Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/category/topics/housing-homelessness/)
Resident frustrations boiled during a town hall meeting hosted by the Buena Park City Council to consider a temporary, regional homeless shelter just north of the city’s border with Anaheim.
Roughly 1,300 people are sleeping in homeless shelters throughout Orange County, with all big shelters located in north and central Orange County in cities like Santa Ana and Anaheim, according to unofficial numbers provided to Voice of OC.
The two-day count of people living on the streets of Orange County finished Thursday night.
But volunteer teams reported difficulty finding homeless people during the first day of the two-day countywide homeless count.
They’re counting the number of homeless people in each city as part of a requirement for federal funding to help combat homelessness.
The temporary homeless shelter is scheduled to open March 1.
Doug Chaffee, the former mayor of Fullerton, took office Tuesday. Supervisors also set March 12 as the date for a special election to replace the seat held until recently by Todd Spitzer.
Over the last year, OC saw more action toward getting homeless people off the streets and into shelter than any other time in recent memory.
Anaheim officials cleared out homeless encampments at Maxwell Park Friday morning and sent roughly 30 people to the newly opened 200-bed emergency homeless shelter near Angel Stadium four days before Christmas, as part of a settlement in a federal lawsuit.
The year-end meeting featured goodbyes to supervisors Todd Spitzer and Shawn Nelson, criticism of the all supervisors over the deaths of more than 200 homeless people this year, and questions from the incoming DA about wiretapping and alleged conflicts of interest related to a contractor hired by the outgoing district attorney and illegal surveillance of elected officials by a police union’s law firm.