Shelter for Homeless, Mentally Ill Women OKd

The Fullerton City Council on Tuesday night approved the opening of a downtown shelter that will offer overnight housing to homeless, mentally ill women.

The shelter, which is located in the basement of the First United Methodist Church of Fullerton in the 200 block of East Amerige Street, will open “as soon as possible” with room for 20 women, according to Eldon Baber, administrative director for Western Youth Services.

“There are people now on the streets who are cold and hungry,” Baber said in an interview before the vote. “And there are very, very few shelter programs in Orange County.”

Western Youth is a 16-year-old, nonprofit agency that offers mental health, shelter and drug-abuse prevention services, Baber said.

The council voted 4 to 1 to approve a conditional-use permit for the facility but ordered operators to return for a 6-month review. Councilman Richard C. Ackerman cast the lone dissenting vote, saying that such a facility was inappropriate for the downtown redevelopment area, which city officials have been trying to restore economically.

The council majority did attach three conditions to operation of the facility Tuesday night.

First, the operator was ordered to return in 6 months with a written commitment stating how transportation of the women from the Fullerton shelter to day-time facilities in Santa Ana would be handled.

Second, the council asked the operator to return in 6 months with a copy of eligibility requirements for admission to the program--an effort aimed at ensuring that only truly mentally impaired homeless women are served.

Third, the council asked the operator to return in 6 months with plans for providing showers for the women. Currently, the shelter has only sinks and toilets on the premises.

Councilman A.B. (Buck) Catlin had said earlier that he feared a shelter might attract more homeless people to downtown Fullerton. He had wanted assurances that women staying at the shelter would be transported elsewhere during the day to participate in social programs.

The city’s Chamber of Commerce officials also had sent a letter to the Planning Commission opposing such a shelter in the downtown area. Their letter was the only dissent at the Jan. 11 meeting at which commissioners voted unanimously to recommend council approval of the shelter.

Baber said that all of the women staying at the shelter would be recommended to Western Youth by various government and private social services agencies. Each woman would have to be receiving help already from a social worker, he added, although some exceptions would be allowed.

“Obviously, if someone shows up at the doorstep and asks for shelter that night, they’re not going to be thrown out,” he said.

Only homeless women can stay at the shelter, he added, no men or children.

The women will probably be bused to the shelter each day from a homeless drop-in center in Santa Ana run by the Orange County Mental Health Assn., Baber said.

Evening check-in will be around 5 p.m., followed by a hot dinner. The women will have to be out of the shelter by 9 every morning for therapy, he said.

Volunteers will be available in the evening at the shelter to play cards, watch television and chat with the women to help them readjust to society, Baber said.