Skid Row used as a dumping ground for LA Medical Center

There are no limits, are there, Linkat?

Is this a new story? I thought I read about this same thing a long time ago. I guess nothing ever got done about it.

It was new on CNN.

There have been a number of stories published in the LA Times over the past few months about such dumping. In addition to hospitals, police departments from other cities have been known to dump vagrants or other undesirables there.

Additionally, a new LAPD directive to enforce the anti-camping ordinances in an effort to clean up Skid Row (where, due to a lack of space in the missions homeless folks camp on the sidewalk in cardboard boxes or other makeshift shelters) has resulted in a migration of the homeless into other sections of the city (gee, who could've foreseen that?), including particularly the downtown which the city has been working hard to revitalize.

Yep, there's nothing that says exclusive downtown quite like stepping out of your $600,000 loft apartment and tripping over an unconscious, unbathed alcoholic passed out in a puddle of his own urine and vomit!

I seem to recall a similar flap from back in the late '60s, early '70s, and another flurry of outrage sometine in the eayl '90s, both times the implication being that funding cuts were at the root of the problem ... doubt much has changed since and I'm sure it goes on - I suspect some editor decided its time to recycle a story that has a history of playing well.

Yeah, it's "recycled" news I suppose - if the same story has appeared before, but if its still happening, its still news.

Since its news, recycled or not, its going on. Since its been going for decades, seems like one of those things that gets talked about more than dealt with.

Oh. I thought you might've been suggesting that it was a story put back on the front burners from the past.

From a hospital pov, I kind of get it.


This sort of thing is likely to happen here, too, as we adopt a similar funding system to what I understand ours is.


You have a casemix sort of system, do you not?


If so...x comes in and is diagnosed to have such and such a problem.


Casemix allows so much funding for this condition.


After that, the hospital is not paid. Also, the funnel feeding people into the system just keeps disgorging them at the door, and beds are always scarce.


The system makes no provision for homeless people, and people with inadequate support at home, and people who just take longer to recover etc. etc.

The tradition, at least here, has been that hospitals act kind of like the last mother ship....they can't get rid of you until they can put you somewhere reasonable.


But.....if you weren't somewhere reasonable to begin with, it takes a loooong time for somewhere reasonable to appear, meanwhile, nowadays, you are costing the hospital a fortune, and casualty is filling up with desperately sick people with no beds.


Difficult thing.

Yup old news. Back in the 1983 the Reagan adminstration slashed a very specific mental health subsidy and the result was institutional dumping all over the NYC's East Village, Harlaam and the burroughs. There was a club on Ave. A called The Pyramid Club and I remember standing outside of it one night about 3am as a small mini bus pulled up across the street to a place known as Thompkins Park. When the bus pulled away three very confused looking men stood there wearing baggy grey clothing and holding paper sacks. Someone at the club mentioned all the dumped people were give a few weeks worth of meds. that some thug would soon rob them of. The dumped would sleep in the park for a few nights and if they were lucky, one of the charity groups would find them and bring them to homeless shelter to start the cycle all over again.

According to the news report this occurred just last weekend, but has been suspected in the past…."The practice had long been suspected but police say they now have evidence, releasing pictures and video to the media on Tuesday of five hospital patients being left in the downtown area commonly known as skid row." I think the one difference in this case is that the police are finally instigating a criminal probe. I believe this in part to as one person stated they are trying to clean up downtown LA (not really to help the homeless).

How bad is it really - "Last year, police reported seeing someone wearing a colostomy bag wandering there in a confused state."

And what about the poor sap that was dropped there and actually did have a home?