Officials Disagree on Shrub Removal: Is It a Dig at the Homeless?

Santa Ana city officials said shrubs and trees were uprooted as part the maintenance plan for the Civic Center Plaza, but critics say the action is just another effort to make life more inconvenient for the city’s homeless.

Citing an earlier city policy of discarding the possessions of the homeless stashed behind the same shrubbery, Robert Cohen, director of the Orange County Legal Aid Society, said he sees the new action as “part of the package of dealing with the homeless as a negative instead of dealing with them as people who have problems.”

“It just seems like an incredible coincidence,” Cohen said.

Allen Doby, the city’s recreation director, said the landscaping changes were part of the city’s annual maintenance plan and had nothing to do with the homeless. “Our consideration is revamping the area every 5 years,” he said.

Doby said the junipers and other shrubs, which often are used as shelter by the homeless, were uprooted from around Civic Center buildings as part of the revamping and to redo the irrigation system. The older shrubbery is being replaced with flower beds that are more colorful and require less maintenance, he said.

Last August, the Legal Aid Society sued the city on behalf of two homeless men to discontinue a policy of discarding the bedrolls of the homeless. As a result, the city now stores found bedrolls at Centennial Park, where they may be claimed.

Doby said city workers send any bedrolls or personal items that are labeled with names to the park, which is about 4 miles from the Civic Center.

But Cohen said Thursday that the homeless are only allowed to claim their belongings 2 hours each week on Tuesdays and Fridays. He said the Legal Aid Society filed an amended complaint to the original lawsuit over the access issue.

“It seems they’ve gone out of their way to make things inconvenient for the homeless,” Cohen said. “You wonder what they’re going to do next.”