Aurora Morales was walking through an alley near MacArthur Park on Nov. 3, 2025, when she spotted something hidden behind a small group of people.

“There’s a guy,” Morales called out to her teammate, Angel Borjas. “He’s behind his wheelchair. He’s really hard to see.”

The man was squatted down and bent over at the waist, his forehead nearly touching the ground. For the Homeless Health Care L.A. overdose response team out that day, it was a familiar pose and a common sign of opioid use — known as "riding" or the "fentanyl fold."

The man bent over in front of them was behind buildings off Alvarado Street. It’s known as "Fentanyl Alley" and is half a block from MacArthur Park, where the team patrols every day. Fentanyl has devastated the area.

At the scene, team members gave the man an oxygen mask to breathe into. They explained to me how oxygen counteracts an often-deadly effect of fentanyl called respiratory depression — when the person's brain stops telling their body to breathe.

When the man regained his composure, he introduced himself as Sal. He told me he was feeling much better. He had recently returned to the park after his friends were concerned about his health and called LAFD paramedics, who took him to a hospital.

He seemed unfazed by his latest close call. “I’m just getting started, man!” Sal told me.

Aid workers handed Sal a package of naloxone, an overdose-reversing drug also known by the brand name Narcan. One of the aid workers, Joseph Cathey, told him the team would be back around to check on him.

Had the service workers not been there, Morales said, he would have overdosed.

 "Now he's up, he's breathing, he's talking." Morales said. "We got to prolong his life just one more day."

They saved a man’s life that morning — and they said it was a slow day.

MacArthur Park, once a destination for the most affluent Angelenos, has become a symbol of the opioid overdose epidemic that has torn across the U.S. in recent years.

The area is also recovering from a 2023 spike in violent crime — though still second only to Skid Row as the most violent place in L.A., according to an LAist analysis of LAPD crime data. Daily dangers at the park have left many afraid to go.

In an attempt to save lives, local officials have contracted a wide range of services to serve MacArthur Park, including free medical programs and gang violence reduction teams. Community organizations have also rallied to the area to regularly bring food, clothing and other necessities for people in need.

The high level of assistance creates tension between people who view the help as compassionate and others who see it as enabling drug use and criminal activity. Those in favor of more enforcement argue that local government leaders should focus on cracking down on crime, not making it easier for people to use drugs around the park.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli points toward MacArthur Park while speaking at a press conference after a drug enforcement operation there on May 6, 2026. “In my opinion, [needle exchange programs] make it worse,” Essayli told reporters. “You got these black Jeeps that drive around doing harm reduction, which means they're handing out clean needles, making it easier to sell drugs.”

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Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator, was also at the press conference, and criticized local government leaders for “farming homelessness” by making it easy to do drugs near the park. “This is a fundamental disagreement that I think we have in America,” Oz said. “Giving people who are addicted what they need [to use drugs] doesn't free them.”

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As Mayor Karen Bass debated challengers Nithya Raman and Spencer Pratt the same night as the May 6 raid, she said she would end the city’s needle exchange program, which has provided clean needles across the city since it was implemented to prevent the spread of AIDS/HIV in 1996. Bass reaffirmed that she did not support the program during a separate mayoral forum on Oct. 15. Nithya Raman, who advanced to the general election against Bass, has said she would not end the program.

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Raul Claros, founder of the non-profit CD1 Coalition, ran against Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez in the June primary election and stayed in an RV near MacArthur Park to bring attention to health and safety concerns there. I interviewed Claros in his RV on May 29, when he told me people need to have access to harm reduction programs, but not in public spaces like the park. “ I'm all about saving anybody and second, third chances, right?” Claros said. “ But not at the risk and harm of everybody else.”

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“There's a trend for people wanting punishment,” said Immanuel Camacho, a member of Homeless Health Care L.A.’s overdose response team. “But for us it's the opposite of that, it's kindness, it's being part of the community and showing care and affection.”

More services are available to unhoused people at the park than anywhere else in the city except Skid Row — and still, people told me it’s not enough. Service providers from multiple organizations said they have limited resources and face bureaucratic hurdles that can make it a challenge to connect people with the things they need most, like long-term medical care or housing.

As drug enforcement operations near the park transitioned in June from targeting dealers and distributors to people who were there to use drugs, several service providers told me people with substance use disorders were driven deeper into the shadows, where they are less likely to get the help they need and risk overdosing without anyone there to save them.

Overdose response and street medicine

The Homeless Health Care L.A. team prepares to head into MacArthur Park on Nov. 3, 2025.

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The Homeless Health Care L.A. team is in MacArthur Park every day, carrying naloxone and small oxygen tanks to prevent overdoses, first aid supplies and a biohazard box for used needles they pick up from the ground.

The team says they have prevented hundreds of people from dying of overdoses, either by their own intervention or through community members they trained how to recognize and respond to an overdose. They also report picking up more than 43,000 units of hazardous waste like used needles and other drug paraphernalia within just 15 months.

Walking into the park, the team is recognized almost immediately.

“There’s our people, Wawa,” one man said to his dog. He called the team over to check out his new skateboard. Several people approached to chat or thank them for their work.

Morales told me it took a while to build that kind of trust. Some people still refuse services, she said, but many who stay in the park appreciate having someone there to look after them.

Camacho said he believes their work benefits the community beyond the people they help directly. By reversing overdoses, they are also reducing the strain on local first responders and the healthcare system.

Still, they can’t stop every overdose in the park, and some people need more help than their team can provide — that’s when paramedics or physicians need to get involved.

Paramedics from the Los Angeles Fire Department's nearby Station 11 respond to more emergency calls than they did during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent years, about one-fifth of EMS calls near the park have been for suspected drug overdoses.

LAFD paramedics respond to a medical emergency near MacArthur Park on Aug. 9, 2026.

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LAFD paramedics respond to a medical emergency in MacArthur Park on May 29, 2026.

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LAFD paramedics check on a man outside the metro station across the street from MacArthur Park on Sept. 2, 2026.

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Capt. Erik Scott, a spokesperson for LAFD, told me that the department added a new unit in the area to bring field-based medical care to MacArthur Park.

In September 2025, Advanced Provider Response Unit 13 started treating patients around the park where they are, often without a trip to the hospital, and connecting frequent EMS users with preventive or primary care.

Members of the LAFD's Advanced Provider Response Unit 13 drive near MacArthur Park on Aug. 23, 2026.

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Scott said the specialized team also aims to reduce the number of emergency calls for fire companies and rescue ambulances, which could improve response times in the area — only Fire Station 9 in Skid Row had more emergency calls last year than Station 11.

Scott provided statistics from the department that showed a 10% decrease in 911 calls for medical emergencies near the park in 2025 compared to the previous year. Calls about overdoses proved to be more persistent, decreasing about 2%.

Mayor Karen Bass spoke with LAFD firefighters in MacArthur Park on Feb. 28, 2026. Bass told the firefighters she used to be a nurse and suggested she ride along one day on emergency calls. “Make sure you dress comfortably,” one of the firefighters replied, “because we’re going to be busy.”

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Along with paramedics, there are also doctors, nurses and social workers in the park every week.

“We go to the people on the streets — under the bridges, places like MacArthur Park — to provide the same level of care on the street that you'd expect in a brick-and-mortar clinic,” Brett Feldman told me.

Feldman is the director of USC’s street medicine program, which he founded in 2018. The program has received funding from the City of L.A. since 2022.

“Of all the places I've done street medicine, MacArthur Park was the most challenging to cover,” Feldman said.

He pointed to a USC study released in 2025 that found most of the people who receive treatment in MacArthur Park don’t live nearby.

“Only about 20% of people live in and around the park,” he told me, “so the rest are coming from different places around the city.”

It’s hard for healthcare workers to stay in touch with patients who have no fixed address, Feldman said. He said his team has tried to maintain contact by keeping a consistent schedule so people know how to find them. They’ve also hired a new full-time team this year to be able to serve the park Monday through Friday.

Contrary to a popular belief, Feldman said people who are unhoused or struggling with substance use do usually want treatment.

The USC study found that many people there desire treatment for mental health and substance use disorders, he said, but had never been offered those treatments.

“Even though our perception was there were so many services coming [to the park], we still weren't coming anywhere close to meeting the need,” Feldman said.

Some healthcare providers and local government officials are hopeful that new facilities and services could also help fill some of that need with supportive housing, recuperative care and addiction treatment.

Notably, the long-shuttered St. Vincent Hospital has reopened as a Behavioral Health Campus with beds to house more than 200 people struggling with mental illness and substance use disorders — there are another 600 beds planned for the site. That effort has raised millions of dollars from healthcare organizations and the state government.

L.A. Care Health Plan, a provider for public healthcare coverage like Medi-Cal and Medicare Plus, is also partnering with the city and county to roll out the MacArthur Park Care Collaborative. Along with expanding street medicine services in the area, the collaborative is expected to build a drop-in center near the park for people who are unhoused or suffering from substance use.

The collaborative will provide “low-barrier medical care, mental health services, overdose prevention, and pathways to longer-term care,” L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis told me in a statement.

Solis represents both Skid Row and MacArthur Park on the Board of Supervisors and serves on the L.A. Care board of governors.

“The focus is on meeting people where they are and reducing the barriers that keep individuals experiencing homelessness and substance use disorders from accessing care,” she said.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who represents the area on L.A.’s City Council, told me she has also been working to open a healthcare hub in the area since she took office, collaborating with the county and service providers. She got $3 million of the city’s opioid settlement funds approved to go toward a brick-and-mortar facility in 2024.

“We are not trying to saturate this neighborhood with services in the way that people oftentimes compare it to Skid Row,” Hernandez said, “but we are offering the spaces for people to be, because right now there's nowhere else for them to be except in our park and on our sidewalks.”

Medicine second to housing

Without housing, healthcare can be a “losing battle,” said Dr. Absalon Galat, medical director of L.A. County’s mobile clinic and street medicine program, which has been serving the park with comprehensive healthcare for two years.

“Housing is really the core, in terms of stabilizing somebody,” Galat said.

As a division of the county Department of Health Services, Galat said his program serves as a “one-stop shop.” They can help people who need substance use treatment or general healthcare, while connecting people to housing resources.

Dr. Lorenzo Gonzalez also works in the department as a physician and has led the mobile clinic that serves MacArthur Park every Thursday. He agrees that healthcare takes a back seat to housing needs for the people he treats in MacArthur Park.

The L.A. County Department of Health Services’ mobile clinic brings comprehensive medical care to the park every Thursday.

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Gonzalez said he hears from patients who lost their homes in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think medicine comes second to housing needs and more immediate needs of shelter, safety,” Gonzalez said.  “ We provide comprehensive medical care, and we also have folks here like a social worker and a community health worker that can help you with your social needs.”

Gonzalez said he also acts as a liaison between housed residents near MacArthur Park and his patients by attending local government and community meetings.

“We walk a line, right? We want to be there to support the MacArthur Park folks that live, rent and are taking their children to the park,” he said. “And we want to make sure that our [unhoused] patients have a voice and are seen in these spaces where they're normally not at.”

Jennifer Haid has worked in the park since 2021, connecting people to housing and other services through her nonprofit HumanKind LA.

Haid, who has an office across the street, said she sees the park as a place for community that everyone can share in.

Jennifer Haid of HumanKind LA meets with a client at her office near MacArthur Park on Aug. 5, 2026.

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“The park can serve many things,” she said. “It can serve as a place for wound care and food. It can serve as a place for healing and peace for people just as much as it can serve as a place for sports and whatever else.”

Haid told me that service providers in the area like herself have spent a long time building trust and gathering the required paperwork to get people housed. She said recent drug enforcement raids have made her job “infinitely more difficult,” making the park an unwelcoming, unsafe place for her clients and leading most of them to stay out of the area.

Haid said many of her clients have already been met with a lifetime of broken promises and believe the system isn’t on their side. It’s tragic, she said, when people who have put in the work to receive housing are now missing the opportunities they applied for.

“Finally, something has come to fruition,” Haid said, “and they can't be here to get it.”

A man pushes a cart past an alleyway half a block from MacArthur Park on Feb. 11, 2026. People often go to the alleys near the park to use drugs out of sight, but service providers say this can increase the risk they overdose with no one around to help.

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Preventing gang violence

Many of the people bringing services to MacArthur Park grew up in the area or know what it's like from their own experiences to deal with drug use, organized crime or homelessness.

Several service workers from different organizations told me their personal experience gives them a sense of compassion and understanding toward the people they are trying to help.

Tina Padilla-Zamora said her father was a gang member. She told me she didn’t see any other way of living life when she was growing up in Northeast L.A. For a while, she followed in his footsteps.

“Being in a gang was what you're supposed to do,” she said. After experiencing life in prison, she said, she decided to take another path.

Padilla-Zamora became a case manager for local violence intervention organizations before she started Community Warriors 4 Peace, a non-profit organization now contracted by the city as part of the Gang Reduction and Youth Development program.

Tina Padilla-Zamora and her son, center, stand with members of Community Warriors 4 Peace in MacArthur Park, on Oct. 31, 2025. Padilla-Zamora started the organization to help reduce gang violence in L.A.

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She told me personal experience like hers gives gang violence intervention workers the tools they need to lower tensions between neighboring gangs.

They know where the “invisible boundaries” are that divide the territories of different gangs around the park, she said, and they know how to pick up on signs other people might miss — subtle warnings that violence might erupt. They provide safe passage for children to local schools and help gang members to find their own paths away from organized crime.

Two other organizations, Homies Unidos and Healing Urban Barrios, are also contracted by the city to work in the park as peace ambassadors and reduce community violence.

Padilla-Zamora said that while she understands that law enforcement has their own job to do, the city can’t arrest its way out of the problems in MacArthur Park.

Eventually, she said, those people who are arrested will come home, where they will need other resources and opportunities to avoid returning to gangs. Those resources — like quality jobs and housing — have been in short supply around MacArthur Park for decades.

Supporting community

Although homelessness and substance use issues are among the most apparent problems facing MacArthur Park, some people — housed and unhoused alike — lack even simple things like food or community. To fill those needs, local non-profit and faith-based organizations are in the park nearly every day, providing mobile food banks, free meals and religious services.

Chris Turner works for L.A. Dream Center, which is one of the organizations that brings food to the park through a mobile food bank.

Turner spoke to me as dozens of people lined up behind a white box truck for their turn to receive groceries. He said his organization works with the L.A. Regional Food Bank to serve low-income communities across L.A., and they come to MacArthur Park once a week.

“I've been on the other side of the line of the people that I feed every day,” Turner told me. He said he grew up going to food banks, and sees this work as a chance to make a difference when 1 in 4 L.A. County households face food insecurity.

Others work to carve out space in the park for family-friendly activities that celebrate the neighborhood’s rich culture.

Allegra Padilla is the executive director of Music, Arts & Community · Los Angeles, which hosts a wide range of concerts every year — everything from cumbia and big band to punk rock.

Padilla told me that these events provide a space to reconnect with tradition, experience something new and connect with people through music and food.

“Not only might someone see themselves reflected on stage,” she said, “but they might also be able to connect to a valuable resource while they're on the lawn or get to make some art with their grandmother.”

Padilla said she sees different groups working to uplift MacArthur Park in the midst of the fentanyl crisis, and hopes that there will be longer-term commitments and opportunities for people in the area.

“This was not something that was happening before, you know, five years ago,” Padilla told me. “So how can we all rise to the occasion and figure it out?”