Voice of OC (https://voiceofoc.org/tag/santa-ana-civic-center/)
The top county officials are moving in a new direction to address the county’s growing homelessness, authorizing new housing and support services in a unanimous decision this week.
Orange County supervisors are scheduled Tuesday to move forward with the county government’s first new Civic Center building in decades, a $315-million proposal to replace a long-empty building across from Santa Ana City Hall.
As county supervisors embark on developing a new downtown civic center for Orange County, public engagement should be key to the process.
Responding to calls from homeless advocates, the Anaheim City Council is set to review a controversial anti-camping ordinance intended to discourage homeless encampments in public areas.
While many challenges remain, 2016 will go down as a year in which Orange County officials finally began to address one of the county’s most shameful realities — its ever-increasing homeless population.
The new shelter in downtown Santa Ana, known as the Courtyard, has helped provide a safe place for hundreds of homeless people to sleep at night. But problems have come along with the progress.
Igmar Rodas, an outspoken member of the homeless community at the downtown Santa Ana Civic Center, spent a week chronicling his visits to the homeless shelter and service center the county just opened at the old downtown bus terminal.
A coalition of homeless advocacy groups, led by the ACLU, asked the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday to devote $55 million in county taxpayer dollars toward ending homelessness.
Orange County First District Supervisor Andrew Do spent the night at the county’s newly opened homeless shelter and service center in downtown Santa Ana last Thursday. He said he “learned a lot” from the experience.
The Los Angeles-based non-profit The Midnight Mission will receive up to $1.4 million over the next year to run a 300-bed shelter and service center at the now-shuttered Santa Ana Transit Terminal adjacent to the Civic Center.