The cold weather waits for no one, and still with no cold weather shelter in place, advocates worry Orange County is behind in providing for the local homeless population this winter season.
Although days are forecasted to be warm throughout the next week, a National Weather Service meteorologist said nights will continue to be cold – most dipping to the mid-40s. That may not be too concerning for some, but being unsheltered and cold creates challenges and trauma for the region’s unhoused.
Most shelters in Orange County don’t take walk-ups, that is why the county has traditionally opened emergency shelters during the winter months so people have a place to at least get out of the cold overnight. But as the winter trudges on, and with no shelter currently in place, advocates say action from local leaders is not being taken quickly enough.
“The cold weather shelters, the brilliance of those is everybody qualifies. If you’re cold, you can just go inside,” said Katherine White, director of operations and patient care for Wound Walk OC, an organization that offers first aid and other resources to people living on the street. “In the end, we’ve just got to get people inside. You cannot leave them out to just die.”
The county has provided emergency shelters since at least 2007, most often at the National Guard armories in Santa Ana and Fullerton. They often opened as early as October and were offered until spring.
Last year, an emergency shelter didn’t open until February after push-back from Santa Ana over hosting one again after opening more of its own shelters, and a lack of interest from other cities. In the end, Fullerton offered its Independence Park gym.
Doug Becht, director of the county’s Office of Care Coordination, said city mayors and managers were sent letters in August asking what their individual city needs are during winter and to “generally explore the potential” for each city to host a cold weather emergency shelter of its own to serve the homeless folks living on its streets.
“We realized that having one central or two central locations to provide cold weather shelter to the entire county can be really challenging,” Becht said. “Often, during these times, getting in from the cold weather or the rainy weather is something we want people to be able to do rather quickly. And when it’s in one geographic location, those that aren’t close to that location are really disadvantaged in access.”
It’s also hard for a single city to play host to an emergency shelter for the entire county, officials said.
Responses were received from a few cities, including Costa Mesa and Anaheim, showing interest in “just having a conversation,” Becht said, but no formal negotiations or potential projects materialized.
“We really try to work with our cities to understand their particular needs, and then see how we can partner with them if there’s an identified need,” Becht said. “We continue to be interested and open to talking with any of our city partners about what a solution might look like.”
The county’s Commission to End Homelessness directed his office to “move further in exploring and potentially negotiating an option” with the cities that showed interest. Although his office is trying to move quickly, Becht said Friday through an agency spokesperson there was nothing to report back yet, but a possible solution might be presented to the Board of Supervisors at its next meeting on Jan. 23.
In the meantime, the Office of Care Coordination is ensuring county-run shelters are filling every empty bed available with homeless folks looking to get out of the extreme weather, Becht said. And, using the county’s extra beds to get people out of the weather will hopefully also start their journey out of homelessness, he said.
Michael Sean Wright, founder of Wound Walk OC, said with no cold weather emergency shelter, he expects more homeless people will die on the streets of Orange County.
Multiple nights of rain, flash flood warnings, blustering winds and mudslides had many Orange County residents hunkering down indoors last winter. The excess of rainfall brought California out of a drought, but it was far from welcomed by OC’s homeless population.
To provide more shelter from the unforgiving weather conditions, Wound Walk OC, in partnership with the Lestonnac Free Clinic, set up waterproof canvas igloos in a parking lot in Anaheim multiple nights last year.
“We’re not going to let people die in front of us. So if that means literally covering people with our blankets, with our temporary shelter provisions, our supplies, then that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Wright said. “The biggest downfall was lack of planning for weather, rain. And yet we know everything’s changing. It’s getting wetter, hotter, colder, more extreme. When we don’t plan for those who are the most vulnerable, the most vulnerable are going to be the highest impacted. And that’s exactly what happened.”
Nearly 500 homeless people died in 2023, said Dennis Kriz, a pastor of St. Philip Benizi Catholic Church in Fullerton. He knows. Every month he holds a prayer service and reads aloud the names of those who died in the last 30 days.
According to the data Kris receives from the coroner’s office, 231 people died between November 2022 and March 2023. From November 2021 to March 2022, 200 people died, and in the same time period the year prior, 149 people were reported to have died while homeless.
“Last year it was quite rainy and quite cold and the death toll was very high. The shelter probably saved lives,” Kriz said. “Just this Monday, because it was pretty darn cold Monday, we had an older lady who was sleeping right next to the door of my office. I went home, I came back with a sleeping bag, and I gave it to her because I knew that it was 9 in the evening, there really would be no place to call that would actually give her someplace to stay.”
Shelters have their own set of rules and requirements for access and typically require referral from an outreach program or law enforcement. Some have strict curfews, which can be a challenge for those with job schedules that start earlier or end later, meaning they might be choosing between work and a safe place to stay, the advocates said.
Other shelters want proof of ties to the local community, which could mean providing a copy of an old lease or school records – documents that are difficult to keep safe with no shelter, they said.
Kriz said if a homeless person is cold and decides to go to an existing shelter after 5 p.m., or they don’t have an I.D., they will be turned away.
Contrary to what many believe, most homeless people are not “service resistant,” White said, but rather the services being offered are not accessible or not targeting their needs correctly.
“Put up a cold weather shelter and see how many people will stand in line. We had people standing in line from 3 p.m., in the pouring rain, where there was no cover, or waiting for a bus that wasn’t coming until 7 p.m., to sleep in a gym on a cot with no promise of housing on the other side,” she said. “Don’t tell me that people don’t want help. If they don’t want your help, what’s wrong with the help you’re offering them? Because what you’re offering isn’t meeting their needs.”
