Laws in 3 Cities to Ban Camping in Public Areas Draw Protest : Ordinances: Homeless advocates say they are an unconstitutional attempt to oust transients from Fullerton, Orange and Santa Ana.

Camping, once considered a healthy, outdoorsy pastime, is becoming a bit of a dirty word in the county’s urban centers.

Like proverbial dominoes tumbling one after another, Orange County cities are passing ordinances that ban camping in public areas.

While city officials in Fullerton, Orange and Santa Ana deny that their new laws, approved in May, are aimed at any particular population, homeless advocates say the ordinances are thinly disguised--and unconstitutional--attempts to oust transients from those communities.

“The intent is to drive the homeless from the cities,” said Lloyd A. Charton, a Tustin-based lawyer who has represented homeless clients against Santa Ana.

Charton and lawyers from the Orange County Legal Aid Society claim the new ordinances are so broad that they would make it illegal to sleep on public property, or to wear extra clothing. Being homeless would become a crime, they say, and they are preparing to challenge the ordinances in court.

At the same time, the advocates admit that each city has a right to control its property and last week attorneys for the homeless people living at the Santa Ana Civic Center told them to dismantle their tents and shelters and begin using portable bedrolls to avoid problems with authorities.

“We recognize the problem at Civic Center,” Charton said. “It wasn’t meant to be a shantytown. We are arguing for one thing only: for the rights of people to sleep at Civic Center, if they have no place else to go.”

Harry Simon of the Legal Aid staff put it another way: If the cities want to prohibit the homeless from certain public areas, they should provide them with other places to go.

“The city as a landlord has to yield to other people’s interests because they represent the public good,” Simon said. “The interests of the homeless are particularly strong because they have to live and they have no alternative.”

The Fullerton City Council, the first to pass an anti-camping ordinance, gave the law final approval May 5. The Orange City Council followed suit on Tuesday. The Santa Ana City Council is expected to adopt a final draft of its ordinance Monday. All ordinances take effect within 30 days of passage.

Each of the three ordinances prohibit camping in public areas. The Fullerton law, just one paragraph long, makes it unlawful to camp in any public park, street, parking lot, parking structure or public area.

The Santa Ana and Orange ordinances each consist of several pages that define camping, camp facilities, streets and other public property. Both also specifically prohibit erecting any sort of temporary structure and outlaw storage of personal belongings on public property.

Despite the lengthy language, Simon maintains that the terms of the ordinances remain ill-defined and leave the laws open to liberal interpretation by law enforcement officials.

The Santa Ana and Orange ordinances would make it illegal to sleep or prepare to sleep on public property, and the Orange law prohibits “using or storing personal belongings such as . . . ‘extra clothing.’ ”

Under these terms, anyone could be cited for napping on a park bench or wearing what a police officer deems to be too many sweaters, Simon contends. The ordinances would restrict transients’ freedom of movement, punish them for being homeless and effectively result in “a total ban” from the cities, all in violation of the Constitution.

“I think some of (Legal Aid’s) arguments are pretty far-fetched,” countered Orange City Atty. Robert O. Franks. “They argue that if someone walks into town with a backpack and sits down on a park bench they can be arrested. That’s not the intent. . . . We intend to prosecute people for taking up space, but the intent of the ordinance is to keep those sidewalks, the (Civic Center) plaza, and other areas open for their intended use.”

The Legal Aid Society intends to file lawsuits against one or more of the three cities within the next few weeks. City officials assert that the ordinances will withstand legal scrutiny and say they expect court challenges.

It remains unclear whether other cities in the county will adopt similar ordinances, but with laws cropping up in Santa Barbara, West Hollywood and Long Beach, some say the trend is hard to ignore.

“I think the majority (of cities) are considering ordinances that will be coming in over the next six months or year,” said David N. Ream, Santa Ana’s city manager.

In effect, cities will follow the trend as a way to protect themselves from homeless exiled from neighboring communities.

“You’ll see many more of these ordinances passed,” said the Rev. Ron West, secretary-treasurer of the Fullerton Interfaith Ministerial Assn., a group that asked the city to try other alternatives before banning camping.

“The attitude is: ‘Well, we certainly don’t want them all coming here, so we’ll pass our own ordinance.’ It’s mass idiocy,” West said.

But for city officials who hope to rid their communities of the homeless, ordinances are no answer, said Lee Podolak, president of the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force.

“The homeless are always with us,” she said. “They probably can thin out the ranks by making it so uncomfortable. But if they ban them from Civic Center they’ll end up in parks or people’s front yards and the city will have to move them out all over again.”

Homeless advocates and city officials agree that the problem is much too big for local governments to handle and that federal, state and local governments should work together to build shelters and create social programs to help the needy.

“Providing for the homeless and others in need is really society’s problem,” said William C. Winter, Fullerton’s city manager. “But it needs to be done on a (level higher than municipalities) . . . or people will gravitate to the place where there are services, and that’s inequitable to the city.”