The drumbeat has been going on downtown for so long it’s a wonder anyone hears it any longer.

No other part of Los Angeles County provides the kind of services needed to aid the homeless, so the Skid Row population continues to swell. That growth in turn increases the pressure to provide more services even as it exacerbates problems inherent in having such a dense concentration of the destitute, mentally ill, and addicted. Crime is up, and now a new hazard is emerging: fire.

As we report this week, the number of fires in tents used by the homeless has jumped, posing a danger not only to the people living in them but to the properties to which they are often affixed.

Add that to a litany of problems property and business owners face. Employees feel unsafe, customers are reticent to visit, insurance rates are going up, and, increasingly, owners are trapped holding properties that are becoming essentially unsalable.

Skid Row was once a narrowly defined problem, one that affected a relative few and was concentrated in an area most Angelenos never gave a second thought. But now downtown is booming and the problems inherent in our failure to adequately address the problem are oozing into other commercial and residential areas.

As Hal Bastian, a longtime downtown real estate consultant, told reporter Howard Fine, “If you think that we’re going to rent 8,000 apartment units and 2,000 condo units when people have to step over homeless lying on the street with open sores, you are sorely mistaken.”

Perhaps the fear felt by those whose recent investments are jeopardized by Skid Row’s expansion will be the catalyst to spur a change.

Bastian thinks commercial interests will end up in court as they seek to force the city and county to make other communities share the burden of caring for this population. Money and promises haven’t helped thus far, and that might be the solution to what has become a national disgrace.