A skid row, also called skid road, is an impoverished area, typically urban, in English-speaking North America whose inhabitants are mostly poor people "on the skids". This specifically refers to people who are poor or homeless, considered disreputable, downtrodden or forgotten by society. A skid row may be anything from an impoverished urban district to a red-light district to a gathering area for people experiencing homelessness or drug addiction. In general, skid row areas are inhabited or frequented by impoverished individuals and also people who are addicted to drugs. Urban areas considered skid rows are marked by high vagrancy, dilapidated buildings, and drug dens, as well as other features of urban blight. Used figuratively, the phrase may indicate the state of a poor person's life.
The term skid road originally referred to the path along which timber workers skidded logs. Its current sense appears to have originated in the Pacific Northwest. Areas in the United States and Canada identified by this nickname include Pioneer Square in Seattle; Old Town Chinatown in Portland, Oregon; Downtown Eastside in Vancouver; Skid Row in Los Angeles; the Tenderloin District of San Francisco; and the Bowery of Lower Manhattan. The term Poverty Flats is used for some Western US towns. — "The variants, Poverty Flats and Gravy Bend, were acquired during impoverished times when residents had to eat watered-down gravy."
The term "skid row" may often be interchangeable with the term tent city. A tent city may exist on the premises of a skid row, but many tent cities are in areas not known as skid rows.
Origins The term "skid road" dates back to the 17th century, when it referred to a log road, used to skid or drag logs through woods and bog. The term was in common usage in the mid-19th century and came to refer not just to the corduroy roads themselves, but to logging camps and mills all along the Pacific Coast. When a logger was fired he was "sent down the skid road".
The term "skid road" is generally believed to have originated as a reference to Seattle's Yesler Way.
United States Albuquerque International District, Albuquerque, New Mexico, specifically with some areas off Central Ave, especially intersecting Louisiana, Texas, and Rhode Island Streets, have high homelessness rates, as well as a higher than average rate of public drug usage and high property-related crime and violence. The area is colloquially known as the "War Zone". Albuquerque had a rising murder rate in the early 2020s, with the murder rate surpassing 20 per 100,000 people, as well as a surge of visible homelessness especially in the ID area. In the 1990s, some years the neighborhood would account for over half the city's homicide count, despite being 1-2% of the city's population.
Anchorage Fourth Avenue in Downtown Anchorage has a homelessness and drug abuse problem. In 1978, a descriptive analysis document compiled by a Department of Health facility in Anchorage, regarding downtown Anchorage's social issues and vagrancy described parts of Fourth Avenue as "Skid Row". Today, the name is not commonly used professionally, but the area still has issues of homelessness, especially affecting Native Americans and Native Alaskans. Forty-five percent of Anchorage's homeless population is Alaskan Native, as compared to less than 15% of Anchorage's population being of Alaskan descent. 1,100 Anchorage residents were homeless in 2019, over two percent of the city's population. However, this figure may include those people periodically homeless at some point that year, as opposed to average counts where homeless people are counted on a given day, which usually increases the percentage. Problems of homelessness and poverty are now less concentrated in the Fourth Avenue area; homeless people are often seen in Midtown and Spenard, among other locations.
Austin Sixth Street in Downtown Austin has issues with homeless individuals camping (which led to a proposition passing to ban public camping in most city areas) and public crime and drug use.
Baltimore Baltimore, Maryland has a homelessness issue in the Inner Harbor. Some housing projects and gang-plagued neighborhoods bear social issues similar to skid rows.
Boston Mass and Cass, also known as Methadone Mile or Recovery Road, is an impoverished area/tent city located at and around the intersection of Melnea Cass Boulevard and Massachusetts Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts.Tent City BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS Retrieved 15 September 2023 It has been characterized as "the epicenter of the region's opioid addiction crisis".
Due to its concentration of service providers, the area around Mass and Cass has attracted a large number of people dealing with homelessness and drug addiction, especially after the closure of the treatment facility on Long Island. 300 homeless residents were counted in the area in a November 2021 article.
The effects on local residents and the city's attempts to deal with the problem have generated considerable controversy. The city of Quincy has opposed reconstruction of the bridge to Long Island as the only access to the island by bridge is through that city. Housing and homeless advocates also protested Acting Mayor Kim Janey's October 19, 2021 announcement that Boston would begin clearing out the tent city. Janey cited the lack of hygienic facilities in tents, the sexual assaults and crime in the area, and the four or five overdoses that are reversed each day in the area. Opponents say that the dismantling of the tents and other makeshift structures, forcibly if necessary, is a criminalization of homelessness and addiction.
Chicago Traditional Skid Row areas in Chicago were centered along West Madison Street just west of the Chicago River and, to a lesser degree, North Clark Street just north of the Chicago River. Since the 1980s both of these areas have been gentrified.
Denver Union Station, Denver, Colorado has a homelessness and vagrancy problem. Reports of public drug consumption, including that of opiates and meth, are daily or regularly reported on the public train and buses, and the district is amongst the top 3 areas of highest violent crime. In July 2020, an estimated 1,350 people were camped out within Denver city limits, and an advocacy group for homeless individuals counted 664 tents. Lincoln Park has a high concentration of tent-dwelling homeless individuals, and reports of criminal activity and drug abuse are commonplace. Although, some tent cities are well kept in the area.
Honolulu Chinatown has had issues with blight of homelessness and poverty. Initially more predominately Chinese when it was established and active in the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries, it became a red-light district after World War II era. Today, the neighborhood still experiences problems with people dealing with addiction and mental health problems, as well as homelessness and public crime.
Houston In the 1800s much of what was the Third Ward, the present day south side of Downtown Houston. According to some, the eastern boundary is a low rent group of houses near Texas Southern University referred to as "Sugar Hill". and among musicians, the Third Ward's boundaries are usually thought of as extending southward from the junction of Interstate 45 (Gulf Freeway) and Interstate 69/U.S. Route 59 (Southwest Freeway) to the Brays Bayou, with Main Street forming the western boundary. The Third Ward was what Stephen Fox, an architectural historian who lectured at Rice University, referred to as "the elite neighborhood of late 19th-century Houston". Ralph Bivins of the Houston Chronicle said that Fox said that area was "a silk-stocking neighborhood of Victorian-era homes". Bivins said that the construction of Union Station, which occurred around 1910, caused the "residential character" of the area to "deteriorate". Hotels opened in the area to service travelers. Afterwards, according to Bivins, the area "began a long downward slide toward the skid row of the 1990s" and the hotels were changed into flophouses. Passenger trains stopped going to Union Station. The City of Houston abolished the ward system in the early 1900s, but the name "Third Ward" was continued to be used to refer to the territory that it used to cover.Wood, Roger. Down in Houston: Bayou City Blues (Issue 8 of Jack and Doris Smothers series in Texas history, life, and culture). 2003, University of Texas Press. 1st Edition. , 9780292786639.
The Third Ward today, and parts of Downtown Houston area, struggle with drug issues, homelessness and poverty.
Los Angeles The Los Angeles Skid Row is an area on the East side of Downtown Los Angeles, roughly bounded by Main Street on the West, Alameda Avenue on the East, 3rd Street on the North, and 7th Street on the South. The area was originally home to many cheap, low-quality hotels, popular with itinerant laborers and new arrivals to the city owing to its proximity to the train station and its central location. In an attempt to rehabilitate the area in the 1960s, most of the run-down single-room occupancy hotels were demolished. This led to major reduction in the amount of very low-cost, bare minimum housing available to the area's extremely low-income population, contributing to the severe homelessness problem in the area. Skid Row was once located at the industrial periphery of Los Angeles' often neglected downtown area. As downtown has been revitalized since the 1990s and the adjacent Arts District area has gone from a desolate industrial wasteland to a major center for tourism, entertainment, and upscale housing development, Skid Row has become increasingly hemmed in by bustling, populated neighborhoods. This has contributed to a substantial increase in the density of homeless residents living on the streets in Skid Row, since many of the new residents and businesses in the surrounding areas do not want the encampments to spread.
Local homeless count estimates have ranged from 3,668 to 8,000. In 2011, the homeless population estimate for Los Angeles' Skid Row was 4,316. L.A.'s Skid Row is sometimes called "the Nickel", referring to a section of Fifth Street.
Several of the city's homeless and social-service providers (such as Weingart Center Association, Volunteers of America, Frontline Foundation, Midnight Mission, Union Rescue Mission and Downtown Women's Center) are based in Skid Row. Between 2005 and 2007, several local hospitals and suburban law-enforcement agencies were accused by Los Angeles Police Department and other officials of transporting those homeless people in their care to Skid Row.
Within Skid Row, the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is a performance group whose members are mostly homeless or formerly homeless people who create performances and multimedia art that highlight connections between their lived experiences and external forces that impact their lives.
Westlake and Venice Beach have had issues with street crime and homelessness, and elements of skid rows and red-light districts. As per a 2020 count, there were nearly 2,000 homeless people in Venice of its 41,000 residents in general. up from 175 in 2014. Many of them lived on Venice Beach on the sand by the shoreline, until a city-ordered sweep done in August 2021. Many people experiencing homelessness still reside in inland Venice, more towards Abbott Kinney Road.
Minneapolis The twenty-five-block area that became known as the Gateway District in downtown Minneapolis was once the city's Skid Row. The area was a dense collection of bars, liquor stores, flop houses and rescue missions. Many on Skid Row were seasonal laborers who came from different parts of the country to work on farms or in lumber mills. During off-season months they crowded into the city, and onto Skid Row.
A documentary filmed in the late 1950s and early 1960s by John Bacich focuses on this Skid Row.
New York City