Why COVID-19 Has Run Amok in Los Angeles The jam-packed living arrangements of frontline workers in an unaffordable housing market are partly to blame. . In 1991, poring over an analysis of newly released data from the previous yearâs census, I came across a startling statistic: The most densely populated census tract in the United States wasnât some Manhattan neighborhood of high-rise apartments. It was right here in Los Angeles, in the neighborhood centered on MacArthur Park, a mile or so west of downtown. Could that be true? I drove around the neighborhood and couldnât find a single residential building taller than seven stories. On the other hand, the sidewalks were uncommonly crowded by L.A. standards, and it was clear that the area had become the end-of-century equivalent of New Yorkâs Lower East Side in 1910, a neighborhood of hardworking immigrants struggling to make do. And given the cityâs high rents and low pay for people on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, it seemed likely that many of those apartments were home to several families or to platoons of single men.