French TV Station, Canal + Features Lamp Community

Lamp Community ends the homelessness of Los Angeles' most vulnerable individuals, primarily adults with mental illness, through a continuum of services and housing, enabling them to reach their highest level of self-sufficiency and community integration. Visit www.lampcommunity.org for more info.

9 a.m.,

the largest community of homeless

in the U.S. slowly awakens.

Skid Row, a city within the city,

covering several city blocks in the

center of Los Angeles.

More than 2,000 people

sleep in these streets each night camping in

tents and sometimes even

on the naked ground stunned by drugs.

A few months ago, William was living on those sidewalks.

He tells us what his daily life was like.

One must form alliances to protect themselves from predators or thieves.

People want to rob you. They can sexually assault you.

Every morning the police wake you because it is against the law to be sleeping during the day in your tent.

The only thing that matters to some is to find drugs.

Some people panhandle, me myself, I was a thief.

If William was able to escape from that reality,

it’s certainly thanks to this woman, Beth, and her organization, LAMP.

This shelter welcomes hundreds of people and helps them escape for good from the streets of skidrow.

They also fight to have the city redefine its approach of the problem.

There is plenty of money spent on the police

but policing alone is not a solution to the crisis down here.

We need more mental health and housing resources to get people out of Skid Row.

One third of these homeless people suffer from mental problems

Half of them do drugs on a daily basis.

An explosive situation, with no global solution at the moment

a few blocks from the Downtown towers.