cop said as he pointed to one of the buildings. “Right here used to be called the ‘Drop In Center,’ and the staff was literally supplying a 14-year-old girl with cocaine. And she would then sell it on this block.”
The LAPD busts Bloods gang members who set up shop inside a tent in one of the notorious drug corners in Skid Row.
Skid Row has become a “Zombieland” with the introduction of fentanyl-laced drugs, residents said.
A federal judge ruled in May that the city had to provide shelter, or at least offer it, to all of the unhoused by October 18.
However, the Skid Row Housing Trust, the nonprofit landlord that owns the SRO buildings, has not been well run and is a magnet for controversy.
The trust was on the verge of collapse, but a judge, at the request of Mayor Karen Bass, gave its then-head Mark Adams the authority to draw a line of credit to manage and repair the buildings.
However, Adams resigned in June after a three-month tenure that placed the properties into additional debt, while little to none of the much-needed repairs were made.
Under his watch, residents also were illegally told they would be evicted for unpaid rent. Some of the due rent was as little as $56.
Pressure to oust Adams grew after reports by the LA Times revealed the company he previously used for receivership work had been banned from doing business in the state since 2015. Adams allegedly never paid business taxes, according to the paper.
Even before Adams was brought in, the buildings run by the trust were in severe disrepair but still used as housing.
Suzette Shaw, who lives in the New Genesis building in Skid Row, said that while security has improved in her building, drugs are still very much a problem.
“There was a female who lived on my floor and they found her dead in her apartment last year,” Shaw said. “She OD’d on fentanyl. Someone else just died on my floor a few weeks ago.”
Shaw, who lives in one of the highly coveted artists’ lofts in the complex, said she was also assaulted as she was walking near her building.
Suzette Shaw, an artist and activist who
lives in Skid Row, said she tries to “keep to herself” inside her own
subsidized loft. Over the years living in Skid Row, she has seen
overdoses and also has been attacked. LA’s astronomical rent prices kept
Shaw living in Skid Row despite the dangers. 
Charles Perry, who lives on this
sidewalk in a tent at 7th and Wall streets, picks up his puppy, Baby
Girl. LAPD senior lead officer Deon Joseph said this location is known
as “Fentanyl Way” and the dealers sell right outside the SRO buildings.
Street gangs and Cuban cartels control much of the drug trade in Skid Row, cops said.
A man and woman have to walk in the street to avoid tent encampments at 6th and Wall streets in Skid Row.
LAPD senior lead officer Deon Joseph
said he expects things to “get much worse” as LA County braces for a new
policy that allows non-violent offenders back on the streets without
having to post bail.
“We have security here, but I am my own best security. None of them really understands what it means to be a trauma survivor,” she told The Post.
“People who get these jobs are sometimes not culturally competent or trauma-informed when they are dealing with the most fragile people on a daily basis. There is a lot of disrespect sometimes and retriggering trauma.”
Joseph added how the narcotics teams recently cleared out fentanyl and other drugs from one of the more well-known dealing tents at 7th and Wall streets, but the dealers all returned two weeks later.
The drug-dealing tents are still just steps away from two low-income buildings that house formerly homeless people. He worries that LA County’s new zero-bail policy will cause yet another uptick in crime.
The policy, which went into effect on Oct.1, allows criminal suspects accused of non-violent or non-serious crimes to be released immediately without bail.
Joseph said he expects property crime will increase as addicts trade whatever stolen goods they have with dealers or other addicts in order to “maintain that high.”
“The new security in the buildings are doing a good job so far to keep the dealers out, but it never ends,” Joseph said. “And now this new policy allows criminals to know there are no consequences to their actions. I expect things will get much worse here.”
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