Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/david-o-carter/)
Supervisors Todd Spitzer and Shawn Nelson said they are opposed to a proposal by south Orange County mayors to put a new homeless shelter on county-owned property in rural Silverado Canyon.
Santa Ana council members and residents have said the three cities’ refusal to accept emergency shelters revealed a double standard: It’s okay to put shelters near poor kids in Santa Ana but not near kids from wealthier families.
The homeless people who slept in the Santa Ana Civic Center for years were cleared out by Thursday afternoon and people can’t sleep there anymore after much of the area was blocked off by chain link fences.
Lloyd Pendleton’s speech to local officials, business leaders and advocates came as Orange County grapples with a growing homeless population and a severe shortage of shelter and affordable housing.
County officials have asked the National Guard for 90-day extensions to use the Fullerton and Santa Ana armories at night for homeless shelters.
“We don’t have sufficient capacity,” said the supervisors’ chairman, Andrew Do. The issue is scheduled to be discussed Tuesday at a federal court hearing with U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, county officials, and city officials from across Orange County.
County workers, along with the Santa Ana Police Department, began clearing out segments of the Civic Center homeless camp Monday as healthcare workers and city contractors started health and other assessments of roughly 200 people living there.
“What we saw with…the hysteria from Irvine, is this: It’s simply a class-based argument that if ‘I pay enough for where I live, I shouldn’t have to deal with my homeless problem. I should shift it to some other city,’ ” said county Supervisor Andrew Do.
Answers about where shelters might be placed, and how they would be operated, could come at an April 3 court meeting.
Among the problems he cited: Women’s beds put in men’s sleeping areas due to a lack of space, people with serious mental illnesses being triggered by extremely crowded conditions at the Courtyard shelter, and women being told by county officials their option was to stay at an already-over-capacity shelter with men who they say sexually assaulted them.