ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Loosening the Bureaucratic Noose

At least the YMCA in Santa Ana has done its part to help out its tenant, the Lighthouse Program, a vital service for the homeless. The same cannot be said for the city, which ought to do a bit more to remove red tape now that the program must move to new quarters.

In anticipation of the sale of its building on Civic Center Drive, the YMCA has moved its own operations. But it allowed the Lighthouse Program, a nonprofit program serving the mentally ill homeless during the daytime, to stay on temporarily in the old building.

Unfortunately, plans to move the program to a church building on Santa Ana Boulevard have been complicated by city nit-picking. There’s also been a less-than-enthusiastic early welcome in the new neighborhood.

As part of the conditions attached to relocation, city staff has insisted that the Mental Health Assn. of Orange County, the program’s sponsor, pay for an estimated $20,000 in site improvements.

These improvements include landscaping, construction of exterior block walls with wrought-iron sections and the painting of new stripes on the parking lot.

The irony of the requirement for improving the parking lot did not escape Lighthouse Program coordinator Mike Bouchard, who pointed out that the homeless do not drive cars.

John A. Garrett, director of the Mental Health Assn., has asked for some relief on the requirements, a reasonable enough request.

The foundation is on a very tight budget, and its work, after all, is a considerable service for the community. City planners ought to bend some.

If an organization like Lighthouse Program were not there to help the homeless in the daytime, by providing regular psychiatric and medical care and long-term assistance in returning clients to housing and jobs, the city would have the problem on its hands.

And what of this handiwork that the city says must be done? It shouldn’t be too much to ask whether some of the county’s many landscaping or construction firms might lend a hand, as a pro bono effort.

Clients such as Dan Salaets, 54, who lost his job in the automotive industry after 31 years, went through a divorce, lost a son to suicide and suffered a nervous breakdown, could be almost anyone in Orange County who had suffered a combination of bad breaks.

Surely a little loosening of the bureaucratic obstacles is in order to help such a vital lifeline for the homeless make a successful move.