SANTA ANA For two hours straight, the Orange County Board of Supervisors listened to one Orange County resident after another at their public budget hearing on Tuesday, June 13, criticize them for not dedicating enough money to alleviate homelessness.

And the speakers repeatedly called for a county fund to provide much-needed housing.

Advocates for the homeless fill the room as fellow advocates speak to the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting in the Hall of Administration Tuesday morning in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Todd Spitzer of the Orange County Board of Supervisors listens as an advocate for the homeless speaks Tuesday morning in the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Tim Houchen of Anaheim, an advocate for the homeless, takes video during the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting as he holds the Orange County Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness, Tuesday morning in the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Advocates for the homeless fill the room as fellow advocates speak to the Orange County Board of Supervisors in the Hall of Administration Tuesday morning in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Susan Meyer of Costa Mesa, speaks to the Orange County Board of Supervisors concerning homelessness in Orange County Tuesday morning in the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)



Tim Houchen of Anaheim, an advocate for the homeless, speaks to the Orange County Board of Supervisors as he holds the Orange County Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness, Tuesday morning in the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Michelle Steel, chairwoman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors listens as an advocate for the homeless speaks Tuesday morning in the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Izzy Hernandez attends a rally as advocates for the homeless gather outside the Hall of Administration before the start of the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting on the upcoming county budget. Many advocates for the homeless spoke to the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday morning in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Luis Garcia,16, of Anaheim, a student at Anaheim High School, and an advocate for the homeless, speaks to the Orange County Board of Supervisors in the Hall of Administration Tuesday morning in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Andrew Delgado,16, right, of Anaheim, a student at Anaheim High School, and an advocate for the homeless, sits with fellow students in the audience during the meeting of the Orange County Board of Supervisors in the Hall of Administration Tuesday morning in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)



Advocates for the homeless hold signs as they gather outside the Hall of Administration before the start of the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting on the upcoming county budget. Many advocates for the homeless spoke to the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday morning in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Advocates for the homeless hold small model houses as they sit in the audience as fellow advocates speak to the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday morning in the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Advocates for the homeless sit in the audience as fellow advocates speak to the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday morning in the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Advocates for the homeless hold signs as they gather outside the Hall of Administration before the start of the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting on the upcoming county budget. Many advocates for the homeless spoke to the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday morning in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Mark Daniels of Anaheim, an advocate for the homeless, speaks to the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday morning in the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)



Advocates for the homeless hold signs and model houses as they gather outside the Hall of Administration before the start of the Orange County Board of Supervisors meeting on the upcoming county budget. Many advocates for the homeless spoke to the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday morning in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Karina Ramirez,17, of Anaheim, a student at Oxford Academy, and an advocate for the homeless, speaks to the Orange County Board of Supervisors in the Hall of Administration Tuesday morning in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Andrew Delgado,16, of Anaheim, a student at Anaheim High School, and an advocate for the homeless, sits in the audience during the meeting of the Orange County Board of Supervisors in the Hall of Administration Tuesday morning in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Andrew Do of the Orange County Board of Supervisors listens as an advocate for the homeless speaks Tuesday morning in the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Luis Garcia,16, of Anaheim, a student at Anaheim High School, and an advocate for the homeless, speaks to the Orange County Board of Supervisors in the Hall of Administration Tuesday morning in Santa Ana, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)



“We are here to insist – to insist – that you revise the budget,” said Jeanine Robbins, who lives in Anaheim and, along with her husband, Mike Robbins, is a leader in the grassroots Anaheim Poverty Task Force.

The board is considering a proposed $6.2 billion county budget for fiscal year 2017-18. Once adopted, the budget takes effect in July.

The stream of comments they listened to without response – some delivered as heartfelt pleas and some as threats of voter retribution – came from about 60 members of the public, most of them participants in a rally held outside the Hall of Administration before the start of the board meeting.

Protesters included high school students, college interns, lawyers engaged in social justice, community organizers, volunteers and leaders from nonprofits, clergy, labor union members, people with mental health issues, and those who are homeless now or had been in the past.

Many of them wore white T-shirts inscribed with the handwritten names of homeless people who have died this year and such phrases as “Their Lives Count,” “End Homelessness,” and, simply, “Help.”

The county has opened two emergency shelters in recent months that currently sleep up to 500 people. Just last week, the board initiated a $750,000 pilot program for people in the tent encampments along the Santa Ana River and also approved a $5 million expenditure of mental health dollars from a state funding source to provide permanent housing for qualifying homeless people.

But critics say such efforts fall far short in dealing with the growing crisis here: January’s federally mandated Point in Time count of the homeless, a one-night snapshot undertaken every two years in Orange County, showed a nearly 8 percent increase in the homeless population since 2015, with half of the 4,792 people recorded in the census living without shelter.

The talk at the rally and at the public hearing echoed a request heard multiple times over the past few years, one that was at the heart of a 2016 report on homelessness by the Orange County office of the American Civil Liberties Union: that the county spend discretionary tax dollars to fund its own Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness, a 2010 road map approved by the Board of Supervisors but never executed.

Tim Houchen, who spent four years sleeping in Santa Ana’s Civic Center before moving in 2015 into supportive housing in Anaheim, held up a worn, color photocopy of the 10-year plan as he stood at the microphone: “This is something that recommended urgency and we haven’t seen much of that.”

Houchen, one of the organizers of Tuesday’s rally, started his own nonprofit to help homeless people, Hope 4 Restoration, and was recently appointed to his city’s housing commission. While Anaheim and Santa Ana have the county’s largest homeless populations, those who came to address the supervisors illustrate how homelessness is a countywide issue. They hailed from communities that included La Habra, Fullerton, Orange, Los Alamitos, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Mission Viejo and San Clemente.

Many speakers called for establishing a $50 million housing trust fund to self-generate money that would supersede what they claim is the county’s over-reliant and sluggish use of federal and state dollars to address homelessness.

Such a fund, supporters argued, could relieve the county’s acute shortage of affordable housing for low-income residents – not only for the homeless, many of whom have no income or rely on government programs to survive, but for many wage earners only a paycheck or a medical crisis away from being on the streets.

Israel “Izzy” Hernandez, 18, was one of several Anaheim High students who talked about what they have lived through or have witnessed among their schoolmates.

Hernandez, who graduated in May, shared how his family took in a fellow student he got to know from band class, a kid whose parents found themselves out of work and on the streets after both suffered injuries and couldn’t work. His friend, one of three teenage siblings, lived for four months with the Hernandez family, themselves struggling financially, Hernandez said.

“We have to end this because students shouldn’t bear the destitution of being homeless,” Hernandez told the supervisors, as his friend’s 13-year-old brother sat listening. “Honestly, it’s excruciating.”

Hernandez and about 30 other high school students came to the meeting under the auspices of Orange County Congregation Community Organization, a long active local faith-based group that plans to hold a gathering Monday, June 19, to analyze the budget for any revisions resulting from protesters’ demands.

“We are expecting a positive response,” said Cynthia Sanchez, a community organizer for the group.

If nothing changes in the budget, she added, then protesters will seek meetings with individual supervisors.

“We’re making sure they are aware that this is a priority. And they need to address it.”

Later in the day, after most of the observers had left the board chambers, the supervisors took a straw vote to approve eight more positions in the Health Care Agency for outreach and engagement workers assigned specifically to homelessness. The $750,000 for the positions would come from state Mental Health Services Act funding.