Interview with Mario Gonzalez
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Downtown Los Angeles is home to a new kind of turf war, the likes of which hasn’t been seen here for decades and – as is fitting in the world’s most cinematic city – the stakes are high and the opponents poorly matched. On the one side are the developers, the police, and the hipsters whose skinny jeans and cool bars have become emblematic of Downtown’s shiny, new exterior. On the other side are the homeless, the drug-addicted, and the socially-active, all of whom put down roots in Skid Row decades ago, when everyone else was busy living and making money elsewhere.

Gentrification is old news. Cast a glance eastward and the newly revamped neighborhoods of Echo Park and Silverlake shine in the California sun, free of stigma and full of new residents. However, it is the scale and silence of Downtown’s skirmish that makes this urban renewal unique. Downtown Los Angeles is ground zero for the largest homeless population in the United States. A few square blocks is home to ten thousand of the county’s total ninety thousand homeless men, women, and children (more than sixteen percent of these people are mentally ill). Although the influx of new, privileged residents onto Skid Row’s doorstep has momentarily stymied (according to the latest DataQuick report), the encroachment has led to discomfort on both sides and a knock-down, drag-out fight for the sidewalks of the city.

Were you to see Mario Gonzalez, 28, walking down Main Street in his dark jeans and plain t-shirt, it would be easy to mistake him for one of those loft-dwellers, a member of the new garde. Yet he is more likely to ask you to buy a plate at a charity gala to benefit the HHCLA — Homeless Health Care Los Angeles — an organization that seeks to improve the health of the homeless through direct service, education, and advocacy. Rather than a lofty view of a cosmopolitan center, his vantage point surveys the frontlines of the turf war, and he’d like his peers to consider the unconscious role they are playing in displacing downtown’s dispossessed.

“The downside to the ‘cool’ downtown L.A.,” Gonzalez says, “is that the [young] people moving in, who like the idea of living here, don’t consider that there have been [other] people here [for] fifteen years or more, doing their thing.” Unlike any other urban coalition in Los Angeles, Downtown’s homeless have no voice and are ill-equipped to resist the pressures of urban development.

Gonzalez thinks part of the reason the issue hasn’t caught traction is the stigma placed on homelessness and drug addiction. “Homelessness is misunderstood. When I was growing up my parents would say, “That’s what happens when you don’t do enough math. You’re going to wind up on the street.” It was a very black and white thing for me. But now I’m [listening to a story from a former lawyer]: ‘Wow, you crashed your car into some guy that was speeding. Wow, you broke your spine and insurance stopped paying for your pain medication, no kidding. Oh my god, you started using heroine to supplement [sic] for your back pain, I hear that. Oh, you suddenly couldn’t afford anything and your wife and family left you.’ It’s a chain of events. A lot of these people are just normal people, they like American Idol.”

Gonzalez and others like him continue to raise public awareness and support for Downtown’s homeless. “We’re advocates for homelessness and homeless healthcare. We have people marching outside of City Hall. These are people that don’t have any time or ability to advocate for themselves. They can be so down in the dumps and so strung out that it’s easy to tread on them and ignore them. For the most part they are as afraid of you as you are of them,” Gonzalez said.

Sea Change
Downtown has changed significantly over the last few years. “It was fine until people starting moving here.” Gonzalez continues, “I understand that communities revamp themselves; they get more money coming in and they get American Apparel to open up a store. This happens all the time, but this case is really particular because the concentration of homeless people [here] is higher than in any [other] place in the country. It became a problem because a lot of homeless centers and facilities and services are located on Skid Row - and someone wants to live in a building with their afghan dog or their labradoodle. Suddenly they’ve planted themselves here, [yet] the place and the people haven’t changed. What do they expect?” he said.

Now, with the newcomers moving in by the hundreds, everything from laws governing parking, loitering, and soliciting to how the homeless conduct their daily lives has changed drastically. In September 2006 the city began its “Safer Streets Initiative” to make Downtown more palatable to its newer residents. Before homeless advocates got wind of it, LAPD officers descended upon the homeless in the early morning hours, sometimes bulldozing their tents and carting away their belongings. Real estate developers renovating Downtown buildings opt to pay a fine rather than include the low-income housing units required by law. Police officers patrol the area doling out jaywalking tickets to the homeless and citing them for sleeping in doorways. “It all makes it very uncomfortable for them, but you can’t move [social services agencies] out of here – you can’t move the L.A. Mission somewhere else,” Gonzalez said, who has received his own share of jaywalking tickets.

But for all the doom and gloom, Gonzalez said organizations like his remain dedicated to serving the homeless community. HHCLA runs a controversial needle-exchange program and medical clinic and last year it launched a program to teach opiate addicts to treat overdose victims with Naloxone, a drug that reverses the effects of heroin. “The syringe exchange is one component of our Harm Reduction Center,” explained Gonzalez. “At this location we cater to high-risk individuals with substance-abuse issues, specifically heroin addiction. These clients can come in and bring their used syringes and exchange them for new clean syringes. We provide them with the safer-injection supplies they might need out on the streets: cookers (to cook the heroin), water, tourniquets, cotton and alcohol swabs. [Furthermore, we provide assistance] and referrals to detoxification programs.” He added, “There are common misconceptions in this population as to what an overdose really is. Even the overdose scene in the film Pulp Fiction has had ripple effects out here. People think that they need to inject a massively huge needle into each other’s chests to ‘bring them back to life’. What really ends up killing them is the lack of oxygen. The ODB (Overdose Bag) contains two pre-loaded injections of Naloxone that serves as an opiate antagonist. It cancels the effect of the heroin temporarily and allows the user to resume breathing. This needs to be implemented within two- to five minutes of the overdose before any severe brain damage occurs. Meanwhile the paramedics are on their way and able to assist with any other issues that might have arisen from the overdose. Often times the user is unaware that mixing other drugs may increase their likelihood of an overdose. We’ve saved thirty-five lives so far and taught more than a hundred people. It’s a start,” he said.

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www.hhcla.org