No Place to Call Their Own : Law Clears Shelters From Civic Center, Scatters Homeless

By day, the cleaned-up Civic Center looks like a success story for City Hall.

Gone is the shantytown of makeshift huts and tents that Santa Ana’s homeless had erected in the shadow of the County Courthouse, and which the city had fought for years to displace.

City officials armed themselves with an “anti-camping” ordinance they believe can withstand legal challenge, and the homeless were then persuaded to dismantle their shelters and move on at the beginning of September, when the law took effect.

Where did they go?

Everywhere, and nowhere.

Some who were fortunate enough to get help through a charitable group that raised funds during the summer received one-way bus tickets out of Orange County, or were placed in temporary shelters. And those considered capable of finding jobs were given start-up money to move into motels or apartments until their first paychecks arrived.

But most of the 275 homeless people who were living in the Civic Center this summer are still wandering the streets, many of them scattered throughout the city that wants them out.

Some are sleeping near the vacant YMCA building or in front of the Orange County Social Services office on Walnut Street, while others seek refuge at night under street bridges. And about 60 never left the Civic Center.

“Just about everybody leaves in the daytime and comes back at night,” said Angela Torres, 35, who has lived the life of a transient since she was a teen. Believing that the new law prohibits camping but permits sleeping in public areas, Torres said the homeless do not pitch tents but move from one spot to another, night after night, hoping to avoid detection and harassment by police.

Torres, whose name appears on the third page of a 100-name waiting list, was unable to get a bus ticket to San Francisco before the volunteer group ran out of money. Denied that option, she now wants a legal confrontation on the constitutionality of the anti-camping law.

“I am sick and tired of running, I am tired of being chased, and I am tired of the harassment,” she said, reflecting the views of other longtime homeless who lack the desire or ability to leave the Civic Center and lead a conventional life.

But some who felt they could turn their lives around if given another chance are learning what it’s like to be on their own again.

Their hopes were raised unexpectedly when the volunteer group hastily organized this summer and successfully petitioned the Santa Ana City Council to postpone enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance while they investigated how to help the homeless.

Calling themselves Operation Fresh Start, volunteers interviewed the homeless in the Civic Center, found out their needs and signed them up for welfare benefits if they qualified.

Using $15,000 in private donations--the bulk of it contributed by the Orange County Bar Assn.--the group bought bus tickets for about 40 people for destinations as far away as New Jersey and Florida, and initially found at least temporary lodging for 104.

Of those who were provided housing, 30 still remain in the Shelter for the Homeless and another 22 have found full-time or part-time jobs, according to agency officials. Many who drifted away from the shelters could not adapt to their new environment, or are substance abusers who really needed special attention not provided by the program.

Vickey and Norris Billup, both 35, are among those who were placed in small apartments, but will have their support reduced as they become more self-sufficient. Now that Vickey has found a temporary job in an assembly plant and Norris is scheduled to begin working at a warehouse, they will be on their own to come up with the $150-a-week rent for their furnished bachelor flat in Anaheim with once-a-week maid service.

“When they said they were going to put me in a place, that was a start automatically,” said a smiling Vickey, occasionally glancing at the television show “Little House on the Prairie.” Television, she added, was one of the things she missed most during the last two years at the Civic Center.

Although her husband had experienced homelessness before they met and married two years ago, Vickey said she was unaccustomed to life on the streets.

It was so easy, yet so harsh. Easy, the Billups said, because churches and other volunteers wanting to help the homeless constantly provided food and clothing at the rent-free Civic Center. The plywood for their shanty was given to them by contractors, they said.

But it was harsh, they added, because they feared the occasional violence and drug dealing, the mood swings of the drug and alcohol abusers, and the regular thefts of supplies and clothing.

One possession Vickey managed to hold onto was a formal dress studded with blue sequins she once wore in Las Vegas. It served as a reminder of the lifestyle she yearns to return to.

“I don’t want to go back to the streets, period,” Vickey said.

But Norris was not so confident. “I am never going to say I’ll never go back to the streets because there are no jobs; (businesses) are laying off people. My brother and his wife are out of work now.”

Sitting on a park bench next to a county government building, Martell Conley, 42, also looked forward to better times.

Lowering his hand to just a few inches off the ground as he described how depressed he became last spring, Conley said he found himself sleeping in a city parking garage in June after losing his wife, his $9-an-hour job at an aerospace firm and his apartment.

“I expected to die out here,” he said.

Now, he looks for work and lives with three other men in a two-bedroom townhouse in Orange, with the rent initially provided through the funds raised during Operation Fresh Start.

Because the need was greater than the funds, help did not reach many who wanted it, including people like Brenda Rowe, 50, who said she sleeps in her 1969 Mercury station wagon.

An old and incomplete work record has caused her trouble in finding work, and her last employer, she claimed, cheated her out of pay and instead gave her the car. “I’m busy panicking,” Rowe said, while conceding she has not had it as tough as others on the street.

But tears in Rowe’s eyes revealed the bitterness she feels because friends and two sisters have closed their doors to her and her 28-year-old son, Earnest, who rejoined her recently.

“When you get down, it seems like nobody wants to . . . help you,” she said. “If every homeless person out there . . . if their families would help, there would not be a problem anymore.”

Donald Bryant, case manager for the Shelter for the Homeless and co-chairman of Operation Fresh Start, said the volunteers plan to regroup this month with hopes of continuing their assistance.

In a community where past legal battles over the rights of the homeless have cost city government about $500,000, police have gingerly enforced the law. Shopping carts used by the homeless have been confiscated, if they could be identified as belonging to a particular store.

Meanwhile, public law groups have joined forces to challenge the anti-camping ordinances in Santa Ana, Fullerton, Orange, Long Beach and Santa Barbara.

Ironically, one person who likes the ordinance is “Dirty Harry” Bull, 34, one of the original Civic Center homeless.

“That’s the way it should be. That’s the way it was in the beginning,” he said of the cleaned-up government complex. Those who moved to the Civic Center in recent months, he added, “came to visit and got stuck. (The recent volunteer effort) helped a lot of the people that got lost, that did not know where they were going.”

Bryant said that while the city seems to have accomplished its goal of improving the appearance of the Civic Center, the ordinance took away from the homeless a central location where their advocates could dispense food, clothing and advice on where to seek shelter.

“I know that the (street) people know . . . the places to go for food, but it means they have to walk a little bit farther,” Bryant said.

One obvious but expensive need is a transitional living center for substance abusers, Bryant said, adding that would only begin to solve the problem.

“I saw one woman on Bristol Street, sitting at the bus stop,” he said, referring to a homeless woman with a history of mental illness. “She was still dirty. We couldn’t even offer her food; she wouldn’t take it. Those are the ones I really feel bad for. We do not have the answer for them. No one has the answer for them.”

While a few of the homeless have been spotted in neighboring cities, law enforcement officials report no noticeable increases in their homeless populations.

They may move around, but they are not gone, said Harry Simon, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Orange County.

“They are like a tube of toothpaste,” he said. “You squeeze them in one place and they move to another. They will be back. . . .”