With all the riverbed homeless people out of the motels, most moved into shelters and other placements, the attention of a federal judge now turns to relocating the people who sleep in and around the Santa Ana Civic Center.

Plans to begin clearing the Civic Center next week were discussed at a court session on Friday, March 30. U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter, who has been overseeing a pair of civil rights lawsuits filed when the county began to clear more than 700 people from Santa Ana River Trail encampments, had tough words for officials and for homeless people inclined to reject help.

Only recently, Carter said, has there been a “concerted and good faith effort” to address what he called “inattention” to Orange County’s growing homelessness problem, adding that it’s been a scramble to try and catch up with decades of neglect.

“We’re going to have a lot to say about beds next week,” Carter said in reference to a court session on Tuesday to which he once again has invited the mayors and city managers of all 34 Orange County cities, in addition to county officials. “If you’re going to throw numbers at me, be prepared — I’m going to throw some numbers back at you.”

But Carter also said he has no mercy for those people who decline help in favor of illicit behavior involving drugs.

Katrina Horne, a homeless woman from Santa Ana who has lived at the Civic Center off and on the past two years, said she too has little tolerance for lawbreakers who abuse drugs and threaten other homeless people. But Horne, 41, said many homeless people at the Civic Center, like herself, are ready to accept help that is sensitive to their particular needs.

Katrina Horne, a homeless woman who has lived at the Santa Ana Civic Center plaza off and on for the past two years, is encouraged and comforted by Santa Ana Police Commander Ken Gominsky, who oversees the police homeless outreach and patrols in the Civic Center area, on Friday, March 30, 2018. Gominsky and his team will be working with county health care workers and clinicians beginning Monday to relocate about 200 homeless people at the Civic Center into shelter. (Photo by Theresa Walker, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Katrina Horne is a homeless woman who lives at the Santa Ana Civic Center. She was too embarrassed to pose by her tent on the Plaza of the Flags area but sat at a bench with the plaza in the background. She said she is tired of being homeless. (Photo by Theresa Walker, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Notices posted at the Santa Ana Civic Center warn that no overnight camping will be allowed beginning Monday, April 2, and that outreach teams will begin doing assessments to refer homeless people living at and near the government plaza shelter options and other services. (Photo by Theresa Walker, Orange County Register/SCNG)

This map on notices posted at the Santa Ana Civic Center shows the area where outreach engagement teams will begin doing assessments on Monday, April 2, to offer shelter options and other services to homeless people living at the government plaza and nearby. A recent count put the number of homeless people in the targeted area at 206, who all could be relocated in a week’s time, city and county officials said. (Photo by Theresa Walker, Orange County Register/SCNG)



“If you really want these people out of here, find them a place to go,” said Horne, who has battled depression since the loss of her mother to cancer six years ago. “But some want to just get high and stay here. The ones that aren’t cooperating, there’s nothing you can do for them.”

Carter acknowledged that he doesn’t have the power to order city officials to court to talk about fair measures to house homeless people, but added, “I would think that any mayor or city manager who cares about their city will be here.”

Tumultuous two weeks

As he spoke those words, yet more drama unfolded over the thorny issue of where to shelter homeless people.

At a special meeting Friday, the Santa Ana City Council called for exploring legal options to force communities around the county to do their part in dealing with homelessness. Just days earlier, the Board of Supervisors rescinded an earlier 4-1 vote calling for temporary homeless shelters in Irvine, Laguna Niguel and Huntington Beach after tens of thousands of people signed petitions and showed up by the busload to protest.

Also on Friday: the county’s behavioral health director, Mary Hale, retired less than two weeks after county supervisors admitted they’d failed to spend tens of millions of dollars in available mental health funding for homeless housing. Supervisors Andrew Do and Todd Spitzer alleged county Heath Care Agency staff members essentially hid upwards of $184 million in surplus Mental Health Services Act funding.

But news reports from recent years have repeatedly drawn attention to the unspent money. And county documents show that Hale told the board in Aug. 2015 that the MHSA dollars could be spent on housing for the homeless – even highlighting it as a need.

Under pressure from Judge Carter, supervisors in recent weeks have voted to appropriate $90.5 million in MHSA money for homeless housing.

Civic Center

Stepped-up efforts continue to provide shelter and services to homeless people under Carter’s guidance.

Beginning Monday, April 2, Health Care Agency outreach workers and clinicians, assisted by Santa Ana Police Department officers, will assess and provide referrals to an estimated 200 people living around the Civic Center.

They will be offered beds at county-run shelters in Anaheim and Santa Ana, or in county-contracted facilities that can serve those in need of treatment for mental health and substance abuse issues, and women who suffered domestic violence.

There are no plans to offer motel vouchers as the county did with the riverbed population.

Officials said it was possible that the area outlined in notices posted at the Civic Center — bounded by Flower and Sycamore streets on the west and east, Civic Center Drive on the north and 4th Street/Santa Ana Boulevard on the south — could be cleared in a week’s time.

Homeless people have lived in and around the county’s seat of government for decades. In recent years their numbers exploded along with drug use and crime attributed to some who might be resistant to change. Those numbers have fallen since the opening of the Courtyard shelter on Santa Ana Boulevard in October 2016.

Horne, the homeless woman, was frustrated with her own efforts to use a housing voucher that she said ended up expiring in December. But she felt encouraged by the efforts of Santa Ana Police Commander Ken Gominsky, who heads field operations at the Civic Center, to get her into a bed at the nearby women-only WISEPlace shelter.

Gominsky stopped her on Friday to ask how she was doing.

“We will fix this,” Gominsky told Horne as she began to cry. “I want you off the street.”

Staff Writer Jordan Graham contributed to this report.