An Unfortunate Response to the Homeless in Costa Mesa

It’s never been fun to be poor, and it’s getting less fun all the time. The enemies used to be starvation and joblessness. Now, they’re your fellow citizens, wanting like the devil to legislate you away.

The timing was no doubt accidental, but it says something, doesn’t it, that Thanksgiving 1994 provides the backdrop for citizen complaints about the homeless and foodless?

In this California year of peace and goodwill toward some, there are certain sentiments that just can’t wait for Christmas.

The headlines this week were that some Costa Mesa residents want the city to cut back its permits to private agencies serving the homeless. No permit, no ability to house and feed the homeless. The logic appears seamless. One citizen argued that the agencies are “the magnets, short and simple. And as long as they’re here, the homeless are going to keep on coming.”

Note that the argument isn’t that the homeless will suddenly and miraculously have shelter and food; no, it’s just that they won’t be hanging around Costa Mesa anymore.

Once upon a time (and it does seem like a couple fairylands ago), we prided ourselves on taking care of the more unfortunate among us. Now, not even the spirit of Thanksgiving keeps us from blasting the presence of so many lost souls.

The sentiment behind the Costa Mesa citizenry is nothing more than that of Proposition 187 in search of its next group of have-nots. If we can ward off “undesirables” by denying education and medicine, why not food too?

Who’s next? Indeed, one more down-and-out group, and maybe we can get the wave going.

In the Costa Mesa scenario, its citizens are playing the role that Californians played en masse during the Proposition 187 debate. Why, they ask, should they pay a disproportionate share of the cost for a social problem?

Forget for a moment that Costa Mesans aren’t paying for the homeless. It’s more a matter of having to see them more than the rest of us do, and their visibility is unsettling. Residents claim the homeless are committing crimes, and police confirmed that, saying they’re largely of the misdemeanor variety, such as trespassing, public drunkenness and urinating in public.

In keeping with the spirit of 187, Costa Mesans seek a solution that doesn’t address the problem.

Should Costa Mesa residents have to put up with trespassing, drunkenness and public urination? Absolutely not, and people committing those crimes should be accountable. But shutting down soup kitchens doesn’t attack crime; it attacks eating. And just for the sake of argument, if you didn’t have a home, where would you go to the bathroom?

Sandy Cusmano, a spokeswoman for the Mental Health Assn. of Orange County, says about 35% to 40% of the homeless have mental problems. After the severe cutback in recent years of mental health facilities, how surprising that we now find them on the streets. If those mentally disturbed people could piece it all together, they might wonder how a society could first kick them out of hospitals and then kick them off the streets.

Even in their diminished capacity, they must ask: Is there somewhere else to go?

Costa Mesa residents understandably feel put upon. Other than the fact that three shelters happen to be in their city, there’s no particular reason why that city should do any more for the homeless than any other town.

And Mayor Sandra L. Genis sounded exactly the right note by saying the homeless in the area have responsibilities too.

Cusmano said the public doesn’t realize that agencies are trying hard to rehabilitate some homeless people, and that many are directed to independent living. As a group they are not violent, she said, because if they were, “they’d have plenty of money to live.”

This issue isn’t about Costa Mesa citizens. It’s about all of us, and how we plan to deal with society’s most unfortunate or deprived citizens. Homelessness isn’t solely Costa Mesa’s problem, any more than illegal immigration is solely California’s.

All Costa Mesa is doing is holding up a mirror for the rest of us to look into.

I asked Cusmano whether people are getting colder and harder toward their fellow man. I asked her to take a guess as to what people are thinking these days, as they contemplate closing down soup kitchens.

“I think a lot of people don’t know what to feel,” she said.

I think she’s right, but for a county whose residents tell pollsters that they want Judeo-Christian values stressed, I dug up one.

Maybe it could form the basis of a prayer in school some day:

“I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat.”

The quote was in the Book of Mark and was attributed to a man named Jesus.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.