Street People : Cold Spell Revives Street Memories of Homelessness
There are a few characters who drift in and out of the Santa Ana downtown area almost daily. Tom is one of them.
I met him briefly last March when I spent eight days on the streets living the grimy life of a transient, homeless person while doing research for a story on homelessness in Orange County. I doubt Tom remembers me, but I often think of him and countless other men I encountered during that wretched, cold and rainy week.
By coincidence I spotted Tom two mornings last week outside the courthouse in Santa Ana. I do not acknowledge that I know Tom--or any of the others with whom I shared oatmeal and cold floors at the Orange County Rescue Mission--when I see them.
On Wednesday, when the cold wind blew and the rain persisted throughout the day, I did not see Tom outside the courthouse scrounging for shorts (cigarette butts). I wondered where he was and if he had found a warm spot for the day.
When I roamed the streets of Santa Ana last March, the elements were tough. I slept under a cluster of eucalyptus trees along the Santa Ana River. The temperature was about 45 degrees and it was dry. Wearing a heavy Army fatigue jacket and double-wrapped in a blanket, I still shivered.
I also spent one miserable day in the rain. My hands were numb and I ached while sleeping fitfully that night on the hard floor of the mission’s lobby.
So when the bona fide winter storm, bolstered by rain and frigid gusts of wind, moved in last week, I shivered at the thought of the homeless braving wet conditions and near-freezing temperatures.
Sunne Dae, the men’s director at the Rescue Mission in Santa Ana, said 60 men had been crammed into the facility. Luckily, cots are now strewn in the lobby and the men do not have to sleep on the cold, hard floor. Dae said blankets and ponchos were dispensed to several other men who could not get into the mission.
“We’ve been very lucky so far, but this situation just doesn’t get any better,” said Dae, hoping the winter storm would swiftly disappear.
It was a sad week for those who survive on the street. While the storm was moving into the Southland, a report out of Washington indicated that the number of homeless throughout the country continues to soar. More worrisome, according to the report, is the fact that families now constitute the majority of the homeless.
Two years ago, a study revealed that at least 5,000 homeless people live in Orange County and there are only 500 beds to accommodate them.
“The numbers haven’t gone down and the number of people living in parks and on the streets keeps multiplying. It’s going to get worse,” said Scott Mather, a Costa Mesa insurance executive who spends most of his free time championing the cause of the homeless.
The night before the storm struck, Mather and his friends distributed 178 hot meals on the street.
Still, Mather feels the frustration. He is a member of a newly created task force to find a comprehensive plan to help the homeless. The panel, which includes several heads of county agencies, met last week. But Mather said the task force may be too concerned with gathering data and long-range plans.
“I want to help these folks right now ,” he said.
Normal weather has returned. Nights are nippy but it is dry again. Until the next bad storm, we will ignore the homeless problem. Then the media, including this newspaper, will get excited again about the problems of the homeless.
