Albuquerque International District, Albuquerque, New Mexico, specifically with some areas off
Central Ave, especially intersecting Louisiana, Texas, and Rhode Island Streets, have high homelessness rates, as well as a higher than average rate of public drug usage and high property-related crime and violence. The area is colloquially known as the "War Zone". Albuquerque had a rising murder rate in the early 2020s, with the murder rate surpassing 20 per 100,000 people, as well as a surge of visible homelessness especially in the ID area. In the 1990s, some years the neighborhood would account for over half the city's homicide count, despite being 1-2% of the city's population.
Anchorage Fourth Street in
Downtown Anchorage has a homelessness and drug abuse problem. In 1978, a descriptive analysis document compiled by a
Department of Health facility in Anchorage, regarding downtown Anchorage's social issues and vagrancy described parts of Fourth Street as "Skid Row". Today, the name is not as used professionally, but still has issues of homelessness, especially affecting
Native Americans and
Native Alaskans. Forty-five percent of Anchorage's homeless population is Alaskan Native, as compared to less than 15% of Anchorage's population being of Alaskan descent. 1,100 Anchorage residents were homeless in 2019, over two percent of the city's population. However, this figure may include those people periodically homeless at some point that year, as opposed to average counts where homeless people are counted on a given day, which usually increases the percentage.
Austin Sixth Street in
Downtown Austin has issues with homeless individuals camping (which led to a
proposition passing to ban public camping in most city areas) and public crime and drug use.
Baltimore Baltimore, Maryland has a homelessness issue in the Inner Harbor. Some housing projects and gang-plagued neighborhoods bear social issues similar to skid rows.
Boston Mass and Cass, also known as
Methadone Mile or Recovery Road, is an impoverished area/
tent city located at and around the intersection of
Melnea Cass Boulevard and
Massachusetts Avenue in
Boston, Massachusetts. It has been characterized as "the epicenter of
the region's opioid addiction crisis". Due to its concentration of service providers, the area around Mass and Cass has attracted a large number of people dealing with
homelessness and drug addiction, especially after the closure of the treatment facility on
Long Island. 300 homeless residents were counted in the area in a November 2021 article. The effects on local residents and the city's attempts to deal with the problem have generated considerable controversy. Housing and homeless advocates also protested Acting Mayor
Kim Janey's October 19, 2021 announcement that Boston would begin clearing out the tent city. and, to a lesser degree, North Clark Street just north of the Chicago River. Since the 1980s both of these areas have been gentrified.
Denver Union Station, Denver,
Colorado has a homelessness and vagrancy problem. Reports of public drug consumption, including that of
opiates and
meth, are daily or regularly reported on the public train and buses, and the district is amongst the top 3 areas of highest violent crime. In July 2020, an estimated 1,350 people were camped out within Denver city limits, and an advocacy group for homeless individuals counted 664 tents.
Lincoln Park has a high concentration of tent-dwelling homeless individuals, and reports of criminal activity and drug abuse are commonplace. Although, some tent cities are well kept in the area.
Honolulu Chinatown has had issues with blight of homelessness and poverty. Initially more predominately Chinese when it was established and active in the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries, it became a
red-light district after
World War II era. Today, the neighborhood still experiences problems with people dealing with addiction and mental health problems, as well as homelessness and public crime.
Houston In the 1800s much of what was the
Third Ward, the present day south side of Downtown Houston. According to some, the eastern boundary is a low rent group of houses near
Texas Southern University referred to as "Sugar Hill". and among musicians, the Third Ward's boundaries are usually thought of as extending southward from the junction of
Interstate 45 (Gulf Freeway) and
Interstate 69/
U.S. Route 59 (Southwest Freeway) to the Brays Bayou, with Main Street forming the western boundary. The Third Ward was what Stephen Fox, an architectural historian who lectured at Rice University, referred to as "the elite neighborhood of late 19th-century Houston". Ralph Bivins of the Houston Chronicle said that Fox said that area was "a silk-stocking neighborhood of Victorian-era homes". Bivins said that the construction of Union Station, which occurred around 1910, caused the "residential character" of the area to "deteriorate". Hotels opened in the area to service travelers. Afterwards, according to Bivins, the area "began a long downward slide toward the skid row of the 1990s" and the hotels were changed into flophouses. Passenger trains stopped going to Union Station. The City of Houston abolished the ward system in the early 1900s, but the name "Third Ward" was continued to be used to refer to the territory that it used to cover. The Third Ward today, and parts of Downtown Houston area, struggle with drug issues, homelessness and poverty.
Los Angeles The Los Angeles Skid Row is an area on the East side of Downtown Los Angeles, roughly bounded by Los Angeles Street on the West, Central Avenue on the East, 4th Street on the North, and 8th Street on the South. The area was originally home to many cheap, low-quality hotels, popular with itinerant laborers and new arrivals to the city owing to its proximity to the train station and its central location. In an attempt to rehabilitate the area in the 1960s, most of the run-down single-room occupancy hotels were demolished. This led to major reduction in the amount of very low-cost, bare minimum housing available to the area's extremely low-income population, contributing to the severe homelessness problem in the area. Skid Row was once located at the industrial periphery of Los Angeles' often neglected downtown area. As downtown has been revitalized since the 1990s and the adjacent Arts District area has gone from a desolate industrial wasteland to a major center for tourism, entertainment, and upscale housing development, Skid Row has become increasingly hemmed in by bustling, populated neighborhoods. This has contributed to a substantial increase in the density of homeless residents living on the streets in Skid Row, since many of the new residents and businesses in the surrounding areas do not want the encampments to spread. Local
homeless count estimates have ranged from 3,668 to 8,000. In 2011, the homeless population estimate for Los Angeles' Skid Row was 4,316. L.A.'s Skid Row is sometimes called "the Nickel", referring to a section of Fifth Street. Several of the city's homeless and social-service providers (such as
Weingart Center Association,
Volunteers of America,
Frontline Foundation,
Midnight Mission,
Union Rescue Mission and
Downtown Women's Center) are based in Skid Row. Between 2005 and 2007, several local hospitals and suburban law-enforcement agencies were accused by
Los Angeles Police Department and other officials of transporting those homeless people in their care to Skid Row. Within Skid Row, the
Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) is a performance group whose members are mostly homeless or formerly homeless people who create performances and multimedia art that highlight connections between their lived experiences and external forces that impact their lives.
Westlake and
Venice Beach have had issues with street crime and homelessness, and elements of skid rows and red-light districts. As per a 2020 count, there were nearly 2,000 homeless people in Venice of its 41,000 residents in general. up from 175 in 2014. Many of them lived on Venice Beach on the sand by the shoreline, until a city-ordered sweep done in August 2021. Many people experiencing homelessness still reside in inland Venice, more towards Abbott Kinney Road.
Minneapolis The twenty-five-block area that became known as the Gateway District in downtown
Minneapolis was once the city's Skid Row. The area was a dense collection of bars, liquor stores, flop houses and rescue missions. Many on Skid Row were seasonal laborers who came from different parts of the country to work on farms or in lumber mills. During off-season months they crowded into the city, and onto Skid Row. A documentary filmed in the late 1950s and early 1960s by John Bacich focuses on this Skid Row.
New York City In
New York City, Skid Row was a nickname given to the
Bowery during much of the 20th century. Along East 125th Street in
East Harlem, Manhattan, there is a noticeable density of homelessness and drug use. There are elements of a drug and poverty-related society along with homelessness in
Lower Manhattan. New York City's climate is colder during the autumn and winter, thus more people experiencing homelessness are sheltered (less than 10% of people experiencing homelessness in the city are unsheltered), and elements of blight are usually less visible than that of west coast cities. As of 2019, 5% of NYC homeless people were unsheltered, compared to the
San Francisco Bay Area's 67% being unsheltered.
Oakland area There are some facets of skid row in nearby
Oakland, California, especially on
International Boulevard, where homelessness and prostitution has been problematic. There are scattered elements of skid row and
tent cities in
Downtown Oakland and
East Oakland.
People's Park, Berkeley has struggled with drug abuse and homelessness, with social services nearby. The area was a concentration of tents in Berkeley. Although the area is benign in comparison to major cities, it has a multi-decades-long history of homeless settlements.
Philadelphia Philadelphia once had a highly visible skid row centered on Vine Street, just west of the approaches to the
Benjamin Franklin Bridge. This area was essentially obliterated by highway construction starting in the 1970s. Today, the area most often referred to as Philadelphia's modern-day skid row is in the
Kensington neighborhood, along Kensington Avenue near the intersections of Somerset Street and Allegheny Avenue. The area is known for its high rates of open-air recreational drug use, poverty, and homelessness. A long-time camp largely hidden from public view in a gulch alongside
Conrail tracks, spanning an area roughly from N 2nd Street to Kensington Avenue, was cleared in 2017. In late 2018, the city cleared a series of large homeless resident camps along Kensington Avenue, Emerald Street, Tulip Street, and Frankford Avenue. The homeless resident population in the Kensington neighborhood alone is estimated to be over 700 individuals.
Portland Old Town Chinatown, a mostly defunct Chinatown of
Portland, Oregon, has a high prevalence of hard drug use, homelessness, poverty, and property and violent-related crimes. As of November 2021, a surge of
meth was reported to be used amongst the homeless community in Greater Portland. In the 1980s and 1990s, where the meth epidemic was at a high in Portland, 35% of the drug was locally produced, as opposed to nearly zero percent of meth used by the homeless communities as reported in 2021.
Downtown Portland suffers a homelessness issue at large, as of the late 2010s and early 2020s.
Seattle , was the original "Skid Road" in
Seattle, Washington.The name "Skid Road" was in use in Seattle by the 1850s when the city's historic
Pioneer Square neighborhood began to expand from its commercial core. The district centered near the end of what is now
Yesler Way, the original "Skid Road" named after the freshly‑cut logs that were skidded downhill toward
Henry Yesler's mill. Henry Yesler acquired land from
Doc Maynard at a small point of land at what is today near the intersection of 1st Avenue and
Yesler Way. He also acquired a swath of land wide, from his property up
First Hill to a box of land about in size, full of timber, spanning what is today 20th to 30th avenues. Logs would be moved down the skid road of Yesler Way to his mill. His steam-powered logging mill was built in 1853 The road became Mill Street, and eventually Yesler Way, but the nickname "Skid Road" was permanently associated with the district at the street's end.
San Francisco The
Tenderloin neighborhood is a small, dense neighborhood near downtown
San Francisco. In addition to its history and diverse and artistic community, there is significant
poverty, homelessness, and
crime. It is known for its
immigrant populations,
single-room occupancy hotels, ethnic restaurants, bars and clubs, alternative arts scene, large homeless resident population, public transit and close proximity to Union Square, the
Financial District, and
Civic Center. During the 1960s, when development interests and the Redevelopment Agency were using eminent domain to clear out a large area populated by retired men in the South of Market area, that area was termed "Skid Row" in the media. The city's convention center was built after the clearing of long term low-income residents. The neighborhood continues to be a plight of drug-related use and crime and homelessness of San Francisco, along with nearby
South of Market, by Market and 6th and Market and 7th Streets. Tent cities were concentrated along Market Street in San Francisco, towards downtown, but are more scattered around the city as of November 2022. 16th Street and Mission to 24th Street and Mission also have a high visible prevalence of unhoused and open-air drug use and sales. ==Canada==