Residents Want Costa Mesa to Oust 3 Charities : Homeless: Neighbors seek to have groups’ permits revoked. The city has organized meetings with a soup kitchen, Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter and Share Our Selves to seek long-term solutions.

Three of the city’s most respected charities for the homeless are under attack by some residents, who contend the organizations and others are “magnets” for street people and want the city to revoke their permits to operate.

Citing thefts, car burglaries and acts of random violence by the homeless, the residents said they would like to see other cities share the burden of caring for Costa Mesa’s estimated 1,500 street people.

“The City Council should bite the bullet on this one and take some of (the organizations’) operating permits away,” said Chris Steel, who ran unsuccessfully for the City Council in the Nov. 8 election. “They’re the magnets, short and simple. And as long as they’re here, the homeless are going to keep on coming.”

Residents are directing their anger at Share Our Selves, which provides emergency financial funds and other aid to the homeless; the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen, which provides free lunches daily, and the Orange Coast Interfaith Shelter, which offers temporary housing.

All three are located in the Triangle Square area, near Newport Boulevard and 19th Street, where the homeless often congregate and cause problems, according to residents and business owners who live and work in the area and have voiced their frustrations during City Council meetings.

Mayor Sandra L. Genis, however, said the homeless situation is not as dire as depicted by the residents, adding that she did not think removing Share Our Selves or any of the other charitable organizations from the city was the answer.

“But I do think the social service providers have some responsibility,” she said. “They’re just going to have to tell the people who are causing the problems that they should shape up or ship out or else they’re not going to receive anything.”

Social service providers say they are merely supplying the bare essentials--food, clothing and shelter--to those who need them.

“No place is ever going to be acceptable until the people come to a moral decision that serving them and helping them is OK,” said Karen McGlinn, executive director of Share Our Selves.

“We have no islands to put them on, no jails to house them in, no boxcars to ship them out of here,” she said.

Bill Wenke, director of development for the Salvation Army in Orange County, said he cannot understand why anyone would want to get rid of any charitable organization, especially if it helps out as much as SOS, the soup kitchen or the Interfaith Shelter.

“One of the finest calls in life is to help the people who are down and out,” he said. “We don’t create hunger or homelessness, we just serve it. The fact is, it exists out there and it exists in big numbers.”

In an effort to address residents’ concerns, the city has been holding monthly meetings with service providers during the past five months to find out who the homeless are, where they come from, whether they are putting the public at risk--and to come up with possible solutions to the problems.

Some of the homeless were invited to attend one of the meetings and were asked why they chose Costa Mesa over other cities in Orange County. The answer, according to McGlinn, was that the city was safer than others, the climate was perfect, and that food and shelter were available.

But some residents are angry that Costa Mesa has to play the host. They argue that all cities should bear the burden of taking care of the homeless.

“There should be no more free lunches,” said Linda Clark, emerging from this month’s meeting with homeowners, the service providers and city officials. “People should work if they want to be fed.”

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Although Police Lt. Alan Kent said nuisance complaints, such as trespassing, drinking alcohol and urinating in public, have increased in the past six months, violent behavior among the homeless has not yet become a trend.

“It’s mostly misdemeanor violations,” he said. “We’ve stepped up enforcement to move them away from the area, but they (the homeless) keep moving in circles. We’ll kick them out of Lion’s Park, because it’s against city ordinance to be there at night, but then they’ll move to Wilson Park.”

Still, a handful of residents contend they have witnessed more violent behavior than they were accustomed to in years past, and they think the solution is kicking the charitable organizations out of the city.

This is not the first time that organizations such as Share Our Selves have come under fire. In 1990, for instance, SOS was forced to move its operations from the Rea Community Center, which it leased from the city, to its present office on Superior Street.

“But now we’re located in an industrial part of town,” McGlinn said. “We’re not in the middle of a residential neighborhood like before.”

Marcus Blackwell, a chemical dependency counselor for the Mental Health Assn. of Orange County, said it’s just “a few bad apples” among the homeless who are causing the problems--people who have been diagnosed as having a mental illness and are abusing some sort of drug. That makes communication with them all the more difficult, he said.

“These people shouldn’t even be in the streets,” Blackwell said. “But the fact of the matter is, the mental institutions have closed down and have kicked them out, and they have no where else to go. Nobody else is there to take care of them.”

Craig Gilbert, a Kansas City native who was once homeless and now volunteers at the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen, said the biggest misconception is that the homeless “are all bums and drunks.”

“But that’s the farthest from the truth,” he said. “The truth is, a lot would like to get good steady jobs, but they can’t. A lot of them have gone to the bottle and a lot of them haven’t.”

Others who work with street people believe the answer is finding a central location for Orange County’s estimated 12,000 homeless.

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Lonnie Ganbardella, a Vietnam veteran who helps the homeless at the soup kitchen, said one possible solution would be to use a part of El Toro or Tustin Marine Corps air stations, which are scheduled to close by the end of this decade, to house the homeless.

Kent suggests that the community--the social service providers, the residents and the City Council--work together to find long-term solutions.

“It’s a focused problem in the community and we’re using a proactive approach,” he said.