Tough New Homeless Policy Triggers Furor in Santa Ana

Pat Ford lives amid the government buildings in downtown Santa Ana, and life there of late has been as hard as the concrete porch he sleeps on.

Two weeks ago, Ford’s belongings were pulled out of the bushes and carted off for disposal by city maintenance crews, who have been on a crusade for the last month, picking up unattended belongings in the city’s parks and the Civic Center.

Ford, 45, scraped together a sleeping bag, a quilt and some more clothes from friends and the Salvation Army. But last Wednesday, when he went off to get cleaned up to look for work, he got cleaned out again. The worldly possessions he had stashed in the bushes were gone when he returned.

“As soon as they saw there was nobody sitting here guarding the stuff, they took it,” Ford said. “No one has ever come down and said, ‘Leave. We don’t want you here.’ Out of the blue, they come over and take everything.”

Month-Old Policy

Since they were ordered to remove unattended belongings from public property about a month ago, city maintenance crews have collected enough clothes, bedrolls and sacks to fill five one-ton trucks, according to city officials.

The get-tough policy has triggered criticism, just as it has in Los Angeles, where police recently launched a controversial raid on two City Hall-area encampments during which belongings of about 50 people were taken and dumped into a landfill.

About 5,000 to 6,000 homeless people live in Orange County, and about half of those are believed to spend most of their time in Santa Ana.

Some critics of Santa Ana’s policy suggest that it is politically motivated, and advocates for the homeless have criticized the campaign as cruel punishment. But Santa Ana Mayor Dan Young has defended the policy as part of a larger effort to clean up what was a few years ago a decaying city.

5-Year Program

“We’re involved in a 5-year program to improve all of our residential neighborhoods in the city . . . and that includes cleaning up neighborhood parks . . . where these vagrants are camping out and have trashed them,” Young said.

The clean-up campaign has thrust the city’s efforts to deal with its homeless population into the limelight. And while some social service groups and homeless advocates say the city is doing its part, others are unhappy with what they see:

- A 1988-89 Community Development Block Grant budget that social service groups say gives short shrift to low-cost housing providers and services for the homeless.

- A recent meeting of city planning officials and social service groups to discuss restrictions that may soon be placed on groups providing meals to the homeless in parks and at shelters.

- Alleged city opposition to a proposal by the Community Development Council, the county’s anti-poverty agency, to bring a trailer with medical and social services staff to parks frequented by the homeless.

“They have made a decision that they’re just going to force the homeless people out of the city of Santa Ana,” said Scott Mather, chairman of the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter in Costa Mesa. “That’s not the way you deal with the problem.”

Mather and representatives of other groups that run meal programs for the homeless in Santa Ana met with June Catalano, the city’s planning director, last week to discuss possible restrictions on those programs. Catalano said she expects to propose an ordinance to the City Council in August that would restrict the groups to certain areas and require that they obtain conditional-use permits before setting up food lines.

The permit process would enable the city to make sure there are enough bathrooms where the meals are served and that the food is properly prepared and contained, Catalano said.

Motives Questioned

Mather sees it as an effort to keep groups from helping Santa Ana’s homeless.

“They wanted to know why we came to Santa Ana,” he said. “It would not surprise me if this became a regulation that would be impossible to qualify for.”

Mayor Young disputes any suggestion that the city is turning its back on the homeless. But he also said the city has an obligation not to surrender its neighborhoods and business districts to large numbers of vagrants.

“We do more for the homeless than any other city in Orange County,” Young said. “We put $100,000 into the construction of (the YWCA’s) homeless facility for women. . . . They’re feeding them in our parks. . . . We provide very substantial amounts of support to a variety of agencies that help.”

But at the same time, Santa Ana should not be asked to accommodate the majority of the county’s homeless, Young said.

‘Can Get a Meal’

“They’re attracted here for the primary reason that social service agencies set up mobile feeding vans at some of (our) parks,” he said. “They know they can get a meal, and we think that’s great--it’s a magnificent idea to give them a meal. But why not in all 27 cities?”

Some of those who work with the homeless in Santa Ana agree with Young’s contention that the city is doing its part.

John Lands, executive director of the Orange County Rescue Mission, said the city “is supportive” of efforts to help the homeless but is “caught in the middle.”

Mary Douglas, executive director of the Santa Ana YWCA, which operates a hotel for homeless women downtown, said: “The city has been most supportive of the work we’re doing here . . . I don’t think they are changing the level of commitment.”

Some of the city’s critics point to the upcoming November council election as the motivation for the city’s hardened stance. A group of residents has complained bitterly the last year about syringes and human waste left behind by vagrants, and a few business owners threatened to move out of town if their area was not cleaned up.

‘It’s Palatable’

“It’s politically nice, it’s palatable, it’s something people want to hear: ‘All right, we’re going to clean it up,’ ” said Helen Brown, a community activist and president of the Civic Center Barrio Housing Corp., a group that builds and refurbishes housing for the poor.

Young denied that public pressure or politics was behind the city’s efforts to clean up the parks.

Young’s chief foe on the council, John Acosta, is the only council member to publicly oppose the city’s policy.

“I think it’s deplorable that we take these people’s personal property and throw it away at the dump,” Acosta said. Businessmen, he said, “have every right in the world to complain that the homeless people are impacting their business . . . milling around, sleeping around, defecating and urinating on your property. However, I don’t think that the approach that the mayor has ordered and authorized . . . is the right answer either.”

Homeless advocates are also upset about the city’s use of community development block grant funds. The funds are intended to benefit low- and moderate-income groups, to attack blight and address community needs that represent a serious threat.

A coalition of social service groups objected to the city’s use of the funds this year to build a new fire station in a largely industrial area while not funding homeless and low-cost housing programs.

The group, headed by Alice McCullough, board chairman of Relampago del Cielo, a Latino cultural group, was successful in persuading the city to allocate funds for some groups that would have gone without, but not for homeless programs.