3 Homeless Shelters Planned For Orange County: Supes

Following a hearing Friday before a federal judge overseeing litigation on homelessness in Orange County, officials said they were optimistic that progress has been made on finding three new sites for transient shelters.

The goal is to establish new shelters in the central, north and south regions of the county. Orange County Board Chairman Andrew Do said he envisions a "hybrid" between the emergency shelter known as the Courtyard in Santa Ana's civic center area and the Bridges at Kraemer Place in Anaheim, which has added services to help transition transients into more stable, long-term housing.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who is overseeing the litigation, was "eager" to hear about the progress on finding three more shelters, Do said.

"He was hopeful" the locations of the shelters would have been established by now, "but none has been offered" by cities in the county, Do said.

A group of south county cities last month offered a site in Orange, which the county deemed unsuitable. Residents of the site also objected overwhelmingly.

Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido said the county and cities were given June 13 and July 15 deadlines to meet on finding locations for the regional shelters.

"There's nothing really to announce, but we're moving forward on the big issues," Pulido said after the hearing.

The litigation was initially filed to stop the county from evicting a homeless encampment from the Santa Ana riverbed in the Anaheim area. County officials agreed to move the 700 some transients there into local motel rooms while social workers assessed them and found other more suitable shelters for them.

Then Carter turned his attention to clearing out the Santa Ana civic center area, particularly the encampment in the Plaza of the Flags next to the Central Justice Center courthouse. That removed another couple of hundred transients with many finding alternative shelters with help from county social workers.

The county and the cities cannot enforce anti-camping laws unless they can provide proof they have enough shelter beds as an alternative. Carter could issue a restraining order prohibiting the enforcement of the anti-camping laws, but he is instead attempting to push the cities and plaintiffs to work out a solution that would provide three regional shelters.

Earlier this year when county officials identified three sites of county-owned land for emergency shelters in Irvine, Huntington Beach and Laguna Niguel those communities protested so fiercely with threats of litigation that the county backed down.

The plaintiffs asked for a hearing Friday in part to address what was happening with 30 transients housed in a motel in Anaheim. Social workers determined that most of them did not qualify for assistance from the Mental Health Services Act, so they were offered shelter elsewhere, but officials said they refused.

Attorney Brooke Weitzman, who represents the homeless in the lawsuit, said many of the transients were never given proper reviews by psychological experts that would have determined if they could be diagnosed with issues that qualified for the funding. County counsel Leon Page said the caseworkers are licensed, clinical social workers and that the transients had to show signs of severe mental health issues to qualify for the funding.

The two sides worked it out, however, and have found some sort of alternative for most of the transients who were in the Anaheim motel. Seventeen of them have been referred to the Illumination Foundation, which the county recently hired to find housing for the area's homeless.

"We are doing our best to build up a system of care," Do said after the hearing. "But we do need help from the cities."

Within the next couple of months the cities will likely offer up some sites that they deem suitable for the shelters, Do said.

Ashley Ludwig, Patch Photo