After multiple extensions, a pilot program in Fullerton that offered a safe overnight lot for people sleeping in their vehicles ended before the new year, but some local advocates are hoping to jumpstart the effort again – this time with a wider reach.
Envisioning a regional program that services Orange County’s northern cities, Fullerton’s Tri-Parish Homeless Collaborative, which includes members of the city’s three catholic churches, are working to get support from city and county officials, and locate funding options, to revive the safe parking program. Advocates said a more comprehensive effort that focuses on permanent rehousing solutions for a broader group of people is needed.
“Right now we’re kind of reimagining the safe parking, and we’re looking at it as more of a transitional shelter for homeless people living in their vehicles … so that more resources can come to the concept of safe parking,” said Enedina Clements, a member of the Tri-Parish and St. Juliana Falconieri Catholic Church.
Kellee Fritzal, Fullerton’s deputy director of Community and Economic Development, said the city has been working with the group on the possible program.
The first of its kind in Orange County, Fullerton’s safe parking initiative was launched as a six-month trial in 2019, offering case management and other resources for those who sought overnight refuge at the lot, as well as security and sanitation facilities. It was extended twice before ending in December, due in part to lack of funding, Fritzal said.
The cost to run the program was roughly $15,000 per month, city officials have said. The lot at Union Pacific Park on West Truslow Avenue was also the subject of complaints from neighbors, Fritzal said.
The initial six-month trial program cost the city roughly $80,000, and in May 2020 Fullerton allocated another $45,000 for an extension. When the program was renewed again in August, the city used coronavirus relief funds to pay for it, officials said previously.
“Funding is always a problem with the limited people we provided,” Fritzal said.
The program had “a few successes,” Fritzal said, marked by the connection of participants with resources that led to permanent housing. In the first six months, 20 people in 15 vehicles came through the program, according to a report by the city. Of those, four people found housing: One who was accepted into a university and a family of three who the city said moved into housing after transitioning through a family shelter.
All 20 were connected with social services, the report said.
When Pathways of Hope took over the program’s operations from the Illumination Foundation after the first six months, it helped house another five people between the end of May 2020 and December, the organization wrote in a separate report to the city. For eight others, Pathways of Hope helped them pay for vehicle or RV repairs and housing deposits, the report said.
David Gillanders, Pathways of Hope’s executive director, said the program was an accomplishment despite being one that was always intended to be short-lived. But the need for a permanent program is apparent, he said. Even with rental assistance and eviction moratoriums during the pandemic, “there’s still going to be people who fall through the cracks of all those programs,” he said.
“We see a lot of value in having a program like this in general that’s permanent, just because there are so many people that do have that slippery slope experience of their economic situation really leading them back to this eventuality of living in their car,” Gillanders said.
In a future initiative, advocates said they’d hope to relax some of the initial program’s strict eligibility requirements, which included having participants pass a background check.
“It ended up being so restrictive that we really limited the number of people we could address,” said Bob Dietterle, a member of the Tri-Parish.
Dietterle and other members of the group planned to meet Friday, May 21, with officials from Fullerton and the county, along with other religious community members in neighboring cities, to start discussing specific actions for a new program, including finding funding and a site location.
He said a new program would include benchmarks to help assess whether the housing efforts were successful, and provide case management and connections to extensive services. Bringing those resources on-site would be an important factor, Clements said, so people can have easy access to employment, healthcare, mental health and other assistance.
“It’s great to have a meeting, it’s great to get people to agree on stuff, but, you know, you got to put the rubber on the road,” Deitterle said.
Gillanders said a regional approach encompassing multiple cities would likely be “really, really beneficial,” and feasible to fund.
“I think it’s really about location,” he said.
“We’d really like to see a city step up and try to carve out a place where a program like this can exist. Fullerton really took that first leap, and we’d like to see another city be able to step in and do that.”
In the time since Fullerton’s program lapsed, the city has started enforcing parking rules along a street where they said long-term RV parking and deserted vehicles had resulted in public safety issues and complaints. During a March City Council meeting, several people, including local religious leaders, called on the city to delay enforcement of the rules or dump them all together, saying people living in RVs along the road would be forced to uproot.
The regulations on Valencia Drive, which were initially enforced as a pilot program in 2019, but abandoned during the pandemic, restrict parking to commercial vehicles only on one side of the street and two-hour parking zones on the other side.
Fritzal said the city worked with faith-based groups after that meeting to offer resources to those in the motorhomes, and connected some with services to get them on a path to housing or get their vehicles maintenance before enforcement began.
Helping those residents posed new hurdles in a “multi-faceted problem with lots of little edges on it,” Dietterle said.
“All of the RV owners we’ve talked to have said, ‘Hey, this is our home. And if you impounded it, you’re impounding and foreclosing on our house.”
