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For the second time in two years the Orange County Board of Supervisors thought it found a piece of property that could be converted to a homeless shelter only to be forced to abandon the property due to an uprising of local residents, backed by their City Council. First, it was a site in Fullerton, and now on November 18 the Supervisors pulled the plug on a site in Santa Ana with local residents and some City Council members cheering their victory to keep a shelter out of their neighborhood.
That there are homeless with no place to go in Orange County is a given, especially in the Santa Ana Civic Center where the shopping carts, trash, half eaten food and the smell of urine prevail. Some of the homeless would love to be able to afford a cheap motel room to get off the street (or off what used to be grass in the Civic Center) regardless of the fact that those in the homeless provider industry decry the motel people and motel children as representing any kind of solution, counting them as homeless even when they have a motel roof over their heads.
In the last few weeks I have noticed some new faces among the homeless who hang out around the nearby supermarket and 7-11. There seems to be more homeless of recent, and most of the faces that I see are ones I have not seen before. I decided to try and find out if these were Orange County’s homeless, or recent arrivals. So I said to one fellow “ Say, you are new around here aren’t you? Where did you come from?’ The answer – “I came from Georgia. If you are going to be without an abode in the winter, this is the place to be.”
Suspicions confirmed. Now I’m wondering why our county government should be working to provide a shelter for homeless snowbirds who come here from outside the county. Build it and they will come – is that what we want? And if so, in whose back yard?
From Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_United_States_law, which saves me from having to draft a comment myself:
People have a legal right to go to the state that they want — and to receive the same benefits available to longer-term residents of that state. You can make life hell for them (within reasonable bounds) if you want — but it has to be done equally for everyone. So eventually, the question becomes whether one wants the homeless to be able to live or to die. If you choose the latter, you can expect them to get unpleasant about it –freedom being just another word for nothing left to lose.
Also, as I was editing and illustrating this post (on a borrowed computer, hence my scarcity here) I was thinking, “Proclaim ‘suspicions confirmed!’ and build a whole piece out of one anecdotal encounter? Not OBNO’s best work. And do snowbirds actually come from Georgia?”
Nice pic of an old hitchhiking snowbird though, eh?
I get your response, Greg.
But it doesn’t really address the original question.
Are these shelters the best solution?
One view is that these folks have few options — to do otherwise would be simple cruelty. Think the Joads in Grapes of Wrath.
Another view is that (some of) these folks are making a lifestyle decision. As you point out, that is completely their right. If I choose to have a mobile, minimally materialistic lifestyle, and I choose to use my meager resources to co-ordinate peregrinations with the climate, absolutely I have the right to do so. Criminalizing my lifestyle, as so many “homeless” policies do, is wrong both constitutionally and morally.
The relevant question is: how do we best target resources to the first group, while not punishing the second?
This is not an easy question. I don’t claim to have the answer. But it is a question that must be addressed if we are going to truly help those most in need ( as opposed to just buy-off our collective guilty conscious) .
Saying “he has the the right,” while true, falls short of the mark.
tyler, you ask good questions.
The County is not interested in the homeless, they just want to be seen to be doing something to look good. The professional do-gooders are just happy to be there.
Nelson’s only interest in a shelter was to show the houseacrats and Moorlach that Mr. Big could do something where they had all failed for years. Of course his own ego got in the way as he chose a crappy site and lined up his number one fund raiser and pal, Cameron Irons, a six-figure commission ginned up on a bogus, post-dated “sole source agreement.” Naturally he left Fullerton in the dark and for a while was quite prepared to “shove it up their ass” (as he charmingly put it).
The building was a tear down. Renovation would have been a fiasco.
The Santa Ana site was just more of the same: overpriced real estate that would present nothing but exorbitant rehab costs.
In my time with the County nobody ever even bothered to look at alternatives to a “regional” shelter. But of course these are people who like to use cliches like “bang for the buck” and “boots on the ground.” And most tellingly nobody ever really found out what homeless people might want and actually use.
Hilariously, Nelson insisted that his shelter be on a bus route, not knowing and not caring that homeless people don’t ride the bus, especially in east Fullerton.
Gotta take exception to that last point: As a frequent busrider myself I can attest that plenty of homeless people take the bus. I’m not sure exactly how they pay for it but they do. Homeless people I’m acquainted with. And I’m always hearing conversations especially later at night on the topic of “Is the Armory open tonight?” and “You should go here, or there.”
A couple of bus trips equals a pack of smokes, right? I see lots and lots of people pushing carts (can’t take them on a bus) and lots riding bikes – saw a lot of that at the County. I’ve never seen any homeless getting on or a bus on Harbor in Anaheim of Fullerton, but I’ll defer to your experience.
What’s really funny is that now Anaheim wants to buy raw land (not a bad idea) but in a super-premium location (bad idea) instead of building one a few hundred yards away between La Palma Park and Carl Karcher Way where there is actually plenty of vacant land just sitting there.
This really is a case of people wanting to be seen as doing something: Anaheim has just chased all the homeless out of the east part of La Palma so it can build a dog park.
Catchy tune, Greg. Janis Joplin, right? RIP
Kris Kristofferson, but she did the most well-known version of it.
And here’s some more food for thought: Perhaps some of these refugees have been pushed out of their former home states? Not too long ago, the City of Santa Clarita bussed homeless people to Downtown LA. And last year, the State of Nevada’s mental health care facility in Las Vegas actually gave patients bus tickets to go elsewhere. At least one of them landed in OC…
http://nvprogressive.blogspot.com/2013/04/california-outrage-grows-as-nevada.html?m=0
And there are probably more. So where can they go? And who will finally give these people a chance at a better life? We’re talking about real people here, not political hot potatoes.
thank you so much for helping to locate my dad!!!!!
the deadbeat owes me money.
can you please tell me where the picture was taken.
and to greg’s point, if we just let them die, that creates all
sorts of other problems, like disposal
So you never saw Soylent Green?
We welcome illegal snowbirds from outside the country to live in Orange County. We give them free medical care and education. Many collect taxpayer subsidies and welfare. So if we accept illegal foreign snowbirds (and reward their illegality) why would you complain about legal domestic snowbirds who have a perfect right as Americans to travel from state to state and live wherever they want?
And why would you be surprised about the size of our homeless population? People need jobs to break out of poverty. When illegal foreigners come here and steal jobs from our citizens – the homeless population is bound to grow. And when illegals are rewarded for their criminality and the borders remain wide open – why would you be surprised when millions of more illegals come here? When you feed stray dogs – would you expect to get fewer of them?