SANTA ANA : Group Says City Had Anti-Vagrant Policy

The city has tried to force homeless people out of the Civic Center and parks, the Legal Aid Society of Orange County said Tuesday, notwithstanding officials’ claims that its policy was only to remove discarded belongings.

“The city had every intention to drive the homeless out of Santa Ana for good,” said Legal Aid attorney Crystal Sims.

In a city memo dated June 16, 1988, Allen E. Doby, director of the city’s Recreation and Community Services Agency, wrote, “The City Council has developed a policy that vagrants are no longer welcome in the City of Santa Ana.” Later in the same memo, Doby wrote that the city had a program to deal with “vagrants.”

“In essence, the mission of this program will be to move all vagrants and their paraphernalia out of Santa Ana by continually removing them from the places that they are frequenting in the city, such as Civic Center, Center Park, the mission, the Hospitality House on the east side of town and other city facilities that offer refuge to them.”

In another memo, Doby wrote that his agency would need $22,000 more to “meet the city’s objective of cleaning up its neighborhoods and forcing out the vagrant population.”

City Atty. Edward J. Cooper said that Doby had mistakenly believed that the City Council had such a policy.

“There was no policy before and there is no policy now on the homeless,” Cooper said. “The only policy is to maintain the parks.”

Legal Aid is representing several homeless clients who are suing Santa Ana for lost belongings. The city confiscated clothes, bedrolls and other property and discarded them in May, 1988, as part of its park maintenance plan. After complaints, the homeless were able to reclaim their belongings at a dumpster in Centennial Regional Park.

The city and the plaintiffs’ attorneys are negotiating for a settlement in the suit, both sides said Tuesday.