O.C. Homeless Study Disputes Stereotypes

The typical homeless person in Orange County is a 30-year-old white male who has lived in the county for more than 10 years and has a high school or college education, according to a countywide survey released Friday by the Homeless Issues Task Force.

The survey also shows that 30% of the county’s homeless are children, and that the homeless hail from virtually every city. Most of the 2,193 respondents said they had been on the street for less than a year, and cited lost jobs and a lack of affordable housing as the cause of their distress.

Task force members said the study is the most comprehensive of its kind in Orange County and contradicts stereotypes that portray the homeless as uneducated drifters with no desire to work.

“This survey is all about providing a snapshot of what’s really going on, who these people really are and how they ended up homeless,” said Tim Shaw, the task force’s executive director. “The stereotypes that exist promote what we call NIMBY, or Not In My Back Yard, the mentality that blocks efforts to reach and help. Maybe this information can alter that.”

The survey, which was conducted at shelters, food lines and welfare offices, also showed more than half the respondents were white. Latinos made up 23.1% of the homeless, blacks 13.4%, Asian-Americans 1.4% and American Indians 2%.

While the study showed children make up about 30% of the homeless population, Shaw said other estimates that tally families using government relief services and community outreach programs put the number at close to 50%. Using county estimates that peg the homeless population at 12,000, that would mean 6,000 youngsters have no home.

The survey showed the average age of homeless children is 8, and that more than half are under 5.

“It’s just outrageous,” Shaw said. “All the platitudes and moralizing about the homeless being lazy and needing to pull themselves up by their bootstraps doesn’t really apply very well to 5-year-olds.”

The numbers are startling, but the reality is even more wrenching, said Barbara W. Johnson, executive director of Fullerton Interfaith Emergency Service, one of the agencies that participated in the survey.

“We’re seeing more and more families, and we’re getting more and more desperate phone calls,” said Johnson, whose group includes 25 congregations of various faiths. “I’ve been here since 1981, and it hasn’t changed when it comes to seeing these beautiful young children with no homes. It’s always disheartening, and the numbers are getting worse.”

Johnson said the Aug. 26 death of 4-month-old Steven Giguere Jr. and the criminal charges that his parents face for their alleged negligence are a harrowing, extreme example of what can happen when families have no homes. The infant, sleeping in a car parked in an Anaheim parking lot, was bitten to death by a ravenous pet rat.

“That family had been to our facility just three days before, and I remember one of the ladies here holding that beautiful baby boy in her arms,” Johnson said. “Oh, it’s just so terrible. And the worse thing, as the economy gets worse, the need goes up and the resources go down.”

Shaw said he put particular value on findings that half of the homeless have lived in Orange County for more than a decade, and two-thirds have been in the area for five or more years. The average length of local residence was slightly longer than 14 years.

“There’s this perception that these people are coming here from other places, from L.A., Riverside, other parts of the country or whatever,” Shaw said. “It’s simply not true. These are Orange County’s own. These are people from here.”

The Irvine-based task force includes government officials, homeless people, advocates for the homeless and leaders of nonprofit organizations. A subcommittee of researchers, academics and government officials drafted the study, based on information gathered during interviews in January and February. The study was passed on to the County Board of Supervisors this week, and copies will be made available to other leaders, agencies and the public.

Compared to a smaller-scale study in 1990, the task force survey showed the Latino population having the largest increase, with that homeless population growing from 14.9% to 23.1%. The task force attributed the increase to the growth of Orange County’s Latino population, and the expansion of Spanish-speaking relief agencies, which likely drew in homeless Latinos who may have been overlooked in the earlier study.

Maria Mendoza, who oversees homeless issues for the county administrator’s office, said she has seen an increase of the Latino homeless during the past decade. She has also detected that all areas of Orange County share the homeless problem, she said.

“Newport Beach, for example, is a place where people assume that they don’t have homeless people, but it’s just not true,” Mendoza said.

The image of Orange County as a community of rich and upper-middle-class residents has hampered efforts to get government relief for the homeless, Mendoza said.

“I’ve heard so often that we ‘really don’t have a problem,’ ” she said. “That’s something we have to overcome, and studies like this, which document the local need, are a step toward that.”

The survey asked respondents to cite the causes for their homelessness and what help they needed to get off the streets. Unaffordable housing was listed most often as the reason for homelessness, with job loss, eviction and poor personal budgeting as the next three most common responses. The area of need most cited was affordable housing, followed closely by job opportunity, rent assistance and transportation.

Of those questioned, 65.6% said they were looking for work. Another 5.8% said they worked part time, while 2.5% reported full-time employment.

Shaw said he was most surprised by the number of respondents, 5.8%, who said they had a college or graduate school degree, and the 24.2% of people who said they had attended some college.

Who’s Homeless in O.C.

A recent survey shows that more than half of Orange County’s homeless are white. A profile of homelessness:

Racial/ethnic breakdown

Asian: 1.4%

American Indian: 2.0%

black: 13.4%

Latino: 23.1%

white: 56.4%

Note: Some survey responses were incomplete.

Why Homeless?

Housing: 50.7% of the homeless site the high cost of housing as a reason for being homeless

Jobless: 47.9% claim job loss as the primary reason for being on the streets

Eviction: 25.1% said they are without shelter because of eviction

Housing: 18.8% said family problems are the source of homelessness

Respondents were asked what kind of aid would help them get off the streets:

60.9%: desire affordable housing

59.8%: need assistance with the first month’s rent

55.5%: said securing a job would help.

42.3%: cited lack of adequate transportation.

Source: Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force; Researched by GEOFF BOUCHER / Los Angeles Times