FULLERTON : City Denies Funding to Study Homeless

The City Council has rejected a request by the Fullerton Interfaith Ministerial Assn. for $2,500 to fund a task force to study the city’s homeless problem.

In a majority vote, the council rejected the request on the grounds that a study of the homeless is not a project “for municipal government,” Councilman A.B. (Buck) Catlin said.

Catlin said existing county and state agencies that deal with the homeless are better suited to address the problem.

But the Rev. John West, pastor of the Morningside Presbyterian Church in Fullerton and vice president of the interfaith association, said clergymen in the city have determined that the homeless problem is overburdening state and county agencies and should be further addressed by local government.

“What we (in the association) were trying to do was to look for ways to expand and strengthen the programs that are already in place,” West said. “It seemed that some members of the council and opponents to the study tried to paint this as the creation of another bureaucracy.”

An estimated 10,000 people in Orange County are homeless, including about 500 in the Fullerton area.

In December, the interfaith association sent a request to the council asking for a task force to study the issue. In January, the City Council voted to hold a special forum on the problem, but the meeting, which was to include representatives from the city’s business, education, civic, social and religious communities, never took place because of scheduling problems.