City officials in Los Angeles have launched a "quality of life" campaign in the infamous Skid Row area that has yielded sharp declines in crime, but some worry that the initiative will just push the poor and indigent to other areas, the Washington Post reported March 15.

Up to 4,000 homeless people used to reside in Skid Row, many of them addicts or the mentally ill. Vans would periodically pull up to discharge indigent patients onto the streets.

But now -- partly spurred by developers who want to turn area lofts into apartments -- police chief William Bratton has used the "broken windows" strategies that proved so successful during his tenure in New York to discourage violent crimes and other problems. The Safer City Initiative had added 50 police officers in Skid Row, who issue tickets for infractions as minor as jaywalking or public urination.

A ban on sleeping on the sidewalks is now enforced during the daytime, and the numbers of people sleeping on Skid Row streets has been cut in half. Meanwhile, violent crime in March was down 36 percent compared to 2006, while property crimes were down 38 percent. Moreover, the city attorney's office plans to prosecute hospitals that dump patients on the street.

"This first step has given us hope," said Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Association, a local business group. Long-term residents of local hotels also said the initiative had made the area more livable.

But advocates for the homeless said that the city has switched from a policy of concentrating homeless people in Skid Row to driving them out. "We're doing nothing but cutting off access to services," said Mark Casanova, executive director of Homeless Health Care Los Angeles.

Rigoberto J. Arrechiga, a public defender who handles Skid Row cases, said that police are now charging local drug users as dealers rather than with possession charges that previously would have given them a shot at addiction rehabilitation services. "It seems that the goal is to send these people to state prison," he said.

George Kelling, a criminologist at Rutgers University who helped  develop the "broken windows" theory, said the city must walk a fine line in redeveloping Skid Row. "You want to make sure gentrification isn't driving people out and the missions aren't driven out," he said. "When people are moving in and grocery stores are moving in, that means jobs. Economic development is not something you want to sneer at."