Cleanup Rules Urged for Santa Ana Homeless Groups

Mobile soup kitchens that feed the homeless in Santa Ana would be required to set up portable toilets, tables and trash cans at each stop under a proposal by the city’s Planning Department.

While a group of local residents applauded the idea, soup kitchen operators called the requirement impossible and another bid to drive the kitchens--and with them the homeless--from the city.

Sam Boyce, director of Street People in Need, based in Newport Beach, said Santa Ana “is trying to drive the homeless away by driving out those that help them. We can’t provide bathroom facilities and pay for permits and bring out portable tables and chairs. It’s too costly.”

Volunteers for the group distribute sack lunches from a van in several Santa Ana locations on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Saturdays, they serve coffee and doughnuts.

But Karol W. Vanzant, a member of the group Cleanup Our Businesses and Residential Areas, which helped draft the proposal, said the homeless problem has grown much more serious in Santa Ana because of the distribution of food by these soup kitchens.

“These are outside food providers that provide help in our city,” he said. “Their vehicles pass out food and clothing right on our streets. This maintains these (homeless) people in our area.”

Vanzant, who owns an auto accessory parts store on West 1st Street, said the homeless sleep on his store’s doorstep and leave litter behind.

“I have to clean up after them before I open my store. It’s disgusting,” Vanzant said.

A report by the Planning Department staff concludes: “The impact of food distribution includes littering, loitering and the creation of unsanitary conditions. It is uncertain whether the distribution of food attracts additional persons to these locations, but aspects of free food distribution do create adverse impacts in the neighborhoods.”

The Planning Department is preparing an amendment to a city code that will be considered by the city’s Planning Commission and then the City Council. The amendment would also require soup kitchens to have city permits.

Jonathan Parfrey, a member of Catholic Worker, a Santa Ana group that serves hot meals every Monday, said most organizations that feed the homeless could not afford to comply with the new code because they all have “very low budgets. This kind of requirement asks us to be like restaurants or a catering truck.”

Orange County has about 10,000 homeless people, 1,500 of whom stay in Santa Ana, said Scott Mather of the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter in Newport Beach.

“This is not going to solve Santa Ana’s homeless problem,” Mather said. “This is just another amendment in place that makes it impossible for agencies to help the homeless.”

Mather blamed what he called the city’s lack of initiative in helping such people for Santa Ana’s homeless problem.

In 1988, the city began a campaign to confiscate such belongings as bedding and clothes in a bid to remove the homeless from the Civic Center area, where many of them sleep overnight.

The city stopped after a protest was filed, and the homeless were able to pick up their belongings at a dumpster in Centennial Regional Park.