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ANYA MCNICHOLS moved to Los Angeles from Cincinnati when Eartha Kitt died. She says she is on a mission from Jehovah. Asked how she spends her days, she fires off four words: “Shower, wash, read, pray.” Ms McNichols lives surrounded by her possessions on the street in front of the Union Rescue Mission, a non-profit that serves the homeless of Los Angeles’s Skid Row. Reverend Andrew Bales, who runs the Mission, sees Skid Row as a humanitarian disaster. “It couldn’t be a worse situation”, he says, “unless it was hell itself.” He has experienced this hell first-hand. While delivering water in the area, Reverend Bales contracted a painful infection that resulted in the partial amputation of both legs.