Free Republic

For Laura and John Kasten, a homeless couple forced from an Orange County riverbed into temporary motel living — the road ahead looms empty, filled with hunger, loneliness, drugs. - snip- On Valentine’s Day, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who was presiding over a civil suit filed by homeless advocates against Orange County and the cities of Anaheim, Costa Mesa and Orange, took a walking tour of the camp, hugging bedraggled residents and insisting that evictions be handled “humanely and with dignity.” - snip- Both John and Laura have struggled with addictions to heroin and to meth, and both...

Supervisors voted Monday for Orange County to spend $70.5 million on permanent housing for the homeless, and to create temporary homeless camps in Irvine, and possibly in Huntington Beach and Laguna Niguel. The vote comes a week after supervisors committed $20 million toward permanent housing for the homeless. The combined $90 million is likely the single largest appropriation ever committed by the county to fight homelessness, and signals a shift in the county’s strategy to solve the growing issue. The decision came as supervisors admitted that they’ve failed to spend money that’s been available for homeless housing – tens of...

Thousands of pounds of human waste, close to 14,000 hypodermic needles cleaned out from Santa Ana River homeless encampments Orange County Public Works released eye-popping figures Thursday, March 8, on the total amount of debris, needles and hazardous waste removed when crews cleaned up the area along the Santa Ana River Trail once populated by the encampments of homeless people. Here’s what was collected between Jan. 22 and March 3 from a more than two-mile stretch of bike trail roughly from I-5 in Orange to Ball Road in Anaheim, according to OC Public Works spokesman Shannon Widor: 404 tons of...

The last of more than 700 homeless people living in the tent encampments at the Santa Ana River Trail left on Monday — 697 of them gone to motels. In the days since, Orange County Public Works crews have cleared away most of the debris left behind on a roughly two-mile stretch from I-5 in Orange to Ball Road/Taft Avenue in Anaheim. It won’t be known until next week just how much trash, feces, discarded syringes and other hazardous waste was collected, said OC Public Works spokesman Shannon Widor. The last official tally from the county was on Feb. 9,...

What happens when homeless people are sent to motels? Some are welcomed, some treated warily, some kicked out Erik Teasley was happy to leave behind the ragtag encampments at the Santa Ana River Trail where he and hundreds of other homeless people had lived until last week, when the county resumed its mass dispersal of an entrenched tent-city community. A comfortable motel sounded good to Teasley, 47. A homeless man from Santa Ana, he’d spent two years sleeping in different spots on the banks of the flood-control channel. But, last week, when he initially was moved away from the riverbed,...

Orange County’s largest homeless encampment is no more. On Monday, following a six-day blitz during which county officials moved 732 homeless people into local motels and shelters, the once-bustling tent encampment sat unoccupied. The last few occupants packed their belongings and left. Sheriff’s deputies guarded locked gates to the flood control channel, preventing people from reentering. -snip- The county attempted to clear the Santa Ana River encampment beginning Jan. 22 so it could conduct an environmental cleanup of the flood control channel. But U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter suspended that process by granting a temporary restraining order in...