Drug Addicts’ Problems Go Beyond a Quick Fix : Treatment: The pariahs among street people are in need of specialized services that are scarce in O.C.

Stand on this Santa Ana corner for a while and you can get anything you want, the young man says, motioning toward the curb.

“Drugs are the biggest problem in this city,” he continues against a backdrop of rundown houses, junked cars and debris-littered lots. “I’d say 80% of the people on the streets are using them.”

Why? “Because they’re here, they’re available and everybody else is doing it.”

He is neither old nor young, a thin man in ill-fitting clothes, a Chicago native who had a decent job as a laborer and lost it, who now lives on the streets and appears a cool survivor until a hint of desperation and sadness tinges his voice.

Why do you do it, he is asked. Why would you smoke away in cocaine your wife’s $500 Social Security check?

“It’s what keeps me still. Otherwise, I might be out stealing from people’s houses,” he answers.

Orange County’s homeless residents, conservatively estimated by county social service officials at more than 10,000 men, women and children, have become increasingly hard to ignore.

Although many express sympathy or concern for the plight of homeless mothers and children, few express more than contempt at the sight of a tattered man or woman huddled against a door jamb in a drug or alcoholic haze. They are among the hard-core homeless, who are on the streets the longest and are the most difficult to reach, with problems that go beyond finding work or a place to sleep.

The homeless who are substance abusers are pariahs. For many, they have no more than they deserve--and are least deserving of a handout or government-supported services.

Yet while these are the homeless who are among the hardest to reach, the hardest to lift out of hopelessness, they are also most in need of specialized, direct services--help that is scarce but much in demand in the county, experts say.

One reason for the scarcity of services is the hard, unsympathetic face presented by these men and women. The public doesn’t understand--or want to face the fact--that they are someone’s uncle, brother or sister.

“The only way we can get the general public to develop some empathy with their plight is if people can identify with them; if people say, ‘That could be me or someone I love,’ ” said William Edelman, manager of drug abuse services for the county Health Care Agency.

Harry is a son and brother. His parents live only a few minutes from the streets and underpasses he has come to call home. But Harry, 44, has not seen them for more than 15 years, since the day in 1975 when, strung out on drugs and alcohol, he almost beat his father to death.

His descent began early. He was drinking heavily in junior high because alcohol was readily available at home, he says. His drug and alcohol use exploded in Vietnam, helping him cope with the closeness of death and destruction.

His addiction made him steal. It also cost him jobs, a family, trust in others, and in himself, all dignity.

“You don’t care what people say when they see you coming and you’re filthy, that you’re standing in a dumpster digging for a half-eaten sandwich; it doesn’t bother you to panhandle a scared young woman for a buck because all you want is a drink,” he says.

Three months ago, sleeping under bushes near UCI Medical Center, he says, he turned over and saw a vision of death, and it reached for him. He entered an adult rehabilitation center in Anaheim run by the Salvation Army. It is not the first time he has tried to go straight, but he is moved this time, he says, by a spiritual hand and is finally beginning to understand his problem.

“The majority of people have the attitude that someone like me is nothing but a derelict, but it’s not true,” he says. “People don’t want to believe something can be an addiction. The problem is the substance abuser doesn’t want to believe it either.”

It is hard to assess how many of Orange County’s homeless use drugs. One Legal Aid study put the number as low as 20%, while the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse says it might be as high as 90%.

Tim Shaw, director of the substance abuse program for the private Newport Beach group Street People in Need (SPIN), estimates that 70% to 80% of the county’s permanent adult homeless are hard-core drug users.

Many others are occasional users probably on their way to becoming serious substance abusers.

Their plight seems intractable. Simply finding them shelter or a job without addressing the underlying substance abuse is likely to make their problems worse, Shaw said.

“The rationale of the (substance abuser) is that they must hit rock bottom, but rock bottom is a constantly adjusting place,” he said. “If they can receive food, clothing, panhandle a bit, it seems as if life is not so bad.”

Yet, there are almost no comprehensive programs that address problems of homeless substance abusers, who lack the means to pay for private hospitalization.

The county provides about $12 million for a drug treatment and prevention program that includes six outpatient clinics, four residential treatment programs, an AIDS shelter and a program for women.

Fees for the program are based on a sliding scale and the services are available to indigent patients, but director Edelman said the program lacks the funding and facilities to meet the demand.

The county’s four detoxification centers have at most 50 beds where patients can spend seven to 10 days ridding their bodies of addictive poisons. Detoxification ideally is followed by an extended period of rehabilitation, but only a dozen recovery homes in the county cater to the homeless.

Most often, addicts end up back on the streets of Orange County before they are recovered. But experts do not blame only the system.

“This is not a nice, neat little structured problem,” SPIN director Sam Boyce said. “It’s a mixed problem, not the least of which is getting people to admit they have a drug or alcohol problem. They like drugs, need them, they dull the pain, the sense of reality.”

And to get the drugs, addicts will resort to violence and crime. Their victims are often other homeless.

The experts on the streets tell the tale:

“The druggies cause all the trouble, the fights,” says George, 62, who has been on the streets for eight years since losing his wife to cancer and his Garden Grove plastics firm to creditors. “They take advantage of the elderly, women, anyone who is vulnerable.”

George became an alcoholic upon hitting the skids but sobered up after a few months. As an older man prone to passing out when drunk, he was all too vulnerable to the harsh realities of drug use on the street.

“I had to learn how to brawl with them; it helped me quit, probably saved my life,” he says, huddled against the cold night near a Santa Ana Civic Center doorway.

The different ways society regards alcohol and drug abusers--more understanding of the former, less tolerant of the latter--might hamper efforts to solve the overall problem, officials say.

Social providers complain that much government funding for treatment and prevention is earmarked for alcohol services and that drug funds come with strings that prevent efficient provision of services.

Boyce said that homeless drug users often claim an alcohol problem to more easily receive services at state or federally funded clinics.

“The state and federal governments have created a bureaucracy that doesn’t allow for the realities of what goes on with people,” Edelman agreed.

“Part of the problem is the myth that alcohol is something our society has been able to grapple with, it’s a disease and not as much a criminal matter. Drugs are seen as criminal, and that is an important line for a lot of people.”

That distinction has made life harder for the homeless man from Chicago, who was arrested and jailed in Bakersfield for sales and possession of cocaine.

Although no less addicted than an alcoholic, his problems--and society’s perception of him--have been much harder to overcome, he complains.

But now he has tired of pouring out his life’s travails and wants only to seek shelter for the night.

He says he has no illusions that anyone really cares about him or his wife, but he thinks that they deserve better.

“Hey, we need help. We need somebody that’s gonna be there for us.”

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE OF HOMELESS ON O.C.

Median Age: 32

Sex:

Men: 66%

Women: 34%

Race:

Anglo: 61%

Black: 17%

Latino: 16%

American Indian: 3%

Asian: 1%

Marital Status:

Single: 48%

Married: 17%

Divorced: 20%

Education:

High School Grad: 63%

Some College: 25%

Degree: 9%

Employment:

Unemployed: 67%

Disabled: 14%

Working part time or full time: 11%

Length of Time Homeless:

One Month: 41%

One Year: 13%

Two Years: 12%

Three Years: 16%

Reason Became Homeless:

Lost a Job: 50%

Unaffordable Housing: 52%

Family Problems: 20%

Eviction: 29%

Notes: Due to the survey format, figures in many categories do not equal 100 %.

Source: Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force’s February, 1990, survey of 1,974 homeless men, women and children who sought services from 16 county agencies and charities.