The other side of town
16th October 2005
Skid row exists because we’ve created it — although until now, with the downtown renaissance approaching its borders — we’ve mostly been able to ignore it.
By shutting mental hospitals, adding thousands to the rolls of medically uninsured, skimping on rehab and keeping social services out of respectable neighborhoods, we’ve guaranteed this teeming human landfill.
Paramedics like Chavez are left to deal with the wreckage. He delivers babies on sidewalks and treats open sores crawling with maggots. He can tell you about Naked Man, who strolls about in the buff and carries on erudite conversations as if he were in coat and tie, and about the once-esteemed professor who wandered the streets in a death spiral after his family perished in a car crash.
Read the whole story here.
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