Downtowns are back

[Crawford]

I don't understand the comparisons between Tenderloin and downtown LA's historic core.

The Tenderloin is a longstanding, super-poor neighborhood of packed-in SROs (essentially welfare hotels). It hasn't gentrified, and won't gentrify, by design. SF Chinatown is similar (if without the drug/homeless/yuck issues).

LA's historic core is a traditional working class shopping district now being gentrified. They aren't particularly similar, even if the buildings have some resemblance. In LA, gentrification probably brings expensive loft apartments and hipsters, while Tenderloin is govt.-run housing for addicts, mostly.

Of course LA has Skid Row, which is sorta downtown core, and which has similarities to Tenderloin, but I don't think this is what we're talking about. Isn't LA's Skid Row mostly tent cities, and lowrise structures, not really wall-to-wall midrise SROs like Tenderloin?