Fourteen people died “without fixed abode” in September in OC. Their names are:
Maria ESPINOZA who died on August 31st in Santa Ana
Chung NGUYEN who died on September 4th in Garden Grove
Steve PANIAGUA who died on September 6th in Anaheim
Matthew MARTIN who died on September 8th in Huntington Beach
Tina ROMERO who died on September 10th in Anaheim
Rudy MARTINEZ II who died on September 15th in Orange
Santiago ANAYA who died on September 17th in Anaheim
David PARKER who died on September 20th in Laguna Beach
Richard MAGDAUG who died on September 23rd in Lake Forest
Mario HERNANDEZ BARRIOS who died on September 26th in Orange
Michael ROMERO who died on September 29th in Huntington Beach
Robert VANMILL who died on September 29th in Anaheim
Raymond CRANDELL who died on September 30th in Anaheim
Durran JACK who died on September 30th in Midway City
Lana NAZARIO who died on September 30th in Buena Park
This is the lowest monthly number of homeless deaths since Sept, 2019 when there were ten. For the year, there have been 243 deaths among those “without fixed abode,” again the lowest number since 2020, when there were 244 deaths by this point in the year.
A number of upcoming surveys and reports should shed light on possible explanations for the decline in homeless deaths in OC over the last two years.
In January – February 2026, the OC Commission on Homeless Deaths will release its report on Homeless Deaths in OC for 2024. The report will be on deaths of more than a year past. However, homeless deaths began to decline substantially in 2024. The total number of homeless deaths in 2024 were 372, in 2022, they were 490, and in 2023 they were 500. This trend has been continuing in 2025. Thus, the report may help us to understand why homeless deaths have continued to decline this year.
Further, in January 2026, OC will conduct its biannual Point in Time Count of persons experiencing homelessness, the results generally released around May or June. Anecdotally, an explanation for the lower number of homeless deaths could be that with a county-wide increase in the number of shelter beds, the number of unsheltered persons (as opposed to sheltered persons) experiencing homelessness has substantially decreased.
Firmer numbers will thus become available then in the next 6-8 months to help us to better understand the decrease, and to help us to see if we are counting properly. Over the years, a fair number of us have known of people experiencing homelessness who died in shelters and hospitals but were not then included among those who died “without fixed abode.”
But we do seem to be seeing progress, and this is good!
Fr. Dennis Kriz, OSM, Pastor St. Philip Benizi Catholic Church, Fullerton.
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