Representatives of iHOPE, a faith-based nonprofit that assists homeless people in south coastal Orange County, led a group of journalists and advocates — and two homeless people who once lived at the Santa Ana riverbed — on an unofficial tour of potential sites for shelters.

The three-hour caravan on Tuesday, April 17, to locations in Dana Point, San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano took place two days before the mayors of South County cities convene to discuss how to satisfy a federal judge who expects them to find a site or sites to house a few hundred homeless people in their region.

The ENDEVCO building was a stop along the nonprofit group iHope’s tour of potential sites for homeless shelters in south county in San Juan Capistrano on Tuesday, Apr 17, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Dennis Ettlin, Vice President of iHope, right, chats with Ronald Heatley, a homeless man, near the site of a possible shelter south of Stonehill Drive next to San Juan Creek in San Juan Capistrano during a tour of potential sites for homeless shelters in south county in Dana Point on Tuesday, Apr 17, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Jennifer Juarez, left, and Ronald Hartley, both homeless, examine the outside of the ENDEVCO building in San Juan Capistrano on Tuesday, April 17, 2018. The locations was a stop along the nonprofit group iHope’s tour of potential sites for homeless shelters in south county. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Jennifer Juarez, homeless woman, walks her dog, Joe, near the spot of a potential for a homeless shelter south of Stonehill Drive next to San Juan Creek in San Juan Capistrano during a tour of potential sites for homeless shelters in south county in Dana Point on Tuesday, Apr 17, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Dennis Ettlin, Vice President of iHope, left, and iHope’s president Cathy Domenichini, chat with members of the media near an empty lot along Calle Amanecer and Calle Sombra in San Clemente during a tour of potential sites for homeless shelters in south county on Tuesday, Apr 17, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)



An empty lot along Calle Amanecer and Calle Sombra in San Clemente was a stop during a tour of potential sites for homeless shelters in south county on Tuesday, Apr 17, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Dennis Ettlin, Vice President of iHope, left, and iHope’s president Cathy Domenichini, chat with members of the media in front of San Felipe de Jesus Church during a tour of potential sites for homeless shelters in south county in Dana Point on Tuesday, Apr 17, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Open space along Camino Capistrano that the nonprofit group iHope showed during a tour of potential sites for homeless shelters in south county in San Juan Capistrano on Tuesday, Apr 17, 2018. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The goal of iHOPE, which stands for Interfaith Homeless Outreach Project for Empowerment, is to help those mayors by suggesting locations that might work as smaller-scale indoor and outdoor shelters.

“Each city is really being asked to step up,” said Cathy Domenichini, a San Clemente native who founded and is president of the 10-year-old nonprofit.

Domenichini referred to what U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter has asked of South County cities from Irvine to San Clemente: Find a way to shelter a proportionate share of the county’s homeless. Carter is overseeing a pair of civil rights lawsuits that led to the recent clearing of tent encampments at the Santa Ana River Trail in Anaheim and at the Civic Center in Santa Ana.

iHOPE has identified 10 possible locations, along with adding accommodations for 10 more people at the existing outdoor shelter in Laguna Beach, that together could house or provide safe parking at night for about 290 homeless people. Most are in so-called SB2 zones, designated areas required by state law to allow the establishment of temporary shelters without conditional use or other discretionary permits.

Those sites include:

An empty 1-acre lot at the corner of Sombra and Amanecer in the San Clemente Business Park area

20-person shelters at two churches across the street from each other, one with a grade school, near Domingo Avenue and Doheny Park Road in Dana Point

A portion of the Northwest Open Space, where the San Juan Capistrano dog park is also located

A small portion of South Coast Water District property off Stonehill Drive in Dana Point beside the flood control channel, future site of a planned desalination plant.

“Our point, and we like to stress it, is that we are not talking about an encampment,” said Dennis Ettlin, a retired aerospace engineer who serves on the iHOPE board. iHOPE once ran a daytime resource center for homeless people but after losing their building about four years ago has focused on outreach that includes weekly mobile showers, meals and other services.

The showers are in the parking lot of St. Edward the Confessor Catholic Church’s San Felipe de Jesus Chapel, one of the suggested Domingo Avenue sites in Dana Point.

Ettlin said there would be structure and rules along with connection to other services to help people get out of homelessness.

Mayors from south Orange County cities will meet the morning of Thursday, April 19 in San Clemente and discuss how to provide shelter and housing for the homeless in their region. Irvine Mayor Don Wagner said the mayors won’t be deciding anything because they need to get any specifics approved by their respective councils.

“Unlike judges, we can’t do things unilaterally but need votes of a majority of the other elected officials,” Wagner said in a text message to the Register Wednesday. “I am very hopeful that there is a robust discussion of serious ideas about easing the county’s homeless problem.”

Ettlin invited elected officials, including members of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, by email and phone call to join the tour.

“We were hoping we could get the mayors here to look at some alternatives,” he said. None came.

But Ronald “Scooter” Heatley and Jennifer “JZ Rose” Juarez, the two homeless people from the riverbed who now reside in motels in central Orange County where they get services for mental health disabilities, liked what they saw on the tour. Both brought their little dogs along.

A possible site somewhere on the peaceful 11-acre Northwest Open Space in San Juan Capistrano especially appealed to Heatley, who once served 25 years in prison for drug-related robberies and spent a couple of years at the riverbed tent encampment. At 58, he blames his circumstances on bad choices he made in his youth, saying he is a different person now but unable to work because of his disabilities, including tremors from what he believes is Parkinson’s disease.

“This is the nicest spot so far,” Heatley said.

SCNG staff writer Tomoya Shimura contributed to this report.