Worst Still to Come : Cold Intensifies Homeless Plight

Gene Rhodes’ raw, reddened hands shook as he pulled a cigarette out of a crumpled pack Monday morning.

He had slept outside the night before, huddled in his bedroll and space blanket near Building 12 at the Civic Center complex in Santa Ana, and temperatures had dipped into the low 40s. Rhodes, 58, figured that it was about the 500th straight night he had spent on the streets.

“It’s hard to get space in the shelters, and it’s not really worth the trouble,” said Rhodes, sitting on a bench outside the Santa Ana Public Library where he passes his days reading novels and history books and staying warm. His bedroll was stashed safely nearby, and his other worldly belongings were in a knapsack and bag at his feet. “It’s cold out here, but we manage.”

Seeking Shelter Elsewhere

With the evening temperatures dropping throughout Orange County, Rhodes and hundreds of other homeless people like him find themselves facing the longest nights of another year on the streets. Winter is only three weeks away, and volunteers at shelters for the homeless are bracing for the inevitable onslaught of too many people and too little space.

In the county’s regional parks, rangers say the falling temperatures mean a lot of the homeless people who have camped there through the warmer months will begin to seek shelter elsewhere.

“A lot of them are construction workers who work nearby,” Ranger Gilberta Crisel said Monday at O’Neill Regional Park. “It’s cheaper here than a hotel.”

It costs $7 per vehicle per day to stay at any one of the county’s regional parks with camping facilities--but there is a 15-day-a-month limit. Those who spend all their time camping often alternate between Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside county parks, Featherly Regional Park Ranger John Bovee said.

There is no current authoritative estimate of the number of homeless people in Orange County, but a survey conducted two years ago by the Coalition of the Homeless showed about 3,000 individuals in shelters or cheap motels because they had no other housing. Another 2,000 were believed to be sleeping in the streets.

Last weekend, overnight temperatures dropped into the low 40s in much of the county and as low as 38 Saturday night in San Juan Capistrano. For those on the streets 11 months ago, that evoked bitter memories, though the nights are still much warmer than they were then.

Temperatures in the 30s on several consecutive nights filled shelters to overflowing last January. Thousands of blankets were distributed by churches and shelters to those who could not find space.

“We haven’t seen the kind of overwhelming rush that we did during that last cold spell,” Salvation Army business adminstrator Warren Johnson said of this year’s demand for space in shelters. The group’s Hospitality House in Santa Ana has been sheltering about 50 men and 16 women and children nightly, Johnson said, and is prepared to squeeze in more, “as long as we have a place for them to lie down,” when the weather gets colder.

‘Depending on Public’

“It will get colder--it always does,” Johnson said. “We’re depending on the general public for donations of blankets and food.”

Most of the 75 beds at the Orange County Rescue Mission already are occupied every night, but the recent cold snap has not yet created “a big surge,” said men’s director Sunne Dae. “We’ve been passing out blankets, but not that many yet.”

And at the YWCA’s hotel for homeless women in Santa Ana, Diane Russell, director of support services, said there has not yet been a significant increase in demand for shelter. “We’re full all the time, anyway.” said Russell. “We don’t have any choice but to refer them to the Salvation Army.”

Russell said there are usually fewer homeless people at the hotel around the holidays, when families tend to be more accepting and landlords may let tenants with overdue rent stay on for a few more days.

“The next three weeks will be a better test,” she said.

For Rhodes and others like him, though, the next few weeks will be no different from the previous few, except that they may be colder. A Denver native who moved to Southern California 18 years ago, Rhodes can’t remember exactly what it was that put him out on the streets for good.

“I don’t know for sure--it was just one of those things,” Rhodes said. “I couldn’t get a job like I wanted to, and then I had no place to operate, I was just floating. It was just a matter of here I am, there I ain’t.”

Life on the streets has taken a toll on Rhodes, judging from his cough and watery eyes. Monday, he couldn’t remember when he last had seen a doctor--”I could go to UCI, but that’s a long walk”--and he said he hadn’t been able to keep food or water down since Saturday.

“My stomach’s bad,” Rhodes said. “I must have eaten something bad.”

‘Not All That Bad’

Another man, who declined to give his name, said he also spends his nights around the Civic Center. He said the recent cold wave “hasn’t been all that bad” but added that he would get an apartment or a room if he could afford one.

The $80 a week he earns as a janitor, he said, just covers his food, transportation and other expenses. His work makes it hard for him to arrive at a homeless shelter on any given day early enough to get a bed, he said.

“There’s nobody who really wants to live outside,” the man said. “Some people say that we want to live out here, but they’re wrong.”

In the county’s regional parks, the number of campers is falling, but the homeless were still there Monday. About half of the 15 groups of campers staying at O’Neill Park were among them, Crisel said.

At Featherly Park, which tends to attract more homeless families because it allows visitors under the age of 18, about 25% of the campsites that were in use were occupied by homeless people, Bovee estimated.

“A lot of people work,” Bovee said. “Only about 1% of them (homeless) give us problems.”

He said recently people have become more aware of the number of homeless campers living at Featherly and periodically come by to help with food and clothing donations.

There were at least two homeless campers at Featherly Park Monday who were completely unfazed by the cool temperatures. Debora Becher and Bruce Gentz arrived at the park Thanksgiving Day after traveling 3,600 miles from Alaska to find jobs in California.

“This is a breeze,” Becher said while stirring soup at the couple’s campsite. “It was four below (zero) when we left home. This is like summer in Alaska.”

Becher and Gentz said their first goals are to find an apartment “that doesn’t require $1,000 to get into” and to find jobs. Gentz is expecting to have a difficult time finding work in construction, but Becher is confident she can land a waitressing job.

Becher said her main reason for coming to California is to save enough money to make the return trip to Alaska and bring her 5-year-old daughter from a previous marriage back with her.

She said she and Gentz feel more fortunate than some of the other homeless people at the park, who are just making it from day to day.

“We know we’re a lot better off,” Becher said. “We at least have ambition. Many of these people wait for someone to give them something so that they can get by. You know, they have a beer can in their hand today but they don’t have a goal for tomorrow. To me that’s really sad.

“I know there are jobs there for me. . . . We’re perfectly respectable people; we’re just starting over again.”

HOMELESS SHELTERS IN ORANGE COUNTY

Orange Coast Inter-Faith Shelter

Requests address not be listed, (714) 631-7213. Costa Mesa-based emergency shelter for families with children. Can house 12 families for up to 60 days. Advisers help clients find jobs, and clients must save 80% of their earnings. Short-term shelter also available.

Salvation Army Hospitality House of Orange County

At 818 East 3rd St., Santa Ana, (714) 542-9750. Separate facilities for families. Hot meals provided. Depending on nature of emergency, families may be placed in a motel. Employed individuals who are saving to rent a home may be eligible to stay up to 30 days.

Irvine Temporary Housing Inc.

Requests address not be listed, (714) 975-4050. Transitional housing available for families for up to 90 days. Clients housed in furnished apartments. Family counseling, medical treatment, employment assistance and food also provided.

Placentia Human Services

At 974 S. Melrose Ave., Placentia, (714) 630-3871. City Division of Human Services provides limited, emergency assistance for Placentia residents for up to two weeks through a voucher system.

Christian Temporary Housing Inc.

At 704 N. Glassell St., Orange, and 393 S. Tustin Ave., Tustin; (714) 771-2969. For homeless families with children. Up to 60-night stays. Adults required to actively seek work and save toward rent for housing. Program provides 2,000 shelter nights a month. Staff members are former homeless individuals.

Sheep Fold

P.O. Box 1234, Tustin, (714) 669-9569. Christian organization with shelters in Garden Grove and Tustin, caring for single women with children for up to three weeks. In some cases, clients can stay up to two months.

Community Resource Center

At 115 W. La Habra Blvd., La Habra, (213) 697-1199. Nonprofit organization of churches and service clubs staffed by volunteers to provide vouchers for emergency housing and referrals for medical care and food.

Orange County Rescue Mission

At 1901 N. Walnut St., Santa Ana, for men (address for battered women’s shelter confidential), (714) 835-0499. Nondenominational religious organization provides shelter, food, clothing, licensed counseling and employment placement services. Men may stay five days; those finding jobs eligible for three-week extension. Women with children may stay up to two months.

Travelers Aid Society At 9872 Chapman St., Suite 6 , Garden Grove, (714) 530-2426. Emergency shelter, food, transportation, counseling and crisis intervention services for families and individuals residing in Orange County six months or less. The society also assists runaways, stranded travelers, the homeless and newcomers seeking employment.

Anchor House

At 150 Avenida Pico, San Clemente (office), (714) 492-6924. Nonprofit organization under the auspices of the Episcopal Service Alliance providing shelter to homeless families for up to two months. Clients must be willing to seek employment.

YWCA Hotel for Women

At 1411 N. Broadway, Santa Ana, (714) 542-3577. For women who have recently become homeless or face imminent loss of housing and need temporary shelter while seeking employment. Twenty free beds and 18 low-cost beds with communal kitchen/lounge facilities. Clients may stay up to 60 days.

Missionaries of Charity

At 1921 W. Washington Ave., Santa Ana, no phone. Temporary housing for families with children for up to three months. Basic medical assistance, three meals a day. Office open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Dayle McIntosh Center, HEARTH Program At 12051 West St., Garden Grove, (714) 772-8285 (voice), (714) 772-8366 (telephone device for the deaf). Emergency short-term housing for handicapped people. Six-bed facility provides shelter up to 60 days for clients seeking employment and/or Social Security benefits.

Fullerton Interfaith Emergency Service, NEW VISTA Shelter At 244 E. Valencia Drive, at Lemon St., Fullerton, (714) 738-0255. Provides needy families with children in north Orange County with emergency shelter and food. Housing for five to six families for up to two months. Apply by phone 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Clients must have some income and are expected to save for own housing.

Compiled by Staff Researcher Deborrah Wilkinson