Public Concern Starts Giving Way to Burnout

Things are tough all over, says Loretta, a 37-year-old Oklahoma native who has spent the past two years living from hand to mouth on the streets of Santa Ana and knows a thing or two about tough times.

Her favorite refuge, a relatively secure and dry loading dock owned by a businessman who had winked at its use by her, her boyfriend and their infant son, is now off-limits as sleeping quarters.

“He’s a nice man; I don’t know what happened,” Loretta said of the once-sympathetic owner.

Only days before, Loretta said, she watched as a friend, a homeless woman who has a bad back and walks with a hunch, was hustled out of the neighborhood by police. They were called by a homeowner who complained that the woman was lingering in front of a residence.

“I think a lot of people don’t give a damn about (the homeless), and some people are just mean for no reason at all.”

For Orange County’s charity providers, Loretta’s anecdotes are part of a distressing pattern of sympathy giving way to frustration and ambivalence. They are hallmarks of a growing social phenomenon called compassion fatigue or burnout.

While these reactions can be seen most clearly in urban jungles like the subways of New York, they are also emerging in Orange County, where an increasingly visible homeless population has slowly entered the public’s consciousness.

Appeals for donations go unanswered.

The homeless who dwell at Santa Ana’s Civic Center are rousted by police.

Once-sympathetic residents turn away from the outstretched hands of panhandlers.

Such reactions increasingly concern social service providers, who must deal with the county’s mushrooming homeless population.

“People are used to (the homeless) now, they’re not so shocked or filled with outrage because it is so commonplace,” said Jean Forbath, chairwoman of the Orange County Human Relations Commission and director of a Costa Mesa charity.

Forbath said she has encountered the phenomenon even among agencies and service providers that deal with the homeless.

“I get comments like ‘Oh no, here they are again’ and ‘Are you still homeless?’ It’s getting to the point where we’re blaming the victims rather than finding solutions.”

Forbath said such negative reactions do not necessarily stem from hostility to the homeless but grow out of frustration that there might be no solutions.

“The problem is so big and the solutions so difficult to obtain that it is easy to close your mind to it and to throw up your hands and say, ‘I can’t do anything about it, so I’m not going to think about it.’ ”

Susan Oakson, a coordinator with the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force, agreed:

“Homelessness is a big issue and we have to meet it on that large level,” she said. “It will take tremendous effort and programs to have an impact, and sometimes that is a hard thing to face.”

John Garrett, executive director of the Mental Health Assn. of Orange County, recalled a recent fund-raising appeal in which hundreds of letters and donation cards were sent out on behalf of mentally ill homeless.

“We all thought it was a good idea,” Garrett said. “It was right after Christmas, and people were still in the holiday spirit.”

But the results were “dismal,” he said.

“People actually called us up and were angry that we had asked them for money for the homeless. This is an affluent county which would rather look at the good than the bad. Even talking to a homeless person is scary.”

The angry responses reflect a population that is aware of the homeless but has no desire to help them, Garrett concluded.

Many social service providers link such anger with a shrinking economy and the feeling among people that they must circle the wagons to protect what they have.

“Many people feel that it is hard enough for them to hold their own, let alone worry about somebody else,” Forbath said.

John Dombrink, professor of social ecology at UC Irvine, noted that the most vocal opponents of helping the homeless or poor often are those on the economic brink themselves.

“It is typically the lower middle class, rarely the very rich or very poor, doing battle over programs,” Dombrink said. “It’s the people who fear most that what has happened to (the homeless) might happen to them.”

But Dombrink disagrees that compassion fatigue is a trend. The homeless continue to evoke just as much compassion as burnout, he says.

In part, Dombrink says, that is because most Orange County residents do not face the day-to-day encounters with the homeless typical in many urban areas, though he says that might have been a factor in the Santa Ana homeless sweeps last year.

In August, about 90 homeless people who gather at the Civic Center were arrested for minor violations such as loitering, tossing away cigarette butts and tearing leaves off trees after many office workers complained. A judge recently tossed out all charges and accused Santa Ana police of discrimination.

But Dombrink says Orange County residents are more aware of the homeless problem than they were five years ago and are more willing to consider solutions.

“I don’t think it’s wrong to say there are seemingly contradictory things happening,” Dombrink said. “There are peaks and valleys of public sentiment. I think the question is do people have staying power on this issue. The jury is still out on whether in five years people will say, ‘We haven’t come up with anything, so let’s move on to something else.’ In my heart I don’t feel that way.”

The social service providers, who must persuade the public to support their cause, are hopeful that they can fight compassion burnout by putting the problem on a more personal level and demonstrating that it is not hopeless.

The Homeless Issues Task Force and Orange County League of Women Voters are putting together a video to address compassion fatigue by profiling volunteers and programs that have made a difference.

And they point out that whether or not the problem of homelessness is ignored, it will not go away.

“If we think of having 10,000 homeless in Orange County as a crisis, just wait until the kids grow up,” Oakson said. “We are perpetuating a cycle of despair if we do nothing.”