SANTA ANA : Market Tries to Heal Relations With Poor

Viva Supermarkets, whose shopping-cart-collection agency confiscated carts containing the possessions of homeless people in Santa Ana’s Civic Center in April, has agreed to make up for the incident by distributing money, food and jobs to the poor.

Under terms of an agreement negotiated by the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, Viva will make a $25,000 donation to the Latino immigration rights group Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, which will distribute it to Santa Ana’s homeless, said Robert J. Cohen, Legal Aid’s executive director. Viva will also donate groceries at least once a week to agencies that help the needy in Santa Ana, Cohen said.

In addition, the supermarket chain will offer jobs to the two dozen homeless people who lost belongings when the cart-collection agency took the carts and dumped their possessions in the Civic Center.

Cohen said Legal Aid was contemplating filing a lawsuit against Viva over the incident before the agreement was reached.

Kasey Haws, one of Viva’s lawyers, said Viva did not know that its cart-collection agency was dumping homeless people’s possessions out before taking back its carts. In deciding how to make up for that incident, he said, discussion turned to how to help the homeless community in general.

“We wanted to do right by the homeless,” Haws said.

Pat Barber, in-house counsel for Viva, said Legal Aid selected Hermandad to receive and distribute the money.