"Skid Row" – it's a term used to describe the part of any city that's seedy, rough and dangerous. The bad part of town. The phrase comes from 19th century Seattle to describe the unsavory street that lined the path where logs were dragged and skidded into Elliott Bay on their way to a lumber mill.
The district centered near the end of what is now Yesler Way, the original "Skid Road" named after the freshly‑cut logs that were skidded downhill toward Henry Yesler's mill.
An estimated 3,593 homeless people live in Skid Row, including those in homeless shelters, according to the region's latest count. While the overall unhoused population in the neighborhood has declined by 27% since 2022, the remaining population faces greater health risks, according to survey data.
Homelessness in Los Angeles County declined for the second consecutive year, according to results from the 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority announced that there are 72,308 people experiencing homelessness countywide — including 43,699 in the city of Los Angeles.
The conclusion was that the region's bias for single-family housing, its historic enmity toward housing for low-income residents — particularly nonwhite residents — and “urban renewal” projects that upset neighborhoods and destroyed affordable housing were among the root causes.
The single-resident hotels, saloons and brothels that served the agricultural and rail workers — all young, single adult males — were the founding institutions of the neighborhood that would become Skid Row.
Skid Row, if it must be said, is not a place for children. And yet there are more than 100 families living there now, with more than 200 children. The large majority stay at the mission — a privately funded shelter that is the only one in the neighborhood that accepts families.
Recent renovations were made to revamp the 15-floor building, which reopened in 2021. Since then, the owners have reserved most rooms for tenants in the bottom 30% of the area's median income, accepting unhoused Angelenos with government-funded housing vouchers.
The heart of Los Angeles' Skid Row is comprised of roughly 50 city blocks (0.4 square miles) of the greater downtown area, generally east of the Downtown Historic Core and the high-rise district of Bunker Hill.
Skid Row is a historic African American working class neighborhood in Downtown, Los Angeles—one of the few remaining in the city. The neighborhood is predominantly African American (58%), Latinx (25%), White (13%), Indigenous (2%) and Asian (1%).
Skid Row was formed in 1986 in Toms River, New Jersey, by bassist Rachel Bolan and guitarist Dave Sabo. The pair recruited guitarist Scotti Hill and drummer Rob Affuso through newspaper ads.
It is generally referred to by the City as part of the “Central City East” area, a fifty-block sector of downtown bounded by Main Street (west), Third Street (north), Alameda Street (east) and Seventh Street (south), although Skid Row's boundaries are actually somewhat fluid.
Skid Row achieved commercial success in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with its first two albums Skid Row (1989) and Slave to the Grind (1991) certified multi-platinum, the latter of which reached number one on the Billboard 200. The band's third album Subhuman Race (1995) was also critically acclaimed.
Who was the woman found in the water tank of the hotel?
On February 19, 2013, the body of Canadian tourist Elisa Lam (born as Lam Ho-yi; Chinese: 藍可兒) was recovered from a large cistern atop the Stay on Main hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where she had been a guest. She was last seen alive on January 31 and was reported missing by her parents on February 8.
After Lam's death, the Cecil was rebranded as the Stay On Main. But the hotel can't seem to escape its past. It's still referred to as the Cecil and this season of "American Horror Story" has dredged the hotel's dark past into present lore.
The new statistics reveal that as of September 2024: 164,040 children are homeless with their families in temporary accommodation – up 21,650 (15%) in a year. These figures are released every quarter, and this is the seventh new record in two years.
"Skid Row" – it's a term used to describe the part of any city that's seedy, rough and dangerous. The bad part of town. The phrase comes from 19th century Seattle to describe the unsavory street that lined the path where logs were dragged and skidded into Elliott Bay on their way to a lumber mill.
More broadly, Little Tokyo is bordered by the Los Angeles River to the east, downtown Los Angeles to the west, L.A. City Hall the Parker Center to the north, and Skid Row to the south.
The band, which was first formed in Toms River, New Jersey, first hit the music scene in 1986 and then stayed active until the mid-'90s when the band called for a hiatus. During that time Skid Row recorded three albums certified multi-platinum and by 1996, had sold 20 million albums.
The Skid Row Action Plan started in June 2022, when Housing for Health in the LA County Department of Health Services began working with stakeholders, government and County partners, business owners and community members to develop a proposal to comprehensively address the need for community improvements including more ...
