Once-cherished MacArthur Park has become Los Angeles’s fentanyl ground zero

07 December 2025

People gather in front of MacArthur Park, some using drugs, in Los Angeles’s Westlake District. Barbara Davidson for NY Post

What was once a familiar refuge of greenery, family picnics and evening strolls has become, in the span of only a few years, a broken, fractured shadow of itself. MacArthur Park once one of Los Angeles’s vibrant community spaces now serves, by many accounts, as a drug-ridden wasteland, a ground zero for fentanyl abuse, homelessness, public-health collapse and a rising sense of terror among residents and business owners.

Locals describe scenes of daily tragedy: people slumped on benches, tents pitched under trees, open-air drug markets selling crack, meth and opioids, discarded syringes littering walkways, overdoses that do not make the headlines and desperation that seeps into every corner of the park. One stretch, derisively nicknamed “Fentanyl Alley,” is said to be among the most dangerous with needles, burned-foil, overdose victims and the constant risk of death underfoot.

Most days the park seems inundated. Observers note that hundreds of unhoused residents appear to treat the area as a de facto shelter. Among them, many circle back daily in hopes of free supplies: safe-smoking kits, syringes, fentanyl-test strips and overdose-reversal drugs. Critics argue that while intended as harm-reduction, these services have effectively turned MacArthur into a magnet for drug users.

For those who live nearby, the collapse has been devastating. Business owners report soaring theft, vandalism, and a steady exodus of customers. Entire storefronts along Alvarado Street are described as used by transient populations and dealers alike. One longtime landlord on the block said he has had to install barbed wire on rooftops after repeated break-ins, spending tens of thousands of dollars just on basic security.

Even more alarming, the reach of the collapse extends to longtime community institutions. One famous eatery, once a fixture of the neighborhood, is reportedly considering relocating; another successful plan to revitalize the park has already begun to unravel under waves of drug activity, crime and neglect.

City officials are aware of the crisis. Earlier this year, the municipal parks commission approved a plan to erect a $2.3 million fence around the 35-acre park ,a move pitched as necessary to address crime, persistent drug use and the city’s inability to maintain safety and cleanliness. But for many harmed by the collapse, the fence feels more like a barrier that further isolates those suffering than a solution to the underlying problems.

At the same time, the city has reportedly poured over $27 million into harm-reduction and outreach programs aiming to stabilize the situation: distributing safer-use kits, organizing cleanup crews, deploying overdose-prevention teams and ramping up public-safety patrols. But even with this investment, the decay continues to accelerate, prompting critics to question whether these measures intended to save lives have instead normalized despair.

The tension between helping addicted, unhoused individuals and preserving public safety has prompted sharp debates within the community. Local residents, overwhelmed business owners and neighborhood landlords have called the park a “zombie zone,” arguing that ongoing harm-reduction efforts only attract more users, empties streets of ordinary residents, and robs the area of its sense of security. Meanwhile, advocates for harm reduction and public health counter that without such intervention, hundreds of lives often at the margins would be lost to overdose, violence or neglect.

Some political voices have begun promising change. One community-organizer running for city office has pledged to live in the park if elected vowing to clean up the area personally and stay until the problems are fixed. Critics dismiss it as a political stunt.

For many, the question now is not whether MacArthur Park can be saved but whether the city has the will, the resources and the moral clarity to do so before the park becomes irretrievable. Once symbols of hope, tree-lined paths, children’s laughter, weekend strolls, MacArthur’s benches are now haunted by needles, its lawns by tents, its water by tragedies.

This decay is not only a consequence of addiction and homelessness. It is the product of decades of neglect, inadequate social support, rising inequality and a failure to address systemic issues. The cracks in MacArthur Park mirror the cracks in a city struggling with housing, mental health, policing, and the desperation of those left behind.

Whatever the future of the park, one thing is certain: for the people living near it, for the business owners who have lost customers, for the families walking past it, for the lost souls sleeping under its trees MacArthur Park is no longer an oasis. It is a warning.