On 250 S. Broadway Avenue in Downtown LA, the Skid Row History Museum and Archive (SRHMA) stands as evidence of a 37-year long cultural collaboration between the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), the first arts organization in Skid Row (c.1985), and the neighborhood of Los Angeles' Skid Row. Over the course of its history, LAPD performances and projects evidence that Skid Row is a vibrant and thriving community with an artistic culture, activist culture, and recovery culture. The Walk the Talk online archive is a prime example of over 90 individuals doing this type of work.

Talent show in Skid Row on 5th and Wall St. Photo by Axel Köster, 1985. Skid Row History Museum and Archive.

The archival records at SRHMA are especially important right now, as stakeholders in the redevelopment plans of downtown LA are misrepresenting the history behind the original boundaries of Skid Row, stating the area ‘Central City East’ was purposefully kept under-resourced and redlined under the physical ‘containment policy’ outlined in the 1976 community plan known as the Blue Book Plan. Following the Department of City Planning’s 1972 Silver Book Plan, the Blue Book Plan was a community plan that saved the largest affordable housing stock in Los Angeles (through the creation and funding of non-profit SRO Housing, Inc.) and centralized services for the people living in Skid Row, which was “better than the obliteration plan.” Jeff Dietrich, co-author of the Blue Book plan explains the meaning of  ‘containment’ in his 2012 Walk the Talk interview:

“Now, the Blue Book Plan is known as the containment policy, but it saved the housing. It created SRO housing. SRO started buying up slum hotels and renovating them. The Skid Row Development Corporation was created. That's why they invested so much money in building big new missions down here. It was the only way to preserve the services and the housing. They could gentrify outside Main Street, and we could build our community in the 50 blocks down here.”

Los Angeles city archivist Michael Holland with copies of the Blue Book and Silver Book from the city archives. Photo by LA Poverty Department, 2015. Skid Row History Museum and Archive.

In 2015, LAPD founder and artistic director John Malpede and associate director Henriette Brouwers worked with Los Angeles city archivist Michael Holland to make a copy of the Blue Book and Silver Book from the city archives, making it accessible at the SRHMA. Then, LAPD created an exhibit called Blue Book/Silver Book at SRHMA, which illuminated the key passages of the plan. LAPD hosted community conversations about how the Blue Book’s containment policy actually prevented community displacement after the City Council adopted the plan. In fact, a community blossomed out of Skid Row and makes the continued work of the LAPD possible. See ‘Making a Case for Skid Row Culture’ —a deep dive into the importance of arts and creative spaces on the social fabric of the neighborhood. 

 Silver Book pages illuminated for the Blue Book/Silver Book exhibit. Photo by LA Poverty Department, 2015. Skid Row History Museum and Archive.

A new community plan DTLA 2040 will be presented to the Department of City Planning and city council later this year, in response to their new downtown redevelopment efforts for the year 2040. This effort, just as in 1976, is tied to the historical understanding about the creation of the borders of Skid Row. The Central City East Business Improvement District and others are pointing to an area on the map called the IX1 zone, and referring to this as the border of Skid Row—which is significantly smaller than its traditional boundaries. The biggest line item issue for the Skid Row Now and 2040 coalition (representing Skid Row’s position within the plan) is to sustain the IX1 zone but also make it a point to correct the record, to make it known what the original borders are and the intentions behind them: affordable housing and centralized services.

When governing powers and business interests are discussing among themselves the various ways to slice up a city map of a neighborhood for their own interests (developing market-rate housing, for example), they refer to their own understanding and access to the 'historical record.' The misinformation and misrepresentation about the history of Skid Row borders (3rd to 7th/Main St. to Alameda) in other recent cases, such as the Judge Carter lawsuit, shows the lack of an agreed upon historical narrative about the creation of Skid Row’s initial borders and creates an environment where context can easily be lost, giving the active threat of community displacement more strength. Elsewhere, community displacement manifests in different contexts such as the eviction of the community at Echo Park Lake in March 2021. 

Freeze the Squeeze action in Skid Row to inform the community about the IX1 zone, referred to in the 2040 Plan. Photo by LA Poverty Department, 2020. Skid Row History Museum and Archive.

Zach Rutland is an archivist for the Skid Row History Museum and Archive for the Los Angeles Poverty Department.