The Wrong Approach

Diane Grue’s acquittal last week on charges that essentially amounted to her being a criminal because she was homeless demonstrated again the complexity of providing shelter for those down on their luck.

The trial was unconventional from the start. Grue was one of six people arrested in November for violating Buena Park’s ordinance against public camping. She was the only one to insist on a trial and refused a plea bargain that would have spared her any time in jail.

Family members who had not seen Grue in a decade learned of her whereabouts through newspaper accounts of the proceedings and rushed to offer her a place to stay.

That is the ideal solution: families taking care of their own. But that is often impossible. Sometimes the homeless have no family. Sometimes they refuse to live with their families. Sometimes their families won’t take them in.

Another alternative to homelessness is shelter in one of the low-rent motels, such as those that line Beach Boulevard, including the stretch running through Buena Park. Those motels have been home to Grue for years, but her Social Security check covered only part of each month. For the remainder, without funds, she camped.

That demonstrates where Orange County has fallen woefully short: providing space for the “almost homeless” and the homeless. Opening shelters year-round rather than just in cold weather is one solution. Building more low-income housing to help those without much money would be a better solution. But county and city governments have done too little to provide low-income housing.

Grue, 66, was acquitted on a technicality: It turned out the area next to the railroad tracks east of Stanton Avenue is not public property, but is owned by the railroad.

The prosecutor in the case argued unsuccessfully that a Caltrans sound wall on the property includes a border of eight inches of public property. He argued that those inches, used by the homeless to store their gear, placed the encampment on public property. The judge, James P. Marion, rightly termed that argument “ridiculous.”

The prosecutor, Greg Palmer, said he has urged the city to broaden the wording of Buena Park’s laws against encampment to cover any area where the public has access. That’s an approach that doesn’t really address the problem.

If Buena Park and other cities simply are trying to sweep the homeless off their streets and hide them from public view, then find them shelter. Just moving them from place to place, fining them, even jailing them, is no answer.

Orange County has 2,000 beds for the homeless and a homeless population estimated at 20,000. Jail is not the solution. More beds are needed.