The state is sending 78 trailers to Orange County to help house homeless people who need to be isolated or quarantined away from shelters because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The bulk of the trailers will go to Anaheim and Santa Ana, with other cities getting small allotments.

Anaheim and Santa Ana have the county’s two largest homeless populations, in shelters and on the streets. There is no charge to cities for use of the trailers but cities must provide hookups to water and sewer lines.

The trailers can be used by a single occupant, or a couple, and are equipped with a single bathroom.

Anaheim expects to get 39 of the travel trailers, which resemble the type of recreational vehicles towed behind a pickup truck. Another 22 trailers will be distributed to Santa Ana, and the remaining 17 will go to three other unnamed cities that county officials said Tuesday, March 31, have put in requests.

The initial deployment of trailers in Santa Ana will be situated on the parking lot surrounding The Link 200-bed homeless shelter on Red Hill Avenue, said Paul Eakins, public affairs information officer in the Santa Ana City Manager’s Office.

Anaheim plans to place two of its trailers at the 102-bed La Mesa homeless shelter in a light industrial area near the 91 Freeway and Kraemer Boulevard and 28 others at the larger Salvation Army Orange County campus on south Lewis Street, where the 224-bed Anaheim Emergency Shelter occupies a corner of the property, said Mike Lyster, the city’s chief communications officer.

The trailers at the Salvation Army will be used for isolation or quarantine as needed, but otherwise will be stored on the property for deployment to other shelters or elsewhere in the county, Lyster said. The other nine trailers will be stored at the Anaheim Convention Center, also for rapid deployment.

“It’s moving fast enough that we know we want to have them on hand,” Lyster said of the coronavirus outbreak.

Anaheim will get to keep the trailers when the coronavirus crisis is over to use for other homeless purposes, Lyster said.

Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said the state would provide 1,309 travel trailers to help protect homeless people living in shelters and reduce the spread of the disease throughout the general population. The trailer acquisitions are part of a $150 million coronavirus emergency funding package to safely shelter and house homeless people.

Register staff writer Alicia Robinson contributed to this report.