BUSINESSES' TRASH DIRTYING SKID ROW CITY COUNCIL WEIGHS $250,000 PLAN TO HIRE CLEANUP CREWS.

Byline: RICK ORLOV Staff Writer

Trash and public health problems in Skid Row are being exacerbated by a longstanding downtown business practice of dumping trash on Los Angeles' streets, officials were told Tuesday.

As the Los Angeles City Council weighed a $250,000 proposal to hire crews to remove the growing piles from city streets, the City Attorney's Office said local businesses -- particularly in the cramped Toy District -- are partly to blame.

``It has been a problem for years,'' said Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Association. ``There is no room for large Dumpsters, and the businesses have taken to just dumping their trash into cans and the street.

``The homeless come by and rip apart the boxes and take what they want to be resold and then dump the rest.''

Lopez said the association's business-improvement teams have been collecting 10 tons of trash a day from the area amid a recent crackdown on crime.

Deputy City Attorney Jeff Isaacs said the city has failed to adequately enforce city laws requiring companies to hire private trash haulers. He said his office has begun notifying businesses that they face fines of up to $1,000 for dumping trash.

Cleaning up Skid Row has taken on a sense of urgency during the past month amid a Safer Cities Initiative that has assigned 50 additional police officers to the area to deal with drugs and crime.

Complicating the cleanup has been confusion about what items the city can legally remove as trash and what may be considered personal property of the homeless.

Assistant City Attorney Chris Westhoff said the city has started to have those arrested identify their personal property. The city then puts those items in a warehouse while all other items can be removed by city crews.

But Westhoff said there has been a problem in getting crews to clean up.

Bill Robertson, director of the Bureau of Street Services, said his agency needs an additional $250,000 to assign crews that could respond within 10 minutes to a cleanup call.

Councilwoman Jan Perry, who represents the Skid Row area, said she hoped to find the funds within the next week to pay for the crews. She also is trying to find money to pay for 500 additional shelter beds that the city thinks will be needed during the winter months.

Councilmen Ed Reyes and Bill Rosendahl renewed their complaints that the squeeze on Skid Row has forced the homeless into other areas.

``I know we have at least 400 homeless people in my district who weren't there before,'' Rosendahl said.

Reyes, whose district is adjacent to Perry's, said he is seeing the return of homeless encampments to areas of his district that have been free of the homeless for more than a decade.

``What concerns me is that if we allow this to continue it will make problems worse,'' Reyes said. ``There will be a sense of lawlessness where people will feel free to come into other areas of the city to commit crimes or dump their property.''

rick.orlov(at)dailynews.com

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