sidewalk repairs – A week of on-the-ground street stops in South Los Angeles turns into a demand for answers to Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman on sidewalks, homelessness, parks, trash and blight—and whether either candidate has a real plan to speed basic service
When you step around a cracked slab that looks like it was pitched to catch your foot. you don’t just notice the damage—you feel how fragile daily life becomes. On Florence Avenue in West Los Angeles, the rough patches already stand out. But in South Los Angeles. the worst spot comes into focus at 71st Street and 11th Avenue. where a sidewalk rises sharply in a way that has been there long enough to turn into something residents now build their routes around.
The activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson. long a presence on Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable issues. had pushed the story to his followers with a stark message: “There are hundreds of busted. dangerous sidewalks in South L A that have gone unrepaired for years.” He said those sidewalks cause “hundreds of injuries. ” leading to “massive numbers of claims and payouts in settlements. ” and urged Los Angeles City Officials to act to “jumpstart a crash program to fix these sidewalks.”.
On the scene, the cause is familiar—ficus tree roots. A 20-foot slab of sidewalk is pitched sharply. as if engineered for the kind of trip-and-fall that only shows up once someone finally gets hurt. There’s a history to it, too. The writer says that in 2014. in early days doing sidewalk patrol. he was able to crawl under a similarly ruptured sidewalk in West L.A.—and could have done the same here.
Instead, Hutchinson asked the question that makes the danger more than just an inconvenience. He peered into the opening and said it looked like a comfy home for rats and other vermin.
The owner of the nearby home, Sharon Kelly, can’t use her front gate because of the lopsided sidewalk. She let the writer borrow her tape measure. It showed a 16-inch rise in the pavement. Kelly said. “It keeps rising. ” and added that it “was already lifted when we came here.” The writer records that was in 1997.
Kelly said she’s called the city for help “several times.” The only response she described was a slapdash temporary asphalt patch.
As Hutchinson spoke with residents on the block. he described a pattern he says he’s heard repeatedly from people who have tried to get attention. “Dozens of residents have come out of the woodwork. ” he said. “and here’s what they all say: ‘We have called our city council person and various city departments repeatedly. over and over again.’” And then comes the word that land in a place like this: “Nothing.”.
Two people with walkers avoided the worst area near Kelly’s property while the conversation unfolded. Charles McQuarn, 77, described what it means to move through the neighborhood now. He said traversing the area requires zigzagging around hazards. including “com[ing] out into the streets. too.” When he was a teenager. McQuarn said he worked for a community group that fixed sidewalks.
The writer also points to the scale of the challenge and the urgency of speeding repair work. He says Councilmember Monica Rodriguez has used Conservation Corps youths to do sidewalk repairs, but that it’s time to scale up the program and expand remedies to reduce delays.
The city’s current pace, as the article lays it out, is about 600 sidewalks fixed each year. The backlog of requested repairs stands at about 30,000, and the writer says those who get onto the waiting list are looking at about 10 years before help arrives.
After 71st Street and 11th Avenue. Hutchinson led the writer a short distance to another stretch of Florence where the damage looks less like isolated failure and more like repeated neglect. For blocks and blocks. cracked sidewalk appears to break apart and pile up around trees—mounds after mounds. one after another. The article calls it a “mike-long museum of municipal neglect,” with Hutchinson saying it has been “for years.”.
That brings the first set of questions for Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman: what will they do to speed up repairs so residents aren’t left waiting a decade while hazards persist?
The sidewalk issue is tied. in the article’s framing. to a broader frustration about what residents say they’ve paid for and what they still don’t see. The piece turns to homelessness. noting that voters have repeatedly taxed themselves more. including Measure H. Measure A. Measure ULA. and Proposition HHH. It says that despite billions of dollars spent and “tens of thousands of people” helped and housed. more than 40. 000 people are homeless in the city and roughly 70. 000 in the county.
In Bass’s primary victory speech, the writer says Bass argued that families shouldn’t have to step around encampments. Raman, the article says, has said greater urgency is needed.
Then come questions centered on accountability and speed: why taxpayers haven’t gotten more for their money with Bass and Raman at the helm, what each of them will do to speed progress and create more accountability, and what distinguishes them from each other.
Parks arrive as a third pressure point. The article cites annual rankings by the National Trust for Public Lands. saying Los Angeles has dropped from 90th to a tie for 93rd in park investment and accessibility among the nation’s 100 most populous cities. It adds that the City Council is about to consider a motion to increase park funding through charter reform. with dozens of community groups in support. and that progress is “ridiculously slow” on an agreement to use schools as after-hours playgrounds.
The question for Bass and Raman here is direct: do they support the charter reform, and what else will they do to address the “sad state” of Los Angeles parks?
Trash and blight complete the list of visible failures that, the article argues, hollow out neighborhoods from downtown to Hollywood. Downtown L.A. it says. has seen vandalism. shuttered storefronts. and post-COVID abandonment that have crippled what was once a vibrant. revenue-generating economy. In Hollywood. a resident hired her housekeeper to help report illegal dumping of goods that are often used to construct homeless encampments. leading to more problems. On the south lawn of City Hall. the article says a graffiti-tagged monument and fountain have been out of commission for most of the last six decades.
So the last immediate question in the piece is almost pointed in its simplicity: at the very least, can the fountain be fixed?
The writer closes by widening the lens beyond any one broken sidewalk. The article returns to what it calls a love-hate relationship many residents have with Los Angeles: it’s a messy. multi-cultural work in progress set between mountain and sea. trying to figure out what it wants to be. For Bass and Raman. the final question becomes: whether in basic services or grand visions. what three or four primary objectives do they have over the next four years—and what do they want Los Angeles to be?.
The piece also frames this as an opening salvo, with “five months” ahead to revisit each topic—starting with infrastructure, and then moving through homelessness, parks, trash and blight, and the core issue underneath them all: focus.
Los Angeles Karen Bass Nithya Raman sidewalks infrastructure homelessness parks trash and blight City Hall Florence Avenue 71st Street and 11th Avenue