Small service makes big difference on L.A.'s skid row

The trappings of the lives of Krystle Marage and her three daughters are not unusual. There are hairbrushes and loofah sponges; Game Boys and skateboards; school books and Bibles; clothes, clothes and more clothes. These days, they have to fit it all inside four trash cans, which sit alongside 500 others in a dank warehouse, around the corner from a frozen fish distributor and a cheap hotel.

Marage, 46, grew up on a pig-and-chicken farm in Belize. The girls' father checked out long ago, she said. She's never had money, not in Belize, not in New York, where she immigrated in 1993, and not in L.A., where she arrived last year after friends convinced her there were jobs to be had. She's always made it, one way or another.

Two weeks ago, luck ran out. Unable to find work and living on $359 a month in county general-relief assistance, Marage couldn't carry the rent on the one-bedroom space where they'd been staying in the South Park district, not far from Staples Center. She and her daughters landed on skid row.

Marage, a devout Christian, is sure the devil is after her. Authorities offer a more temporal explanation. The economy, they say, has soured to the point that skid row's sad parade of junkies, drunks and the mentally ill is not only swelling, but is increasingly peppered with new faces.

Many are new to homelessness. Some are educated professionals -- a few still carry briefcases -- and one, a few weeks back, was so confident that he was but a temporary visitor that he arrived clutching a pair of unused golf cleats. Long after it became city policy that skid row is no place for children, a jarring number of the newcomers are mothers and their children.

So, at the warehouse run by the nonprofit Central City East Assn., where the homeless have long stored their belongings in trash cans that are gently referred to as "bins," operators are contending with a clientele they've never had before. The shift, they said, is subtle but real, and they are scrambling to respond.

Last weekend, they closed the warehouse several hours so they could reconfigure and squeeze in more bins. Managers hope to add 50 more, although that still won't meet the need, said the group's executive director, Estela Lopez.

Bigger changes are expected in coming months. For instance, the warehouse has a rule prohibiting clients from changing clothes at the site. That no longer seems practical, not with mothers bringing their children in to fetch clothes for school. So operators are hoping to add a private dressing area.

That move would come with complications unthinkable somewhere else. Skid row is home to a large concentration of sex offenders, and precautions would have to be taken. Also, many addicts in the area search each day for a secluded place to shoot up; warehouse supervisor Peggy Washington said she fears they might try to take advantage of a dressing room. "I don't need anybody dying here," she said.

Still, everyone agrees aggressive steps must be taken. "There are going to be things we're going to have to talk about that we've never had to talk about before," Lopez said.

The other day, Krystle Marage sifted through her family's bins. She and her daughters -- Mishanta, 14; Jay, 19; and Lilly, 21 -- stop in at least twice a day to retrieve clothes, grab a bar of soap, even snag a pack of Ramen noodles if they need a snack. They've all memorized the numbers assigned to their bins: 194, 202, 287, 348.

Marage stuffed plastic bags full of dirty clothes into the containers. Soon, she said, it would be laundry day. She rolled her eyes. "A momma's work," she said, "is never done."

The association's warehouse, along with the district's missions, food banks and social services, is one of the things that make skid row work, in its own tragic way.

For the homeless, the most mundane steps of the day -- going to the bathroom, finding a shower -- are tiring ordeals. It is particularly difficult for homeless people to figure out what to do with their stuff. After a point, they can't carry it with them, but if they leave it on the street, it'll be lost or stolen. Even if, like Marage's family, they are staying at one of the area's missions, most facilities limit the belongings that can be brought in and offer no storage space.

That's where Central City East's warehouse comes in, taking care, as Lopez puts it, "of one tiny aspect of an enormous conundrum."