SKID Row is one of LA's most notorious neighborhoods.
Rows of makeshift tents line the rat-infested streets of the area, which has a long history of police raids.
What is Skid Row?
Skid Row is known as the US' biggest homeless village, where drug abuse and violence are rife.
It is a neighborhood in Downtown LA, also known as Central City East.
Just a stone's throw from the city's central banking district, where billion dollar skyscrapers house some of the biggest banks in the world, Skid Row is a 10 block stretch.
Why is it called Skid Row?
The notorious area got its name from the colloquial term "skid row", which is used to refer to an impoverished area.
It is derived from the phrase "on the skids", which refers to those who poor or homeless.
Generally, areas branded a "skid row" have a high number of homeless people and often feature drug dens
Who lives on Skid Row?
Skid Row is home to around 5,000 homeless people.
Some live in missions and homeless shelters, others in run-down social housing – while about 3,000 live in tents and makeshift camps on the side of the roads.
One homeless man, Armes, who was living in the Skid Row area last year described it as "the Wild West".
"We have everything crazy going on here; drugs, alcohol, prostitution, fighting, violence," he said.
"It's a society within a society, the homeless people sell drugs and alcohol to other homeless people.
"But there's no love for anybody, there'll be someone who is passed out drunk getting robbed and everyone will just stand there and say 'Ah look they're robbing Jimmy'."
Is the Cecil Hotel on Skid Row?
The Cecil Hotel is in the Skid Row area.
It has a long and sordid history and has housed some of the country's most notorious serial killers.
A new documentary focuses on the mysterious death of Elisa Lam, whose body was found in a water tank atop the hotel in 2013.
It was built with great ambition in the 1920s, but everything changed during the Great Depression.
The budget hotel would become a place to sleep for people who were down on their luck.
“At the Cecil there would be pensioners, single people, drug and alcohol users. It was just where poor people lived," Kim Cooper, who conducts tours of the hotel, told The Sun.
The hotel was called "The Suicide" by many residents because of the series of deaths that took place in the early years, according to Mental Floss.
The hotel is no longer open.
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