Horrifying pics show how downtown Los Angeles is turning into a tent city filled with piles of rubbish and rodents
HORRIFIC pictures from downtown Los Angeles show the deepening problems the city faces with litter and rodents — as a typhoid fever outbreak has rattled the metropolis.
The Californian city took a decision last week not to cap the amount of possessions homeless people can have on Skid Row, making some worried the area’s public health crisis will get worse.
The pictures come after health experts warned rats could fuel an epidemic of bubonic plague in LA.
Authorities are now saying they’ll get rid of fridges, sofas and other large items littered throughout a 50-block area downtown.
But in a statement, councilman Joe Buscaino said: “The settlement will only perpetuate the public health crisis that already exists in Skid Row and will set a precedent for the rest of the city that will normalise encampments.
“The city is sending a clear signal that we are turning the sidewalks in Skid Row into free, unlimited public storage, doing a disservice to the residents of Los Angeles, especially to those living on the streets.”
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Pictures from the area show large buildups of rubbish where workers struggle to clear the streets.
They wear face masks while trying to clear the ever-increasing mounds of unsanitary dirt and grime from the pavements.
Countless rows of tents also stretch across the streets of Skid Row, which gives refuge to about 4,200 homeless people mostly living in shantytown communities.
A law was passed in 2016 which restricted the amount of belongings a homeless person could keep on the pavement to 60 gallons.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Community Action Network, who campaigned for new rules about property, said: “I hope this is the signal this is the sign, the proverbial crossroads, that insists we spend our money and our time on things that actually get people off the street.
“In the interim, it is our hope that at least this provides some legal guardrails both for the houseless people on the street as well as those public servants who are paid to treat the public humanely and responsibly.”
SICK COPS
On Thursday last week, an LA Police detective was diagnosed with typhoid fever — a rare illness usually spread through contaminated water.
At least five other officers who work in the same station also started showing symptoms of the sickness.
The six cops work in the Central Division station, where an investigation into unsafe and unsanitary conditions led to $5,000 worth of fines earlier this month.
The division covers Skid Row and downtown LA — with the officers calling for the homeless encampments to be cleaned up to stop the spread of illness.
Other cases in the area have seen cops diagnosed with hepatitis A and staph infections.
LA Police Protective League treasurer Robert Harris said: “The last thing I need is my members coming to work worried about contracting an infectious disease and bringing it home to their families.”
And union spokesman Dustin DeRollo said cops in Skid Row had to walk through “faeces, urine and trash” on their beats.
In an opinion piece for the LA Times, reporter Steve Lopez called the sanitary crisis “the collapse of a city that’s lost control”.
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He added: “We’ve got thousands of people huddled on the streets, many of them withering away with physical and mental disease.
“Sidewalks have disappeared, hidden by tents and the kinds of makeshift shanties you see in Third World places.”
While typhoid fever is uncommon in the US, it affects 22million people annually around the world.
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