The American Dream Is An Illusion On Hollywood’s Skid Row

Thousands of homeless people in one of America’s richest cities live on filthy sidewalks infested with flesh-eating bacteria and tuberculosis.

For years Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles  has been home to the greatest concentration of homelessness in the United States.

The poverty and deprivation there has turned the American dream into a mere illusion

RT reports: Homelessness in Los Angeles has increased 43 percent in just four years. Skid Row, the epicenter of homelessness in the City of Angels, is home to approximately 2,500 people who live on the streets in a 49 square block area. It is the biggest concentration of homeless people in the United States. Overall, a staggering 60,000 people live without shelter in LA county.

Reverend Andy Bales is the CEO of the Union Rescue mission, which provides shelter to 1,000 people on any given night. He told Redfish Media  about the appalling conditions in Skid Row, which, according to the most recent Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council action letter, is 80 restrooms shy of satisfying the minimum standards of a long-term refugee camp. It has nine permanent restrooms for 1,777 people, or one for every 197 homeless people, compared to the UN refugee camp standards of 20 per person.

Bales outlined just how dangerous this extreme lack of basic sanitation is. “I actually contracted three flesh-eating diseases E. coli, staph and strep from the sidewalks when I had a wound boot on and, after two years in a wheelchair I ended up losing my lower right leg. That is the condition of the health on Skid Row because of the shortage of restrooms. It really is a crisis.” Bales added that a certain strain of tuberculosis, which is not found anywhere else in the world, also thrives in the area.

The chronic conditions in Los Angeles and in other cities around America prompted the government to invite the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, to carry out inspections last year.

In his damning report, Alston said: “The United States is alone among developed countries in insisting that while human rights are of fundamental importance, they do not include rights that guard against dying of hunger, dying from a lack of access to affordable healthcare, or growing up in a context of total deprivation.”

Alston concluded that the “the American dream is rapidly becoming the American illusion.” On Skid Row, the poverty and deprivation make it very hard for anyone to even believe in the illusion any more.

  • Katos

    Isn’t it interesting that California has tens of millions of homeless americans! 

    During a visit to the paradise of Northern California , EUREKA, we were met with thousands of bums and DERELICTS, living in old TRAIN cars in the Downtown area! Aimlessly milling around looking for freebies or something to steal? Every entrance into any business, had panhandlers stationed on both sides of the drive, 3 or 4 at times? 

    San Francisco has just been named a slum worse than the favelas in Brazil! Tens of thousands of homeless people living under the unsurpasses in tents and cardboard boxes! These americans STRIPPED of jobs, living in a city where housing is so expensive, even the tech company employees are living in cars and motor homes! THE downtown area is littered with needles and human feces, making it impossible to navigate street without tripping over a bum or HIS excrement?? 

    Los Angeles, likewise has become home to TENS of thousands of homeless! Astronomical housing prices and wage starvation by giant corporations, HAVE left people’s only hope for survival, to live in their vehicles, ( ALL most of them have left)! But the LA city council is having NONE of that?? “YOU WILL GO TO JAIL IF YOU TRY TO LIVE OFF THE GRID”??They have outlawed sleeping or living in a moving vehicle, criminalizing poverty and assessing fines TO those who have no way to pay, and no where to go?? 

    Then we have the final dregs of the once, incredible and glorious place on the planet TO live, San Diego! Once a veritable paradise, with a climate and COAST line second to none! Today they are the scourge of California as hepatitis c outbreaks have sickened thousand and put many more TENS of thousands AT risk of infection! Uncontrolled WILD fires have burnt millions of acres TO THE ground, AS the powers that be don’t want to spend the necessary DOLLARS TO put the massive tanker planes in the air?? 

    Yet WITH ALL THIS massive poverty and degradation, ALL our elected officials in California CARE about is giving away taxpayers DOLLARS TO illegal aliens to support them on welfare and healthcare, as well as FREE education? 

    It’s obvious that OUR leaders don’t give a SHIT about us, as seniors, vets, and families have BEEN forced out of thier homes INTO the streets, where they’re quickly made criminals and indigent??

    • Duke LaCrosse

      Your leaders are doing this on purpose
      CA is the globalist model for the US
      Take the leaders out

  • Fingal Carson

    What American dream, anyways? The poor/broke people with no hope and no anything? The working class people with 3 jobs and 50-65 hour workweeks, so no lives and no hope of a vacation except when sick? The middle-upper class people with 45 hour workweeks and decent pay but who have to get up 3 am and don’t get home until 7-8 pm 5-6 days a week? The lower upper class people who get to live like people imagine people in the 50s and 60s lived but make more money nowadays? The old or new money who just does clerical, rhetoric, or political work? Or the big money who does even more of nothing and has too much money to know what to do with?

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