Since the summer, officials in a slew of cities across Orange County have been cracking down on encampments on public sidewalks and parks as part of an effort to address homelessness – one of the biggest issues in one of the wealthiest counties in the country.
The crackdown comes after a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year overturned a decision that required cities to have shelter beds available for people before police or code enforcement officers could clear out a homeless camp.
[Read: Is Orange County About To Enforce Anti-Camping Laws Again?]
It also comes after officials announced in May a nearly 2,000-person increase in Orange County’s homeless population since 2022, saying there was a bottleneck at local shelters due to a lack of affordable housing in the region.
[Read: Orange County Homeless Population Continues Growing]
Now, officials in at least eight OC cities have significantly bolstered their anti-camping laws in recent months – regardless of shelter availability.
Stanton, one of OC’s smallest cities, went even further, declaring homelessness a local emergency after their unhoused population shot up by 78% in the past five years.
[Read: Orange County Confronts Homelessness Ahead of Thanksgiving]
“This increase in homelessness, despite the diligent efforts of the city over the years, has resulted in significant impacts to the quality of life for Stanton residents and businesses,” said Stanton City Manager Hannah Shin-Heydorn at the Nov. 26 city council meeting.
“Impacts include an increase in health and safety concerns such as an increase in criminal activity, open air drug use – fentanyl in particular – open fires, obscene and lewd acts in public.”
Many homeless people living on the streets are grappling with substance abuse and mental health problems – oftentimes both simultaneously.
Officials argue the crackdown is necessary to keep public parks, benches and sidewalks safe for residents who are urging officials to act and that they have already invested heavily in addressing homelessness and offer a multitude of services that some people refuse.
But advocates for homeless people say the anti-camping laws will unfairly target people who are struggling to get off the streets.
Garden Grove City Councilman George Brietigam said in a phone interview that officials voted to adopt a no-camping ordinance in the city after moving forward on partnerships with CalOptima for street medicine services and Be Well OC for homeless outreach services.
He also said they introduced the ordinance after the city opened up a homeless shelter that offers drug treatment and job training & placement programs.
“We’re offering every service in the world. We’re trying to get these people taken care of as compassionately and humanly as possible,” Brietigam said.
“At the same time, we’re not going to allow them to continue to camp out in the city and cause the hygiene problems, cause the fires, cause the quality of life issues for our residents.”
According to the latest homeless count from earlier this year, the city’s homeless population dropped from 391 in 2022 to 239 in 2024.
Brietigam said the city’s approach to addressing homelessness is becoming a model across the state and that when the new ordinance goes into effect, it will encourage people resistant to accepting services to reconsider.
“We’ve given all these carrots,” he said. “We’ve got all these programs that the taxpayers and the community is paying for, all these care programs to help the people, but we also need a stick, because, quite frankly, a lot of the people will refuse services. They just don’t want to get help.”
Critics of the recent spat of encampment crackdowns and anti-camping laws argue that criminalizing homelessness does nothing to address the root causes of the problem.
Ugochi Anaebere-Nicholson, a staff attorney with the Public Interest Law Project, said in a phone interview that the Supreme Court decision earlier this year was a disappointment.
“It really didn’t take into account the actual solutions to homeless houselessness, which is permanent and affordable, supportive housing,” she said.
“That’s what’s been proven to actually help stem the tide of houselessness, not these rules that are punishing people for the status of being unhoused.”
Anaebere-Nicholson called the anti-camping laws draconian and said cities need to take a collective approach to addressing homelessness.
“I just don’t see that happening with laws that are designed to criminalize people and penalize them with funds, fees, jail time,” she said “That’s not how you deal with someone who’s going through the crisis of losing their home or not being able to find one.”
Where Are The Crackdowns Happening?
The cities of Santa Ana, Anaheim, Irvine, Garden Grove, Newport Beach, San Clemente, Stanton and Aliso Viejo – have overhauled their anti-camping laws in a move activists say will only worsen the crisis.
In Stanton, the emergency declaration gives City Manager Hannah Shin-Heydorn the ability to make rules and regulations related to homelessness that must later be confirmed by elected officials.
City officials adopted an ordinance that bans people from sleeping and storing personal belongings on Stanton’s streets and sidewalks and a separate ordinance that aims to crackdown on bicycle thefts.
In neighboring Anaheim, police officers have been clearing homeless people out of parks and railways in recent months.
Officials there also adopted laws that prohibit smoking at parks, bus stops and near schools and daycares as well as selling or assembling bikes on public property, blocking sidewalks, leaving personal property unattended on sidewalks or streets and sleeping at bus stops and park tables.
On the coast, officials in Newport Beach also adopted a similar ordinance that bans setting up tents on public property, leaving personal property unattended at certain public spaces and outlawing sleeping on public benches or bike racks.
Officials there say the new law is working and that a census by the nonprofit People Assisting the Homeless – the city’s homeless outreach provider – found the number of homeless people in the city decreased to 11.
According to the Point in Time count published earlier this year, there were 71 homeless people in Newport Beach.
“Newport Beach’s anti-camping laws are clearly having a positive effect in moving people off the streets,” said former Newport Beach Mayor Will O’Neill in a Dec. 4 news release. “The new ordinance is prompting more unhoused individuals to accept shelter and services as an alternative to citations or arrest.”
According to the same news release, the police department responded to over 150 calls involving homeless people and made 58 arrests for municipal code violations between Oct. 10 to Nov. 19.
Food Insecurity is Also Increasing in Orange County
Homelessness isn’t the only issue on the rise in Orange County.
Last month, leaders with the Orange County Hunger Alliance began ringing alarm bells about a quiet and steep rise in hunger to a level they hadn’t seen since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
[Read: Hunger is on a Sharp and Silent Rise in Orange County This Thanksgiving]
Meanwhile, a newly released county report found the number of kids that local school districts in Orange County deemed as homeless and the number of children eligible for free lunches – a longtime indicator of poverty – has gone up again for a second year in a row.
[Read: Thousands of OC Kids Struggle With Homelessness, Hunger and Mental Health Issues]
According to the latest homeless count, there are 7,322 homeless people in Orange County and 4,137 of them are unsheltered.
This year, the Orange County Sheriff’s department also released a report that showed 496 people died living on the streets of OC in 2022.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.