Provide Beds for the Homeless

On Tuesday, Diane Grue, 66, is due in court in Fullerton as defendant in a criminal trial no one seems to want. Her misdemeanor crime is that she is homeless. And that, in Buena Park, is illegal if you occupy public property.

The police officer who arrested Grue isn’t happy about it. “We don’t go around looking for homeless people to arrest, but when we get complaints, what choice do we have?” he asked.

In response to complaints, police said, Grue and several others were arrested last fall when they were found sleeping in a small encampment near railroad tracks.

The others were allowed to pay a small fine. Because it was Grue’s sixth arrest, she was charged with camping on public property. A second charge accuses her of storing camping gear on public property. The gear was her blankets.

The city attorney who is prosecuting Grue isn’t happy about it either. This is the first case ever set for trial. Grue isn’t happy about that, or the prospect of facing the maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $500 fine if convicted.

The city doesn’t want to see that happen, and this one has come to the point it has because of her refusal to accept time in jail as an alternative. After so many arrests, the city decided it had to come down hard on Grue as a repeat offender. Over the years Buena Park has cited hundreds of homeless people for violating its public camping laws, and she is one of many helped by the Rev. Wiley Drake, who has had his own run-ins with Buena Park authorities over homeless people.

The public shouldn’t be happy either. In a county where the average rent is $1,200 a month and rental vacancies are usually way down around 2%, is Grue a perpetrator or a victim?

The county needs to provide more beds for the homeless. On any given night there are nearly 20,000 others who, like Grue, are homeless. And there are only about 2,200 shelter beds available countywide.

The crime isn’t that Grue has habitually been sleeping outside on public property. The crime is that she has to.