Early one morning in Westlake, as neighborhood children were walking to school, I spotted a woman coming in my direction. She held the masked girl’s hand and carefully guided her around the trio, who were spread out on the sidewalk.
They walked down Bonnie Bray Street, a few blocks east of MacArthur Park, where syringes and needles were strewn about and it was common to see people sleeping or unconscious.
steve lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a columnist for the Los Angeles Times since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and was a Pulitzer finalist four times.
The girl’s father, Eduardo Aguirre, hurriedly called my name from behind his family. One night in September, I toured the neighborhood with him, examining broken streetlights, burned-out park playgrounds, and countless other problems that have plagued Westlake for years. The Aguirres don’t usually allow their 6-year-old daughter to use the park, but for them and thousands of other apartment dwellers, it’s the most conveniently located green space.
Aguirre’s wife, Maria, pointed to the wooden planter boxes placed at Bonnie Brae to discourage camping. People broke in behind them and used the space as a toilet, she said. Aguirre explained that kindergartners sometimes wear masks because they don’t like the smell and their parents worry they might inhale fentanyl fumes.
This is one of the sad realities of MacArthur Park. And my chance encounter with the Aguirre family reminded me why I’ve been coming back since August. A frustrated Norm Langer told me he was considering closing the iconic delicatessen at 7th Avenue and Alvarado Street because of the lack of order and decorum. .
Students heading to school pass tents lining Wilshire Boulevard.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
After I wrote that column, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass went to the deli to have lunch and talk with Langer. “The bottom line is we have to do whatever it takes,” she told me that day. “And we must respond with urgency.”
I believed she meant it. But it soon became clear that Bass had said much the same thing to the Los Angeles Daily News nearly a year earlier.
“No one should die on our streets, and all of our neighbors should be able to feel safe and secure walking their neighborhood streets, working at local businesses, and visiting community spaces like parks and libraries.” ,” Bass told the Daily News in September 2023. After newspapers published a series about the misery at MacArthur Park.
Much of that work remains unfinished, and it’s a theme that extends beyond the city of Los Angeles, Westlake, and back in time.
Los Angeles City Councilman Eunice Hernandez (top), physician assistant Brett Feldman (left), and Dr. Ronald Olson (right). Hear Rosa Morales, who lives in the Westlake area, talk about her health concerns. Feldman and Olson are affiliated with USC Street Medicine.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Over the years, we have heard multiple pledges to end homelessness from various public officials. (The city number is about 45,000, and the county total is about 75,000, although it was down slightly last year.)
Almost 20 years ago, as I was writing about the human catastrophe of Skid Row, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa joined me on the street one night and vowed to clean up the neighborhood. (Despite years of attention at great expense, the staggering toll of mental illness, addiction, and homelessness remains.)
In 2014, Mayor Eric Garcetti pledged to refocus City Hall on providing basic services. (Currently, the waiting period for the sidewalk collapse to be repaired is 10 years.)
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaks at the Boyle Heights event. Bass took office two years ago and has made homelessness a central part of his agenda.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Mr Bass, who took office two years ago and put homelessness at the center of his agenda, has housed thousands of people, but with a looming budget deficit, a city report says it will cost more than $20 billion ( The project is estimated to require doubling city, state and federal funding. Eliminate homelessness by 2032.
These are problems that have been festering for decades, and no one expects things to get better anytime soon, but after all the promises and all the money invested, people don’t want to see progress. I’m tired of waiting for clear signs.
Los Angeles is less than four years away from hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics, by which time streets will be passable, buses and trains will be on time and safe, and the city will no longer be a vast encampment. It’s no wonder you wonder if this is the case. But it’s fair to wonder if there will be more cracks in the foundation and more broken promises.
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At MacArthur Park, the problem is not ignored, nor is it easy to solve. They are deeply rooted in poverty, homelessness, a lack of affordable housing, a low-wage economy, cheap and powerfully destructive drugs, and gang-controlled criminal enterprises.
Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunice Hernandez receives a hug of support from a friend during a press conference announcing increased outreach at MacArthur Park.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Recently, Bass and her team have been strategizing with police, recreation and sanitation departments, and working with supportive housing providers.
On Thursday, City Council member Eunice Hernandez, who believes too much money is spent on law enforcement and not enough on social services, held a press conference at MacArthur Park and announced several partnerships and social services initiatives. The initiative was announced. She also said she is working with County Supervisor Hilda Solis and state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo to improve “the quality of life for both residents and visitors.”
“We are standing in a historic place that has been neglected for decades and left without the investments needed to thrive,” Hernandez said, adding that more cleanup, medical intervention and overdose prevention efforts are needed. Emphasized planning.
Westlake has been “severely impacted by the ongoing homelessness crisis and opioid epidemic,” she said. …But it is also a region of hope and promise. ”
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
The neighborhood is primarily made up of low-income Spanish-speaking people, many of whom are undocumented immigrants who do not have the right to vote, even though they play an important role in Los Angeles’ current and future economy. It’s easy to ignore. So while it’s good to finally see such a response in a region that has become a symbol of the disorder ravaging Los Angeles, it didn’t take this long to confront the worsening crisis head-on. It should be. I wondered if this was one of the many MacArthur Park rescue projects that provided temporary relief before it collapsed.
It’s not just neighborhood issues that need to be resolved. It is a scourge of fractured relationships between various city and county agencies, a culture of over-promising and under-delivering, and fragile egos and petty politics.
Despite claims at the press conference that the weapons of all major parties were locked and ready for duty at any time, rather than the usual organized and dysfunctional silo approach, I noted the absence of two key players.
Bass and LAPD Rampart Division brass.
Gangs and other criminals play a significant role in undermining public safety and quality of life in Westlake, from drug distribution to organized retail theft to extortion from vendors, and many drug users The man is a hopeless addict and steals from local merchants to support his habit. .
All of this has a devastating effect, and while arrests cannot be used to escape the drug epidemic and socio-economic hardship, Hernandez’s social services would be more effective if they also worked with the police.
A man performs what local emergency personnel call a “fentanyl fold” on Alvarado Boulevard.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
When it comes to Bass, who has far more power than individual city council members or bully pulpits, she may be the only one able to lead real change. She once told me that she is in a unique position to make things happen because she has served as a state representative and congressman and has built relationships with county supervisors. And in August, as I finished my pastrami sandwich at Langer’s, she told me she was working the case and had already made the call.
Otherwise, it’s a common story in LA where everyone has a problem and no one is in charge or too busy coming up with a solution.
MacArthur Park needs champions and defenders, if not the Marshall Plan. You need someone to say, “You’re not on my radar.” It is unacceptable for the severely incapacitated to be seen shuffling around like ghosts, squirming, tortured, and with blank eyes. Even in Los Angeles, you can’t make a horror movie as disturbing as the reel that plays nonstop in MacArthur Park.
The notorious Yoshinoya Yokocho is where severely addicted people gather around the clock, sometimes by the dozens, to use drugs such as serial killer fentanyl. Some of them are barefoot and can barely stand, their feet caked in dirt. Some are hunched over into pretzels with oozing dermatitis, as if they’ve been attacked by a flesh-eating monster.
People gather in an alley near MacArthur Park, where drug use is rampant.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
The most disturbing thing about it is the silence, the acquiescence, the normalization. People pass by on their way to work. The children walk away. Civil servants drive by. If you live in a neighborhood, it’s part of the landscape, and that’s what you expect, a daily snapshot of social decay and municipal failure.
Rescue teams are operating in the area, as are Narcan patrols swooping in to revive the dying, but it will take the military and more intensive and possibly forceful efforts to make a big enough difference. A comprehensive treatment and rehabilitation system will be needed. .
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As the press conference ended Thursday, LA Times photographer Genaro Molina observed a family walking past a group of people smoking fentanyl, one of whom said, “Everyone stop smoking. Family. is coming.”
That was nice enough, but a park shouldn’t be an outdoor drug den.
Earlier this month, Molina and I walked to school with the Aguirre family. The kindergarteners wore red-nosed reindeer hair clips and were excited to appear in the Christmas production.
Then Eduardo Aguirre, whose 21-year-old son is serving in the U.S. military in Syria, sent me a video of his daughter singing the Snowflake song. He also sent photos of him walking to school past a man on a mattress, a half-naked man, a man standing over a fire on the sidewalk, and someone folded in half on a bench under a blanket. .
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Mr. Aguirre, a mechanical engineer and member of the Westlake South Neighborhood Council, attended Thursday’s press conference and I asked him what he thought of the presentation by Mr. Hernandez and others.
“This is politics,” he said, noting that he has heard similar promises many times before.
But he said he wants to remain hopeful and will keep a close eye on what happens.
“We have to continue them,” he said.
