Costa Mesa Police to Start Clearing Parks of Homeless

Costa Mesa police on Monday will begin forcing people out of the city’s parks after midnight in response to complaints by neighbors about transients.

“My wife won’t take my daughter into the park to use the swings, which is kind of depressing since my taxes and everybody else’s paid for it,” said Ken, a resident who would give only his first name.

The resident, who lives across the street from Rea Community Center on Hamilton Street, said those sleeping in the park behind the center harassed passers-by and urinated in yards in the neighborhood, making it nearly impossible to use the grounds for sports and recreation.

“The main problem is noise,” he said. “They hoot and they howl.”

Recently, four of the transients were playing Dixieland jazz with musical instruments, the man said.

“They were good,” he said, “but not when you’re trying to sleep.”

Police Chief Dave Snowden said Saturday that for several years the city has had a law prohibiting people from staying in parks after midnight. Officials decided to enforce it only after residents began complaining that more and more homeless people were sleeping near the community center and in Wilson Park on Wilson Street.

“They haven’t hassled me, but they sure are growing in numbers,” said Lee Litrell, another neighbor of the Rea Center. “I think it’s just a feeling of the multiplication of them . . . the horde. . . . It’s rare for people to use it as a park.”

“The decision (to enforce the ordinance) was made quite a while ago,” Snowden said. “My staff sat down, and we had been getting complaints and we decided we better do something now or the problem’s going to get worse down the road.”

Police More Active

Although the policy will not officially be enforced until Monday night, residents and transients alike said that police have been increasingly active in the area over the past few days.

Snowden said his officers in the past few days have gone to the parks to warn transients that beginning Monday, anyone there after midnight there would be cited and possibly arrested.

Jean Forbath, director of Share Our Selves, an emergency services program based at Rea Community Center that feeds and clothes the homeless, said she was impressed that police took the time to warn homeless people, but that closing the parks won’t solve the city’s homeless problem.

“I can understand why a lot of the residents are not happy about the (homeless) traffic in the area, but that’s where it is,” she said. “It’s a problem we all have to face. Nobody wants to look at the homeless, nobody wants to see the homeless in their neighborhoods. If we don’t want to look at them, where are they going to go?”

Forbath said she was surprised at the enforcement decision because in the past Costa Mesa has always been one of the most hospitable cities in the county to social service organizations like her own.

Group at Park

About a dozen homeless men--Caucasian, black and Latino--were gathered on the edge of the park behind the Rea Community Center at sundown on Saturday, drinking quietly. Some were shirt-less and unkempt, others were neatly dressed. Many, including a number who said they were Vietnam veterans, noted that they were longtime Costa Mesa residents. Others said they had come looking for work or were forced out of Santa Ana.

“We don’t steal,” said a man who gave his name as Joe. “This is not the way we want to live, but sometimes life drives you to ways you don’t want to live.”

Joe, an upholsterer when he can find work, said he has lived in Costa Mesa for 20 years. “We don’t cause problems to anyone,” he said. “We get pushed around by the cops. This is not the way to live.”

“We’ve been here since the early ‘70s,” said a another man who gave his name as Julio. “We have no other place to stay.”

“I’m job hunting in this area,” said a man who gave his name as Frank and said he was an unskilled laborer. “There’s nothing in my area. . . . I’m willing to take room and board.”

A resident of the area, who gave her name as Shirley, said she goes regularly to the park to help the transients.

“Everybody’s getting drunk because they don’t have anything to do,” said the woman, a bartender who said she has been out of work for the past month. “People sleep here because they have nowhere to go. I come over here to help my friends. I’ve been broke myself.”

Mayor Donn Hall on Saturday defended the city’s action, saying that the city has been doing its part for the homeless for years and it must now tend to the needs of local residents.

“You’ll find that Costa Mesa spends more money on social service projects than any other city in the county,” he said. “We just can’t do it all.”

Cites Complaints

The mayor said he had received a number of complaints from residents near the community center, including one from a homeowner who rented his house to two women who worked night shifts. They were afraid to come home late at night, the mayor said, because of the homeless men sleeping near their house. After a few months, they moved.

Hall said he also feared that offering more services to homeless people would only attract increasing numbers of them.

“We have a lot of people who are basically totally incapable of taking care of themselves,” Hall said. “And that is a problem that the city itself cannot handle, because no matter how much service you provide, you can never provide enough, if you’re the only city providing that service.”

But Forbath said solving the homeless problem isn’t just a matter of providing more services. What is needed, she said, is more affordable housing.

“We have no housing that somebody receiving General Assistance can afford to pay,” she said. “There is just none. The cheapest room at the YMCA is $75 (a week), and that’s if you share it with somebody. There are no single rooms.”

She said that General Assistance--the only funding available to single homeless people--provides $55 a week for housing.