ORANGE COUNTY IN BANKRUPTCY : Homeless Advocates Decry Loss of Coordinator as Blow to Poor

When the Board of Supervisors named Maria Mendoza in 1991 as the county’s first housing issues coordinator, many advocates for the homeless cheered the move--if only because it signaled that officials finally recognized that homeless people live in Orange County.

That is why advocates for the homeless are upset over the elimination this week of Mendoza’s position, along with 24 other jobs in Chief Executive Officer William J. Popejoy’s office.

“Her leaving may not result tonight in an additional person being homeless,” said Scott Wylie, executive director of the Public Law Center, “but it sends the continued message that the reductions in health care staffing and social services have already sent--that poor people are going to have to bear a disproportionate responsibility in overcoming this self-created crisis.”

As program coordinator, Mendoza, 65, helped link together county, city and nonprofit organizations working to house the estimated 10,000 to 15,000 homeless people in the county. She lobbied the state Legislature and Gov. Pete Wilson to keep shelter programs going and spent many a night handing out blankets and food to homeless people at shelters.

“But the biggest accomplishment I see is that we finally had county and cities sitting around the table looking at a better approach to ending homelessness and having everyone accept the fact that we are all responsible,” Mendoza said Thursday.

Her most visible service to the homeless was to keep two national guard armories, in Santa Ana and Fullerton, open every night from mid-December to mid-March.

The Orange County armory shelter program is paid for with $100,000 in federal community development block grant money and the Federal Emergency Management Agency also contributes funds. With that money, the county pays a nonprofit agency, Shelter for the Homeless in Westminster, to run the program.

Although the effort is federally funded, state officials have regularly considered phasing it out and Mendoza has been one of the program’s strongest advocates. Last year, she led a statewide campaign to persuade the governor to rescind his 1993 decision to eliminate the armory shelter program.

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“Her not being there is definitely going to have an impact here and frankly, statewide,” said Tim Shaw, executive director of the Orange County Housing Task Force. “I haven’t seen anybody else willing to jump up and be a spokesperson for the armory program on the state level and I think it’s going to have negative ramifications in that way.”

Mendoza does not predict that the armories will close their doors to the 250 homeless people they feed and shelter each night during winter months just because she is no longer overseeing the program.

“But someone is going to have to do that, to fight,” she said.

Whether someone else will assume Mendoza’s duties or whether the federal money used for the armory program will be directed to another area was unclear Thursday, said Fred Branca, director of budget and management for the county administrative office and Mendoza’s former supervisor.

“That really hasn’t been determined yet and it would be premature to say anything before we go over the alternatives very carefully,” Branca said. He also said it was not immediately apparent what money the county would save by eliminating Mendoza’s position, which is federally funded.

Whether the armory shelter program should be continued has been a matter of debate among advocates for the homeless.

“Personally, I’m torn about it because it’s such a Band-Aid, fix-it kind of thing,” Shaw said Thursday, as rain soaked the county throughout the day. “That money could pay for ongoing substance abuse counseling and other programs. But on the other hand, look at today. No one wants to sleep outside tonight.”

Advocates did agree that Mendoza has done a good job, although the county did not give her much authority.

“Maria was unable to personally create mental health beds or drug rehabilitation beds or create economic programs to help people get off the streets,” Wylie said. “But she was making wonderful progress in sensitizing people in county government.”

And she gave homeless people and their advocates access to high-level officials.

“Poverty issues in Orange County are such that we do need a voice, we do someone who can walk the halls and advocate,” said Larry Haines, director of Mercy House, a shelter for homeless women.

“The poor can’t speak for themselves, and we need that position,” Haines said. “And we need the person in that position to be a true champion because there’s no one else there.”