Is there hope for Skid Row?
Zack is a man in his 40s. He had just moved to Los Angeles from Portland, Oregon, to be closer to his 22-year-old daughter who has made LA home. I met him in the parking lot of St. Francis Xavier Chapel in Little Tokyo as we both prepared to participate in the Aug. 1 Eucharistic procession through downtown’s Skid Row.
Zack has been settling into life in Los Angeles and found out about the procession at his new parish. He came to be a part of it, to pray, and to see for himself what Skid Row was all about. He told me a lot about Portland and its own homelessness crisis: how nearby state parks are over-populated by the unhoused, and how city parks provide rakes for parents to sift through the sand of play areas to remove used needles.
He was sad about the state of things back in Portland. When Saturday evening’s proceedings were about to start, I told Zack I would try to connect with him afterward to get his impressions of what he saw.