2 Armories Shelter Homeless From Stormy Blasts of Winter

As Harry Hare saw it, he couldn’t have picked a worse time to run out of money and luck.

Last Saturday, the 56-year-old Santa Ana man, disabled by arthritis, lost his Social Security check, he said Thursday night. That check, he said, was the only thing keeping a roof over his head.

So he was forced to sleep in his car, huddling at night in 50-degree temperatures as the cold and damp weather made his arthritic left foot swell to twice its normal size.

“It really hurts--it gets painful,” Hare said.

Hare was one of 111 homeless people who sought shelter from the cold and rain in two National Guard armories that were opened on an emergency basis in Orange County on Thursday. It was the first night this fall that two armories had been opened as shelters. Just before Christmas last year, Gov. George Deukmejian gave counties the authority to use such state buildings as emergency housing for the homeless.

The buildings can be used as shelters if overnight temperatures below 40 degrees are predicted or if there is more than a 50% chance of rain and the temperature is expected to drop below 50 degrees.

A total of 78 men, 8 women and 4 children sought shelter at the Santa Ana armory in the 600 block of East Warner Avenue, a county Social Services Agency official said late Thursday. At the second facility in the 400 block of South Brookhurst Street in Fullerton, 19 men and 2 women turned up for dinner, a cot and a warm blanket. The armories are equipped to accommodate up to 250 people.

A final decision on whether the armories will stay open to shelter the homeless tonight will be made based on early morning weather reports, said Dianne Edwards, director of adult and employment services for the Social Services Agency.

“My understanding is that the rain is expected to continue through Sunday, so it’s very likely that we’ll be open (tonight) and Saturday night,” Edwards said.

The emergency shelters were opened at 6 p.m. Thursday, with a staff of about 25 volunteers--mostly from various departments in county government--serving hot meals.

“One of the things we learned last year is that a lot of the homeless are not unemployed folks,” said Orange County Social Services Director Larry Leaman, who spent a few evenings last year--including Christmas Eve--as a volunteer at the shelters. “I would say maybe as many as 10% were asking us for wake-up calls so they could go to work.

“A lot of people working at the lower economic rung earn enough to have shelter maybe 3 weeks out of the month and, by the fourth week, they’re out on the street.”

An estimated 2,000 to 4,000 homeless people live in Orange County, Leaman said.

At the Santa Ana armory Thursday night, there were a number of homeless men who had been rounded up in five buses sent out by the Orange County Department of Social Services. By 7 p.m., about 40 people had been brought to the shelter in that manner.

Word of the shelters was spread through community service organizations, such as the Salvation Army, that deal with the homeless on a regular basis. Those organizations sent homeless people to designated locations where they were picked up and taken to the shelters, Edwards said.

Others struggled in on their own, she said, some before the shelters’ doors had officially opened.

As they arrived, people were told to sign in and were given blankets and cots. A meal of ham, biscuits, broccoli, yams, applesauce and coffee was served buffet style. Edwards said the homeless were also given toiletry articles and will be given breakfast this morning.

Whiskered men wearing stained clothes and toting belongings in plastic bags huddled in small groups to eat and talk before bedding down for the night. Many had arrived in Santa Ana the same day.

Dave McGee, for example, said he had just hitchhiked in from Phoenix to begin a $4-an-hour job as a construction laborer Thursday. But the rain, he said, left him without work or money to rent a motel room.

“Everybody was talking about that good California weather,” McGee, 30, said with a grin.

In even worse straits was 23-year-old Jim Poulicakus, who broke a leg a few months ago while hitchhiking west from New Hampshire and faced a painful night out in the cold before being sent to the shelter by a rescue mission. Poulicakus’ left leg was broken in two places in August when he was hit by a pickup, and he has been hobbling around in a cast and braces since then.

“To be honest with you, I was going to break a windshield and get thrown in jail so I wouldn’t have to sleep out tonight,” Poulicakus said as he cradled a bowl of hot soup in his hands.

Dr. Robert Berger, a physician with the Department of Social Services, said prolonged exposure to cold, damp air causes flu, sinus and sore throat problems for the homeless, not to mention exacerbating conditions such as arthritis.