A California-Funded Homeless Shelter Gave Us Meth Pipes

The Skid Row Care Campus—funded by local, state, and federal dollars—handed us drug paraphernalia.

As governor of California, Gavin Newsom has repeatedly supported “harm reduction” policies, which enable drug use in the name of making it “safer.” He created the state’s Harm Reduction Initiative, which funded “syringe services programs” for “people who inject and smoke fentanyl and/or methamphetamines.” His Department of Public Health has endorsed distributing syringes, glass pipes, and “[c]ontainers for mixing injectable drugs” to drug users. Newsom argued earlier this year that harm-reduction tactics “increase the like­li­hood of people enter­ing sub­stance use treat­ment.”

But do California’s harm-reduction programs encourage addicts to enter treatment? We visited the Skid Row Care Campus, a homeless-services site in Los Angeles County, to witness “harm reduction” in action. We discovered that, instead of directing addicts to get clean, the taxpayer-funded program doles out free paraphernalia, enabling addicts to get high—no questions asked.

We arrived at Skid Row in the morning. The campus, bounded by pastel-colored buildings and a metal gate, looked like an apocalyptic wasteland. Homeless people and addicts were splayed across the common areas, with some smoking what seemed to be hard drugs with impunity.

We stepped onto the courtyard connected to the street. No one stopped us, asked for identification, or searched us for weapons or drugs. This is apparently by design, judging by the Skid Row Action Plan and its implementation outline, which, singly or together, inspired the creation of the campus, denounced the “racist and classist war on drugs,” and called on local officials to create hubs “free from monitoring by law enforcement” and staffed by people with histories of “substance use and sex work.”

We entered campus and found a walk-up counter, where an attendant sat before shelves of drug paraphernalia. Users come to this counter to get free needles and crack pipes, with which they can inject or smoke hard drugs.

“What can I get you?” he asked. “We have oil burners, we have spray shooters, we have socks, we have petroleum jelly.”

Across several visits, we obtained drug-testing strips, syringes, and crack pipes. One worker told us that while drug use isn’t allowed on-site, we “wouldn’t be bothered” if we got high just outside—unless we overdosed.

The entire campus takes a “low-touch” approach. In addition to staple items that many homeless shelters offer—food, laundry, some medical care—the site offers services like doggie daycare, meditation on the lawn, and “valet” cart parking. Around midday, we saw homeless people lining up in the cafeteria for Doritos and instant ramen, while around two-dozen sat in reclining chairs to watch the movie 127 Hours.

The Skid Row site launched in 2025. The campus and its services are run by a group of nonprofits committed to harm reduction, including one that laments the “long-standing criminalization of substance use.”

For these left-wing groups, the site has become a massive cash cow. The campus is listed as a federally funded health center and reportedly pulls in around $26 million a year in local, state, and federal dollars. One of its service providers, Homeless Health Care Los Angeles, has seen its revenue more than double since 2020, jumping to $27 million last year. Another, Wesley Health Centers (JWCH Institute), has seen revenues more than double to $200 million in five years.

Estela Lopez, executive director of the L.A. Downtown Industrial District, thinks the campus has been a disaster.

“You want a meth pipe? Here you go. You want needles? Here you go,” she said, describing the campus’ “harm reduction” approach. “Everything that you need in order to get high, stay high, is provided, no questions asked.”

Lopez said the site has caused chaos on the nearby street. An LAPD source told us they’ve totaled 1,200 “radio calls for service” and four murders in the area so far this year. One of the site nonprofits’ employees told us that drug dealers were “fighting over the guests.”

All of this raises questions about federal funding. Last year, President Trump signed an executive order ordering reviews of federally funded drug paraphernalia distribution sites. The order took a negative view of “so-called ‘harm reduction’ or ‘safe consumption’ efforts that only facilitate illegal drug use.”

The named nonprofits and the mayor’s office did not respond to our requests for comment, and the governor’s office did not offer a responsive comment. L.A. County claimed that they adhere “to all local, state, and federal laws,” and said the campus “is funded by L.A. Care Health Plan,” a public health plan, “and Health Net,” an LLC. (In a 2024 press release, Health Net claimed that the two entities’ investment in the campus’s launch “was the result of California’s Housing and Homelessness Incentive Program, which the state launched with the help of matching funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.”)

Our trip to Skid Row made one thing unmistakably clear: in California, harm reduction facilitates drug abuse. The state’s leaders may think that it’s compassionate to let people waste away, smoking hard drugs and prodding themselves with needles. But these behaviors lead only to ruin, and, finally, death.

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Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America’s Cultural Revolution. Austen Hufford is a senior investigative reporter at City Journal.