Embattled Shelter : Homeless Facility in Laguna Draws Wrong Element, Critics Say

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Laguna Beach, the largest mission for homeless people in south Orange County, is under fire.

Merchants say the transients harass their customers and deface their buildings. Police say that word of the Rev. Colin Henderson’s ministry is circulating on the “homeless grapevine” and attracting out-of-town transients who were largely responsible for the city’s 25% increase in crime last year.

And City Councilman Neil Fitzpatrick, who says most of the city’s homeless are “bums who have chosen that life style,” has asked the Planning Department to inspect the church for possible violations of zoning ordinances.

“They are providing a valuable service, but the pendulum has swung a little too far,” Fitzpatrick said. “I don’t want to see it shut down, but there has been a lot of serious crime lately that can be related to the homeless: a killing, arson and the bombing of City Hall.”

The church, located on Park Avenue just two blocks from the city’s main shopping street, has room for about 50 people a night and currently houses about 30, Henderson said. Police estimate that there are between 75 and 100 homeless in Laguna Beach. A small church in San Clemente houses a handful of homeless people each night, but St. Mary’s is the only center in the south county area where the homeless can receive food, shelter and psychiatric and job counseling.

Closing St. Mary’s would create significant problems, said Doug Barton, deputy director of adult mental health services for Orange County.

“What St. Mary’s gives us in terms of a program is a concentration of the homeless--we can send in our professionals, assess them and help them. Without the shelter, we’d be beating the bushes, so to speak,” Barton said.

Mental health funds for the county, Barton said, are provided by the state and can only be spent in conjunction with centers where the mentally ill homeless congregate.

Fitzpatrick said his objective in asking for the inspection is not to close the shelter but “to let (St. Mary’s) know there is concern. If they are running a boarding facility not related to their church activities, they may not be in compliance with the zoning laws.” Because church activities are broadly defined, however, St. Mary’s probably is not violating any laws, Fitzpatrick said.

“The church should toss out anyone who behaves in a criminal or antisocial manner--that may be as simple as someone who urinates in hallways,” the councilman said. “They have to say, ‘Here are the rules, here is what you have to do, or else you’re out.’ If they can’t follow simple guidelines, then I’m not too terribly sympathetic.”

Henderson, speaking to about 150 merchants and residents at a public forum on the Laguna Beach homeless Monday night, defended the church’s program and said he, too, was “shocked and appalled” by some of the recent crimes attributed to the homeless.

“I have no wish to let people who have behaved like this avail themselves of St. Mary’s,” he said. The church interviews each prospective lodger when he or she arrives, he said, and tries to weed out troublemakers.

“We monitor them closely, but sometimes they slip through,” Henderson said.

Most of the residents who spoke at the forum were sharply critical of the church’s program, however, and said they wanted to see it scaled back or eliminated.

A man who said he had worked downtown for 20 years called the church “a jar of honey that attracts flies. You get a free meal, lodging, and you can steal all you want while you enjoy the climate. They’re going to have to cut the program way down to just those who can’t help themselves.”

Cleans Up in the Morning

Mark Judy, a dentist whose office is next to St. Mary’s, said some of the homeless sleep in his building, and he often finds trash, urine and human excrement outside his door in the morning. “It’s like a horse stables. At least once a week we need to get out there with a rag and a pail.” His patients, Judy said, often are harassed on their way to his office.

“Why downtown?” asked Sheila Bushard-Jameson, owner of a pharmacy on Forest Avenue and president of the Downtown Merchants Assn. “The majority of merchants would like to see the shelter moved away from downtown. I don’t know where they can put it. If it’s not discontinued, then the church somehow has to get a better grip on its people.”

About five months ago, she said, a transient broken into Bushard Pharmacy, and street people often block the entrance to her store and ask customers for spare change.

Neil Purcell, the city’s director of public safety, said transients accounted for 94 of the 247 arrests Laguna Beach police made in January. “We know that a large number of those are living there (at St. Mary’s),” Purcell said at the public forum. “Others sleep on the grounds, in the bushes and underneath the church. The word is out on the homeless grapevine and in the jails even in Northern California, and that is attracting a lot of criminal types and a lot of violent types.”

Henderson, however, said not all transients who give St. Mary’s as their address actually live there. Two transients arrested in January in connection with the City Hall bombing gave police the 428 Park Ave. address, but neither one of them was living at the church at the time, Henderson said. One of them never had, he said.