Santa Ana OKs Ban on Civic Center Homeless Encampments : Law: The courts have temporarily barred officials from enforcing an earlier anti-camping ordinance. The City Council approved the new restrictions on a 6-1 vote.

City officials approved an ordinance Monday night that would prohibit the homeless from using the Civic Center area for “living accommodations.”

The Santa Ana City Council voted 6 to 1 in favor of the new law, which prohibits sleeping, making a fire, digging in the earth or cooking in the public areas of the Civic Center.

In recent months, the courts temporarily barred city officials from enforcing an earlier ordinance designed to clear the homeless from city streets. That law prohibited people from camping or using blankets to cover themselves on public property.

Legal Aid lawyers sued the city over the first law, which took effect in the summer of 1992, and got the 4th District Court of Appeal to issue a temporary order that blocked citing of the homeless until judges decide on the law’s constitutionality.

Officials said the new law is needed because homeless people began moving back to the Civic Center recently. Police have been barred from ticketing homeless men and women under a state anti-lodging law, as well as the city’s first anti-camping law, unless the homeless are using enclosed structures for sleeping.

About 10 people were at Monday night’s City Council meeting to protest the ordinance.

“This ordinance has not worked and will not work,” said Tim Carpenter of Housing NOW!, a group supporting the creation of low-cost housing.

However, most City Council members disagreed.

“This is something the residents of Santa Ana want us to take care of,” City Councilwoman Lisa Mills said.

Mayor Daniel H. Young called previous legal victories by homeless activists a “wake-up call” but said the injunctions against the city were also a “strategic mistake.”

“It left 300,000 people in this city at risk,” Young said.

City Councilman Ted R. Moreno cast the dissenting vote.

“I heard all of you speak and the biggest thing that came out was fear,” Moreno said to the other council members. “I’m looking for us to support those people who are down.”

The new ordinance’s language is designed to focus attention where many homeless people stay--the Civic Center--and also to deflect Legal Aid’s arguments that the city’s anti-camping law limits a homeless person’s freedom of travel into Santa Ana, said Assistant City Atty. Robert Wheeler.

City officials noted they are working with homeless advocates and churches on a plan to spend city money to help the homeless. The plan calls for cities and churches throughout the county to pool money for homeless services.