Chronicling the plight of homelessness

Speaking at the OneCityOneBook event in La Cañada on Sunday, Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez described his first visit to skid row in downtown Los Angeles in the spring of 2005.

“[There are] veterans who have fallen out of wheelchairs. It is just unbelievable. Prostitutes that are living in the port-a-pots that they use as their brothel. This is a complete collapse. And I am looking at [Anthony Ayers] thinking, this is the guy who brought me here. I am learning about music from this guy; I am learning about courage, and I need to shine a light on this. What type of society allows this human landfill in a city of riches?”

Lopez, spurred by a budding friendship with Ayers, would go on to explore that question in a series of newspaper columns and later a nonfiction work titled “The Soloist.” The text was chosen by the OneCityOneBook committee as the 2009 city-wide book selection, and Lopez was invited to speak at the annual OneCityOneBook community discussion. Moderated by La Cañada-based author Mark Salzman, the event drew approximately 200 people, filling the La Cañada Unified School District board room to capacity.

Witnessing the scene on skid row, Lopez said, was one of many eye-opening lessons he would absorb during his ongoing interaction with Ayers. The pair met on the streets of Los Angeles where Ayers would stand trying to perfect a difficult piece of classical music on a battered, two-string violin.

Through months of investigation, Lopez would learn that Ayers was once a promising classical musician and a former student at the Julliard School in New York. It was there that Ayers, the only African-American in his class, would break under the rigorous training and succumb to mental illness. After years of unsuccessful psychiatric treatment in Cleveland, Ayers made his way to Los Angeles where he joined the thousands of other mentally ill in makeshift camps on skid row.

The columnist and the street musician struck up an unusual friendship, which Lopez chronicled week after week in the Los Angeles Times as a way to highlight the plight of the mentally ill and homeless. Largely through the intervention of Lopez, Ayers is now taking psychotic medications and lives in a supportive housing complex designed to serve the severely mentally ill.