Judge Orders State to Repeal Rules on Homeless Children

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge held the State of California in contempt of court Friday for refusing to repeal welfare regulations that require children from homeless families to leave their parents before they can qualify for emergency shelter.

The order, which gives state officials two weeks to comply before sanctions are imposed, stems from a lawsuit filed by a coalition of legal-aid groups claiming that existing regulations illegally force the breakup of families when parents are unable to afford housing.

State officials have the option of appealing the order or revising their welfare regulations--a process that both sides agree could eventually require the state to provide short-term housing for hundreds of thousands of homeless families throughout California.

Members of the Orange County Coalition on the Homeless hailed the action, saying that they hoped it would prompt state action to help a surging county population of an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 homeless people, including 1,500 to 2,000 children, living on local streets and in parks.

“I will be pleased if it forces them to do something to resolve the problem of homelessness in our state,” said coalition member Scott Mather, who also heads the nonprofit Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter, one of a handful of interim shelters that takes families in Orange County.

Mather charged that this year’s state budget contained only $4 million to help the homeless after Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed $23 million for emergency shelters and other programs.

“Hopefully, this will force the governor to re-allocate some of the billion dollars he has set aside in reserves for shelters because there is a crying need,” Mather said.

Coalition chairman Bobbie Lovell said: “These homeless people are not going to go away. They are with us right now and we have to confront it.”

But Lovell said she feared that the court’s contempt order may end up diverting public attention from the need for permanent low-cost housing for poor families.

At issue in the lawsuit are child welfare laws that require the state to provide emergency assistance to needy children, including housing--laws that the state has interpreted to mean shelter for abused or neglected children who cannot safely remain with their families.

As a result, parents who cannot afford housing have been faced with tough alternatives: sleeping on the streets with their children, or giving them away to foster homes and emergency shelters, according to the statewide coalition that filed the class-action suit.

Among the plaintiffs is a 35-year-old nursing assistant who lost her job because of a medical disability and was forced to live in a car with her five children for nearly a year. An Anaheim woman said she had nowhere to go when her husband left her and she and her two teen-agers were evicted from their home. A San Diego father said he had to send his children to a shelter because he had no money to house them himself.

A Superior Court judge ruled in May that a state regulation limiting emergency shelter assistance to only those children who have been removed from their families violates state laws that say needy families should, whenever possible, be kept intact.

The judge ordered the state Department of Social Services to halt enforcement of the family-removal regulation, but state officials, who appealed the order almost immediately, declined to do so pending a decision from the appellate courts.

On Friday, Superior Court Judge John L. Cole found the state in contempt for failing to comply with the original court order, and gave Deputy Atty. Gen. Barbara Motz until Aug. 15 to notify state and county welfare agencies that the family-removal restrictions are no longer to be enforced.

‘Rational, Sane Way’

Encouraging homeless children to remain with their families “is the only reasonable, rational, sane way to read the statute,” Cole said.

But it was not clear whether the state will have to immediately begin providing emergency shelter for homeless children and their parents, which could affect an estimated 9,000 homeless families in Los Angeles County and hundreds of thousands throughout the state.

Relief agency officials in Orange County said there has been a dramatic increase in the overall numbers of homeless seeking assistance in recent months.

At the Share Ourselves relief agency in Costa Mesa, Mather said there has been a 200% increase this year over last, with 900 families a month seeking shelter, food and clothing.

Maya Dunne, director of the Orange County Fair Housing Council, said only a few of the emergency shelters in Orange County accept families and keep them together.

“The situation is one of desperation,” Dunne said. “We get a lot of calls here for families in search of adequate shelter. We can refer them (to) the few shelters that are available. But the demand is much higher than the supply.”

Two Shelters Opening in Fall

Mather said two more family shelters are slated to open this fall, one in Fullerton and one in south Orange County. But they will provide emergency housing for only a dozen families at a time.

Motz noted that the court order, while preventing the state from enforcing previous regulations, does not specifically direct the state to do anything in the way of establishing new programs for homeless families, a point that Cole conceded was valid.

“What one doesn’t do is solve all the world’s problems with one stroke of the pen with one order,” the judge said.

An attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, Byron Gross, said the ultimate effect of the court’s order is that the state will have to provide housing for all homeless families, at least on an emergency basis.

State officials say they do not know how much such a program would cost. The state, for example, spent about $231,000 to house 600 abused and neglected children during January of this year.

More Than a Motel

But legal-aid officials said the roughly $140 a night it costs to house a child in a shelter like the MacLaren’s Children’s Center in Los Angeles is far more than what it would cost to put a family up in a low-cost motel.

Family shelters, vouchers for cheap hotels or emergency cash assistance are all options that the state could consider to help tide families over until they can be established on other welfare programs, such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Gross said.

Motz said state officials will decide in the next few days whether to appeal the contempt citation or to comply with the order.

Times staff writer Kristina Lindgren contributed to this story.