Area’s Homeless Need Caring Communities

Santa Ana’s policy of rousting the homeless out of downtown parks and the Civic Center area and confiscating their possessions is outrageously cruel. Even a study by the police themselves wisely concludes that police action will not solve the homeless problem. Indeed, the biggest crime involved among the homeless is the deplorable lack of community concern for finding these unfortunate and unwanted residents safe, warm places to sleep.

The controversy in Santa Ana focuses attention not only on the city’s unfeeling approach to the homeless situation but on the problem itself, meaning the thousands of homeless people in Orange County for whom only a few hundred beds are available.

Except for a handful of caring people who regularly devote time to the homeless and understand their situation, few county residents seem to care much about the terrible lack of emergency housing facilities or try to understand who the homeless really are.

Some are vagrants. Some are alcoholics. Sticking with those stereotypes makes it easier for the community to ignore the homeless. Cities like Santa Ana seem intent on forcing them to move on, caring less about where they go than about whether they leave town.

But the stereotype doesn’t present a true picture of the people forced to sleep in parks, public buildings, doorways, bushes or wherever they can bed down for the night. Many of the homeless are parents with children. Some have jobs but don’t have enough money to pay either the deposit or the high rent required for an apartment in Orange County.

One survey of the homeless several years ago disclosed that most had lived in the county for more than one year and had a high school education or better. Educated or not, they deserve a roof over their heads. The fact that so many people lack shelter each night is especially outrageous in a community as affluent as Orange County.

That same 1985 survey also showed that local government and the private sector were both doing far too little to improve the plight of the homeless here.

And the draft of another report just completed by a task force studying the homeless issue indicates that the situation is little changed in three years. There still are far too few beds available, and there is far too little community concern. The report duly noted the county’s high housing costs and lack of an affordable housing program.

The report also cites a major reason why more isn’t being done: Many cities and residents are fearful that providing service to the homeless will create a “magnet” that attracts street people.

And so affordable housing and emergency-shelter beds remain in woefully short supply. Detoxification centers remain virtually non-existent. And Santa Ana city officials can confiscate the bedrolls and belongings of the homeless sleeping in city parks with hardly anyone in the community protesting the official mistreatment. There is shame in that silence and indifference.

Ideally, there should be no homeless on Orange County streets; in reality, they are there. Unwanted as they may be, no community with a conscience can continue to ignore them or their needs.

Government exists to help its people--all of its people. The true measure of a society is not in how much more it provides those with plenty but in what it does for those who have little or nothing at all.

The city of Irvine took a small but significant step Tuesday when it voted to accept two run-down farmhouses from the Irvine Co. to renovate for the use of homeless residents. Several private organizations have volunteered free labor and material to make the shelters livable. That’s the kind of community attitude and action that’s needed throughout Orange County to replace cold neglect and official harassment.