Little Hope for Homeless in House-Shy, Affluent Area

With its wooden benches and scuffed tile floor, the lobby of the Orange County Rescue Mission in Santa Ana looks like the waiting room of a small train station. For many of the men who bunk here each night, however, this is the end of the line.

A cab pulls up, stops and then beats a quick retreat, leaving its passenger, a discharged patient from UCI Medical Center in Orange, on the street. He is a familiar sight at the mission: an indigent with mental problems. Hospital officials say there is nowhere else to send him. “This is a pretty conservative county, and we don’t spend a whole lot on social services,” said Jeanne Newcomer, the hospital’s director of clinical social work.

For the homeless, the story of Orange County’s emerging housing crisis is an especially bitter tale. Here, in one of the nation’s most affluent areas, the homeless are not getting enough help, according to activists, social workers and even government officials.

A recent public opinion poll conducted for The Times Orange County Edition confirmed what local politicians already know: The public is sympathetic to the homeless but only at a distance.

On any given day, at least 1,000 people are without shelter in Orange County, the Rand Corp. estimates, and over the course of a year about 4,000 will be without a place to sleep for some period.

About a third of these are thought to be severely mentally ill, which means they don’t get enough to eat and have difficulty doing even simple things like buying a bus ticket or finding a phone number.

But the other two-thirds could be anybody: People who became overextended on their mortgages, suffered a catastrophic illness or moved from elsewhere in hopes of a job and ran head-on into some of the highest housing prices in the country.

In the recent Times poll, conducted by Mark Baldassare & Associates, 606 adults were surveyed. Seven of every 10 questioned said homelessness is “a big problem” or “somewhat of a problem” in the county, and only one in 10 said it was “no problem at all.”

But when the solutions to that problem involved their own neighborhoods, the respondents were reluctant to help. Only half said they would favor a shelter for the homeless in their neighborhoods.

“There’s no place here to put them,” said Rigo Gonzalez, one of the respondents and a homeowner in a southwestern Santa Ana neighborhood of single-family homes. “This is just a residential area here, and there aren’t any vacancies.”

NIMBY Factor

Said George Phillips, a vice president of United Way in Orange County: “It’s called the NIMBY factor: It stands for ‘not in my back yard.’ ”

Those who run the Orange County Rescue Mission know about the NIMBY factor. The mission was moved out of downtown Santa Ana a few years ago as the city strove to create a new, shinier image by redeveloping its downtown. But by last year, residents of the neighborhood where it was relocated were prodding the City Council to make it move again, and the mission only narrowly won that battle.

As for funding for homeless programs, The Times survey found that 59% of those questioned believe government at some level should have primary responsibility for taking care of the homeless. Six in 10 respondents also agreed that local government should fund programs “to help people who can’t afford to get into rental housing.”

Activists on behalf of the homeless, however, say it sometimes is difficult to pry enough money loose from county government to provide at even subsistence levels for the homeless. For example:

The maximum grant from the county’s general relief fund, the safety net that is supposed to catch people not eligible for other types of welfare, is $326 a month. That amount was raised from $311 only after the Legal Aid Society sued the county last year. Orange County was one of many counties criticized in a 1985 report by the California Assembly Office of Research, which found that the maximum grant just covered the average rent for very-low-income people in the county, leaving no money for food or clothing.

Orange County spends far less than most other counties in the state on welfare programs, according to figures from the state controller: About $118 per county resident, compared to an average for all counties of $219. Orange County has a smaller percentage of families living below the poverty line than the state average, but not by much: For the state it is 9.6%, for Orange County 7.9%, according to the state Data Center.

Difficult to Qualify

Furthermore, the county makes it difficult for people to qualify for general relief, activists for the homeless say.

“Orange County will tell you it has the largest general relief grant (per person) in the state,” said Jean Forbath, who heads the Costa Mesa charitable organization Share Our Selves. “But it’s way down in the number of people helped and the dollars spent. It’s like a mirage. It looks good until you get up close.”

County Social Services Agency Director Larry M. Leaman disagrees.

“As far as financial resources, if it’s an eligible client, we feel the resources are here,” Leaman said. “And in the last few years there’s been a liberalization of eligibility for the program.”

Even when the homeless can get the money, finding an affordable place to stay can be tough.

In a county where the average house now costs more than $200,000 and the average apartment rents for more than $700 a month, homelessness is no longer limited to Skid Row.

“(Homelessness) is happening to people who would never think it would happen to them,” said Janie Arnold, an aide to state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach).

A Homeless Issues Task Force organized by Bergeson recently reported that the high cost of housing was a major obstacle to helping the homeless in Orange County.

Single Rooms Vanishing

One form of low-cost housing that is fast disappearing is the SRO--”single rooms only” or flophouses--where homeless men have traditionally found shelter. These establishments are falling victim to urban renewal programs in older cities such as Santa Ana.

From the window of his Santa Ana office, Orange County Director of Mental Health Timothy P. Mullins can see the site of the old Hotel Santa Ana, which catered to those with low incomes. It is now a parking lot.

“In the two years since I’ve been here, I’ve seen as many as 600 SRO rooms disappear,” said Mullins. “Those used to be the places where people on the margin lived, but those buildings have been knocked down as fast as redevelopment can knock them down.”

Today, the poorest of the poor, among them Mexican and Asian immigrants, must squeeze impossible numbers of people into apartments in order to afford the rent.

Help comes from welfare programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children. But getting together first and last month’s rent and a security deposit for a suitable apartment can be nearly impossible.

Even in affluent Irvine, there are now homeless families, said Sylvia Easton, an activist in that city. In a typical case, a family finds it is overextended, trying to make big mortgage payments. Sometimes the husband responds by disappearing.

“The next thing, the family is out on the street, sleeping in the car,” Easton said. As the homelessness problem has grown in Orange County, some activists, like Forbath of Share Our Selves, say they have noticed the beginning of a backlash.

“There’s now a counterforce,” Forbath said. “People have become aware of the pockets of poverty in this county and become afraid of it.”

Signs of the backlash, according to Forbath, include Santa Ana’s recent push to confiscate bedrolls left by the homeless in city parks, the outcry against Latino workers gathering on street corners looking for work, and what Forbath calls “a new emphasis on code enforcement” by city housing inspectors, which has resulted in more run-down housing being condemned.

On one recent day in a Santa Ana neighborhood near the Salvation Army’s shelter, a hand-lettered sign was observed tacked onto a modest frame house. Its message to the homeless men at the mission was straightforward:

“Stay Off The Porch. The Yard. The Driveway.”

HOMELESSNESS IN ORANGE COUNTY

“How much of a problem is homelessness in Orange County?”

All Residents A big problem: 27% Somewhat of a problem: 43% A small problem: 21% No problem at all: 9%

“Who should have primary responsibility for taking care of the homeless?” Federal and state government: 43% Local government: 16% Private charities and churches: 12% More than one institution: 17% No one’s responsibility: 12% Housing the Homeless

“Would you favor or oppose a homeless shelter in your neighborhood?” All Residents Favor: 52% Oppose: 37% Don’t Know: 11%

Favor Oppose Don’t Know All Residents 52% 37% 11% Homeowners 48 42 10 Renters 61 27 12 By Age 18-34 58 30 12 35-54 48 46 6 55 or older 47 38 15 By Yearly Income Under $40,000 58 29 13 $40,000-60,000 52 40 8 Over $60,000 48 44 8 By Region North County 56 32 12 South County 48 43 9

“Local governments should fund programs to help people who can’t afford to get into rental housing.” Agree Owners: 59% Renters: 72% Disagree Owners: 32% Renters: 20% Don’t Know Owners: 9% Renters: 8% NOTE: Percentages may not add up to 100% because of rounding.

Source: Times Orange County Poll, June, 1988