‘Club Homeless’ Wins Week’s Eviction Stay : Courts: Judge temporarily restrains Caltrans. Hearing is set for Friday.

A group of homeless people who have lived in an elaborate, furnished encampment under the San Diego Freeway, some for as long as five years, persuaded a judge on Friday to let them stay at least another week.

A few hours after the legal victory, several acres of a neighboring homeless camp burned in a brush fire. Authorities suspect arson.

Residents in the first camp, dubbed “Club Homeless,” had been confronted Wednesday by state Department of Transportation workers and law enforcement authorities and told to find somewhere else to live.

Several of the residents of the camp at the Beach Boulevard off-ramp filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court saying that Caltrans cannot simply kick them out of the place they have called home for years, and which included a walled bathroom and closets.

On Friday, Judge Helen Thomas issued a temporary restraining order and said she would hear arguments from both sides next Friday.

“They set up their camp and they’ve been living there. They built their little structures and developed the place,” said Paul M. Gray, an attorney who met the homeless people in a local coffee shop and is representing them in court.

“Caltrans recognized them as homeless and allowed them to live on their property,” Gray said. “Once they allowed them to live there, they’ve got to use some different procedure other than putting up a sign saying ‘Get out.’ They have to get them some reasonable accommodations.”

But Albert Miranda, a Caltrans spokesman, said the agency has never given homeless people permission to camp under the freeway, and that the area must be cleared so workers can conduct maintenance and gardening improvements there.

On Wednesday, Miranda said his agency wanted to handle the situation in “the most humane way possible,” and officials provided the transients with information about local shelters.

Those who slept at Club Homeless were not actually removed from the area Wednesday, and many have continued to live there.

When a fire started Friday afternoon, James Benjamin, who lives in a makeshift hut nearby, was returning bottles and cans at a nearby supermarket.

“Someone said, ‘Hey Jim, look! Your house is on fire,’ so I left and ran back,” Benjamin, 43, recalled an hour later.

Benjamin, whose hut was spared, said the burned area had been cleared by Caltrans several weeks ago. Before that, the area had been called “Kids’ Camp” because many homeless youth slept there, he added.

No one was hurt and no property was destroyed in the fire, which began just after 5 p.m., burned across several acres of Caltrans property on the east side of Beach Boulevard, across the street from Club Homeless, officials said. The fire will be investigated as a possible arson, fire dispatcher Steve Rothert said.

Eighteen firefighters from the Huntington Beach, Westminster and Fountain Valley departments responded to the blaze, using 3,000 gallons of water to put it out, Rothert said. It took them 10 minutes to control the flames and 90 minutes to extinguish them, he said.

Neither Gray nor Miranda knew about the fire Friday afternoon, and both said they had no comment on the incident.

Times staff writer Mary Lou Pickel contributed to this story.