THE HUTCHINSON REPORT: It’s long past time for city officials to fix the sidewalks

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Contributing Columnist

If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say I can’t get the city to repair the sidewalk in front of my building, I’d be a wealthy man.

They say variously: I have tripped or nearly tripped over a cracked sidewalk. I must practically walk in the street because the sidewalk is so dangerous. The city won’t do anything about it no matter how many times I call.

Cracked sidewalks in Los Angeles are a mounting hazard. That hazard is nowhere more acute than in South Los Angeles.

In a two-block stretch on one South L.A. street I counted a half dozen cracked sidewalks. Some of the damage is done by tree roots. Some are from age, and wear and tear.

But whatever the cause, they all have been in a state of disrepair for months, if not years. The number of those that fit that bill is staggering. Of the nearly 11,000 miles of sidewalks in Los Angeles, an estimated 40% of them are broken.

The city has repeatedly been called on the legal carpet by disability rights advocates for the busted sidewalks. They charge that the top-heavy number of broken sidewalks violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. This mandates safe and accessible sidewalks to accommodate the disabled. The advocates have won a pyrrhic victory. The city was held liable and must fix the sidewalks. “

However, as always, city officials plead cost. They insist that it will require $1.5 billion and 30 years to make all the repairs required.

“An awful lot of [communities] have either disregarded their obligations under the ADA or made it the last priority,” notes Tom Stenson, a lawyer with Disability Rights Oregon, a nonprofit advocacy group. “There’s a culture throughout America of not taking the needs of people with disabilities seriously.”

A report by the city controller in 2021 found that L.A. had repaired an appallingly low 1% of the damaged sidewalks. There is little evidence that that number has appreciably grown since then.

The injuries have cost L.A. city officials (i.e., the taxpayers) plenty. They have shelled out tens of thousands of dollars in liability claim payments to victims of cracked sidewalks.

Meanwhile, the residents who must navigate the broken sidewalks face grave danger. One study found that more than a half million people are injured yearly due to cracked sidewalks.

The most common injuries are sprains, fractures and head injuries incurred by accidents due to a cracked sidewalk. The prime victims are children and the elderly. Blacks and Hispanics make up a disproportionate number of injured.

The chronic laxity, some say indifference, of many cities to the problem of cracked sidewalk-related injuries continues to be a major sore spot with many residents. Yet, to date, only three cities, San Francisco, Denver and Austin have implemented what they deem “equitable” policies to tackle the problem. By equitable, city officials have made fixing busted sidewalks an urgent priority. Los Angeles is not one of those cities.

The frustration of many residents in South L.A. has reached a boiling point. When I launched my war on street garbage dumping in South L.A., many residents were incensed not just by the street garbage piles, but by the cracked sidewalks. I received almost as many complaints about the hazard of the sidewalks as I did about the street garbage dumping problem.

The single biggest gripe was that they had repeatedly called their city council person or the city public works department giving the exact location of the cracked sidewalk. They said that in almost all cases their plea to make repairs was ignored.

They have gotten no help from Congress. A proposal that would have required state and local officials to detail exactly how they would use federal dollars to improve sidewalk accessibility for people with disabilities and for those in underserved communities died. One Republican senator callously branded the proposal “politically correct virtue signaling.”

Even though Los Angeles lost the lawsuit requiring that it take prompt action to fix the cracked sidewalks, it did not go down without a fight. It dragged litigation requiring fixture out for more than five years.

City officials repeatedly argued that they did not regard fixing damaged sidewalks as a “civil right.” Instead, they argued, it was purely a maintenance problem, no different than periodic tree trimming.

The problem with that, as many residents have angrily pointed out, is that overgrown tree branches don’t cause thousands of injuries to those walking the streets yearly. Cracked sidewalks do. The settlement Los Angles agreed to also required that the city pay for and make surveys, measurements and retain consultants who specialize in sidewalk repairs to ensure compliance.

Judging from the widespread damaged sidewalks in South L.A., there is no evidence that that has much effect on denting the problem. And since there was no oversight provision or timetable in the settlement the city agreed to on the repairs, it’s a good bet that that the number of damaged will continue with absolutely no accountability.

In the meantime, the injuries and losses will continue to soar. The demand to do something about them will only, as it should, grow louder and, in most cases, continue to be ignored.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is “The Epstein Distraction” (Amazon ebook and Middle Passage Press). He also hosts the weekly news and issues commentary radio show “The Hutchinson Report” Wednesdays at 6 p.m. at ktymgospel.net and Facebook Livestreamed at facebook.com/earl.o.hutchinson.