Ruling Allows Homeless Families to Stay Together

In a ruling that has statewide implications, a Los Angeles judge Monday ordered the state Department of Social Services to provide emergency services, including shelter, to homeless children who remain together with their parents.

The preliminary injunction granted by Superior Court Judge Norman A. Dowds, in effect, forces state and local officials to offer shelter to homeless families that in the past were denied aid unless the parents were willing to temporarily place their children in foster homes, attorneys for several public-interest groups said.

“The order puts an end to a policy by the state where it ignored the desperate needs of the homeless or contributed to the breakup of these families,” said attorney Robert Newman of the Western Center on Law and Poverty in Los Angeles, who argued the case in court.

The ruling--which may become effective as early as today--could affect an estimated 9,000 homeless families in Los Angeles County, some of them forced to live in alleys or in abandoned cars, officials said.

In Orange County, an estimated 3,100 homeless persons--1,170 of them children--went to private service agencies in search of assistance in a single month last year, officials said. That is a conservative figure because no one knows how many more homeless people there were that month who did not seek aid, according to a member of the Orange County Coalition for the Homeless, made up of service agencies and concerned citizens.

“Hopefully, this (ruling) will do something to wake up the public to the fact that there are hundreds of homeless children who have no place to go unless they’re taken away from their parents,” said Orange County Human Relations Commissioner Jean Forbath.

There are an estimated 500,000 homeless people in California, but Newman and other public-interest lawyers said it was difficult to accurately pinpoint the number of homeless families in the state.

State officials could not immediately say how such a ruling could be implemented, but Newman and others said several options could be considered.

Among them is a voucher program that could allow families to stay in inexpensive homes and motels. Another alternative, Newman suggested, could be a state contract with local private, nonprofit agencies to house the homeless.

Public-interest attorneys said some homeless parents, desperate to obtain adequate care for their children, have agreed in the past to temporarily place them in emergency shelters in places such as Los Angeles County’s McLaren Hall in El Monte, where it may cost authorities as much as $140 a night to house a child.

The state could house a homeless family for much less in a motel, they pointed out.

The ruling came on a class-action lawsuit filed last month in Los Angeles Superior Court by a statewide coalition of poverty law firms that alleged that the state, acting through the county, was providing emergency shelter only to children believed to be abused, neglected or endangered.

Homeless children were denied aid under the state’s interpretation of the Welfare and Institutions Code unless the state did not consider them to be endangered or abused, the suit said.

Attorney Melinda Bird, also with the Western Center on Law and Poverty, said after the ruling: “How can we draw a distinction? How you can say, ‘This child is abused so it deserves care and this one doesn’t because it’s only sleeping in a car?’ ”

Deputy Atty. Gen. Ralph Johnson argued in court that the law targeted by the lawsuit was designed to aid battered children, not homeless children .

“This statute isn’t the solution to this (homeless) problem,” Johnson added.

He said a bill that would provide emergency aid for homeless children--SB466 authored by state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles)--is being considered by the Assembly. It already has been approved in the Senate.

He added that funds earmarked for abused children might become scarce if the state were forced to pay for the shelter of homeless children and their families.

Conceding that such funds could be in short supply, the judge nevertheless disagreed with Johnson’s arguments. Dowds noted that Section 16501 of the Welfare and Institutions Code charged state officials with aiding in the welfare of “all children” who are eligible for emergency help and shelter.

Johnson said outside of court that state officials will study the ruling to decide whether to appeal.

A spokeswoman for Linda McMahon, director of the state Department of Social Services, said that it was too early to tell how much it would cost to implement such a ruling. In January, authorities spent about $231,000 statewide in more than 600 emergency cases involving abused children.

Advocates for homeless families hailed Monday’s ruling.

Neglected Problem

It “certainly identifies a problem that people tend to neglect,” said Bobby Lovell, president of the Orange County Coalition for the Homeless. “People will say, ‘We have Orangewood (the county home for abused children); what more do we need.’ But that doesn’t help families.

“We have transitional living centers for abused women, but what about the poor guy who has an accident on the job,” Lovell said. Suddenly, he can’t pay the rent, he loses his house, and he needs $1,200 for first and last months’ rent to get into another place, she said.

“So if he’s a family man, he’ll live in a car for months because he and his wife aren’t willing to give up their children. These are poignant cases, and nobody pays attention to them. But these people are just like us. There but for the grace of God goes your aunt or your uncle,” Lovell said.

There are several private shelters with a total of about 400 beds for the homeless in Orange County, but “in no way are there enough,” Human Relations Commissioner Forbath said.

12% Placed in Shelters

For example, of the homeless people counted by the coalition last May, only 12% were placed in shelters by the agencies, Lovell said.

Further, some of Orange County’s private shelters are designed for single men and do not take children, authorities said. Consequently, many private service agencies assist the poverty-stricken families by giving them vouchers for motel rooms, while hundreds more live out of their cars, Forbath and Lovell observed.

Few children of homeless families wind up at Orangewood, Orange County’s 170-bed home for abused and neglected children, according to Bill Steiner, the facility’s immediate past director who now heads the Orangewood Children’s Foundation.

“We try to use every option to keep them with their families,” Steiner said. “Occasionally children were brought into protective custody because they were living in the back seats of cars, but the general philosophy has been that these people should be with their parents, and let’s arrange for them to get some financial assistance rather than have them brought into Orangewood or into foster care.”

Last year, Christian Temporary Housing sheltered 4,090 people--2,255 of them children--in its facility in Orange, a spokeswoman said. In Costa Mesa, the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter operates a nine-unit apartment complex that can house 60 people a night, “and it is always turning people away,” Forbath said. Both programs help the homeless families become self-sufficient, find jobs and save money so that they can find rental housing.

Lovell said the City of Irvine has five apartments for working parents. The Salvation Army and the Christian Outreach Mission, while catering mostly to single men, have accommodations for a few families, she said. Forbath added that two more shelters, one in southern Orange County and another in Fullerton, are scheduled to open soon.

Other agencies, such as Forbath’s Share Our Selves (SOS) in Costa Mesa, operate no shelters but assist families financially or give them vouchers for motel rooms.

“They come from all over the county, some are even from out of state, and many of them have just been evicted,” Forbath said. They are “in and out of motels,” checking in when they receive disability checks or unemployment checks, and moving into their cars when the money runs out, she added.

The real solution, Forbath said, is for the county to provide for more low-cost rental housing. Even the low-cost apartments under discussion now by the county Planning Commission are too expensive for these families, she pointed out.

Times staff writer Kristina Lindgren contributed to this story.