Streets, Sweet, Streets

Sohn emphasized that she considered the cleanup effort a humanitarian project. "They're not choosing to live like that," she said of the more than 3,000 people who camp every night on the sidewalks of Skid Row and across downtown. "They're so out-there on crack or whatever that they're living in their own filth and feces and urine, and it's just not right."

On that point, however, William Nowell would disagree. Looking up from his customary squat, peering out through a tangle of matted dreadlocks, Nowell is articulate, with piercing eyes and a keen understanding of the forces arrayed against him. "They say they're doing it for the homeless, but that's all a crock of shit. They're doing it to tidy up downtown. They want to scrub it and sanitize it so that people will come down and live in all these lofts they're spending millions of dollars on."

As Nowell's week in court made clear, the battle for downtown will have to be fought incrementally, and the outcome remains far from certain. For his own part, Nowell has no intention of cooperating. "I have to live somewhere," he said. "I'm not going to tuck myself away in some cubbyhole somewhere so I don't piss somebody off."

For a movement involving so many different interests, with such broad implications for the life of the city, the drive to clean up Skid Row can be attributed to a surprisingly finite source: developer Tom Gilmore and his audacious plans to revitalize L.A.'s downtown core.

A native of New York, Gilmore took a look at the dilapidated and sometimes boarded-up buildings of L.A.'s central city and became convinced that he could breathe life into a district that had become an economic ghost town.

In that, Gilmore has largely succeeded. Where city officials issued just 400 permits for construction of new residential units in 1999, the year Gilmore started, this year that figure grew to more than 4,000. In the meantime, the downtown corridor has added Staples sports arena, a new cathedral, and a new concert hall is nearly finished. The value of commercial property is surging.