Between Rocks and a Hard Place : For Homeless at Bridge Refuges, Life Will Soon Get Rougher

The aroma of spaghetti sauce warming over a campfire rose above the murky Santa Ana River under the McFadden Avenue overpass in Santa Ana on Saturday, lending a homey atmosphere to an otherwise bleak landscape littered with abandoned couches and shopping carts.

The space underneath this and two other overpasses nearby have been home to about 40 transient men and women.

But at 7 a.m. Monday, the Orange County Environmental Management Agency will have about 25 workers begin placing rocks beneath the overpasses at McFadden and Edinger avenues and 1st Street.

The agency decided to take the action after repeated complaints that the homeless have frightened nearby residents, as well as joggers and cyclists who use the trail on the east side of the river, across from the makeshift campsites. There have also been complaints about transients urinating and defecating in public.

Transients a ‘Nuisance’

“They are a nuisance to the users (of the trail) and the adjacent homeowners,” said Bill Reiter, a public works operations manager for the Environmental Management Agency. “More and more people have been going under there . . . and it’s only going to get worse.”

“We’re going to try to do this in the most humane way possible,” he said, adding that residents’ personal belongings will not be damaged or taken away Monday morning, but simply set outside near the overpasses.

As a group of people at the McFadden overpass sat around a pot of spaghetti cooking over an open flame Saturday, some said they have no idea where they will go when rousted from the spot.

One man, who has been living with his wife there for six months, said that the homeless don’t bother people on the trail. No one camps on the east side of the river because there is too much foot traffic nearby, he said.

He and his wife, who did not want to give their names, had no specific plans about where they would move, but were certain they would remain in Santa Ana.

“I’m from Santa Ana, and I don’t travel,” said another man, 35. “I just want to know, is this the war on poverty, or is this the war on drugs?” he said of the imminent eviction. “What war is this part of?”

The project, approved by the city of Santa Ana, will take about two weeks to complete, Reiter said.

Some residents and trail users said Saturday that they approved of the action.

John Covington, who lives on Susan Street, on the west side of the McFadden Avenue bridge, said he has encountered a few of the people living under the bridge.

“One comes here and asks for water. We don’t mind,” he said. “We told him as long as he asks, it’s no problem.”

However, he said, “this is a quiet area, and it’s starting to get rowdy. We’d rather keep it quiet.”

Santa Ana resident Jesus Benunuri, who has jogged on the trail regularly for the past six years, said the people under the bridge scare him.

“The way they look, they way they smell,” Benunuri said, “they scare me.”

Scotty and Bud Maddox, 22-year residents of Quiet Village Mobile Home Park, which is next to the 1st Street bridge, said the number of people appearing to live under the bridge has increased in recent years. But, they say, those people tend to keep to themselves.

“We haven’t had any trouble,” Bud Maddox said. “We feel sorry for them living there, but they have to live somewhere.”