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Hey, Brain Stuff, Lauren Volubam here.

Torses from around the world traveled to Los Angeles to visit Disneyland,

stroll the Hollywood Walk of Fame, take in world-class museums,

and watch the sunset from the piers and beaches. What they might not see is Skid Row, a neighborhood

comprising 50 city blocks in the heart of downtown L.A. It's just a fourth of a square mile,

or a single square kilometer, but an estimated 8 to 11,000 people live there in precarious houseless or near houseless conditions.

At any given time, some 2,000 to 3,000 residents live in a tent city of tarps, blankets, and boxes.

Others live in shelters and the few remaining single-room

occupancy hotels. The most fortunate have many apartments in new or renovated buildings

built by nonprofits like the Skid Row Housing Trust. The current population of Skid Row is

predominantly black and male, but there are increasing

numbers of women and children. Veterans make up about 20% of residents. L.A. has the highest

percentage of any major metropolitan city in the United States of people experiencing chronic

houselessness, that is, having been unsheltered for over a year,

or having experienced four such episodes in the past three years, plus having some kind of

physical or mental disability. But how did Skid Row get this way? Why does an entire neighborhood

in one of the world's wealthiest states remain walled off from the rest of the city, home to such a high concentration of people struggling with economic hardship, along with coexisting issues related to, for example, mental and physical health and substance misuse?

It's a long and messy story, but today let's talk a little bit about Skid Row.

The first neighborhood to bear this name was in what's now Seattle, Washington. Back in the

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