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A crackdown on homeless encampments has kicked off in Anaheim with police officers clearing out parks and railways as city officials bolster anti-camping laws.
City officials stress that police and city staff are simultaneously offering services to homeless people they encounter before clearing out public spaces so residents can use them safely.
“We’re still providing services. We’re still wanting to make sure that people are connected with services. However, for those individuals that refuse, for those individuals that continue to violate the law, we will enforce the law,” said Police Chief Rick Armendariz at Tuesday’s city council meeting.
But some local advocates say homeless people are being threatened with arrest for loitering at parks during the day and the city has no available shelter beds to offer.
Jeanine Robbins, a longtime resident and advocate for the homeless, said in a phone interview last week the approach is pushing homeless people into neighboring cities.
“Anaheim PD is chasing people out of the parks and off the sidewalks. Where are they supposed to go?” she said. “We’re just simply driving them into other cities.”
A homeless person who didn’t want to give their name out of fear of city reprisal told the Voice of OC Tuesday that Wound Walk, a street medicine team, would show up to La Palma park to provide medical treatment to homeless folks and after they left several police cars would show up to clear the park.
Michael Wright, director of Field Medicine for Wound Walk, said in a phone interview Wednesday that the street medicine team stopped hosting clinics at La Palma Park late last month after about a year and a half at a location that would always attract new patients.
“When the enforcement really started to increase, we wanted to give space for that to take effect and then we also knew that that would cause displacement,” he said. “We wanted to make sure that we were at the locations that they may be pushed to so we moved.”
Wright added that police never showed up to clear the parks while they were working in September.
Mike Lyster, a city spokesman, said in a Wednesday email that dozens of people have been cleared out of parks in the last month, but could not give a specific number.
He also said dozens have also been arrested for drugs, outstanding warrants and other criminal violations.
“What we have seen at parks and other public spaces is never acceptable and should never be rationalized or excused,” he wrote, adding the city offers shelter, substance abuse recovery and mental and physical health assistance to homeless people.
“We are seeing life-destroying drug use, drug sales, bike thefts and sales, retail theft and sales and other clear law violations that have a major impact on parks, motels, streets, businesses and neighborhoods.”
Lyster said as of Wednesday 317 out of their 325 shelter beds were full, but they also have access to more shelter space through partnership organizations.
He also said the city had a pilot program with Wound Walk that expired and are now using CalOptima street medicine teams.
“There can be times when police ask all service providers to temporarily refrain from an area during public safety operations, and that was likely the case during operations at La Palma as well as along Lincoln Avenue where we are experiencing major problems with ongoing police operations,” he wrote.
The crackdown comes as a host of cities across Orange County are tightening their anti-camping laws after the Supreme Court overturned a case that required cities to offer shelter to homeless people before they were allowed to clear them off the streets.
[Read: Anaheim Looks to Bolster Anti-Camping Laws After Supreme Court Ruling]
It also comes after Gov. Gavin Newsom called on city officials to clear out encampments across the state.
The homeless individual criticized Newsom for his response to homelessness and said nobody wants to be institutionalized especially when they’re struggling to just survive.
“Why do you want to criminalize people who’ve already been kicked in the ass or had a hard situation?” they said.
Anaheim Cracks Down on Homelessness
At their Tuesday meeting, officials voted unanimously to introduce three new laws aimed at preventing homeless people from sleeping at parks and keeping the open spaces safe at the request of Councilwoman Natalie Meeks.
Meeks said public safety was her number one priority and recalled taking out bus stop benches when she was the city’s public works director because of the homeless.
“I think the community deserves that. It deserves safe parks. It deserves safe bus benches. It deserves safe transit. It deserves safe liquor stores,” she said at the meeting. “Our families deserve safe parks where you can go and let your children run and play and hide.”
The laws prohibit smoking at parks, bus stops and near schools and daycares as well as selling or assembling bikes on public property, blocking sidewalks, leaving personal property unattended on sidewalks or streets and sleeping at bus stops and park tables.
Officials in Anaheim have long struggled with how to best deal with homeless camps – especially after the 2018 evictions of encampments on the Santa Ana Riverbed, which saw small homeless camps spring up in parks and railroad tracks shortly after.
Since then, the city’s funded and helped build some homeless shelters, but officials have struggled with some houseless residents they call “service resistant.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, City Manager Jim Vanderpool publicly announced that for the past month the city has ramped up efforts to address criminal activity and drug use at La Palma Park, as well as doing nightly clean ups at local parks and kicking people out after they close.
“We followed that with the installation of high visibility cameras at Pearson, Chaparral, John Marshall, Sage, Stoddard and Twila Reed parks. The cameras provide a visual deterrent and include loudspeakers to remotely warn people about being in the parks after hours or other activity,” he said.
Beyond that, Vanderpool also said the city was clearing out railways and had more than doubled staffing for the police department’s homeless liaison officers.
At Tuesday’s meeting some residents spoke against the new laws with one saying there needs to be a place for homeless people in the park to go to.
Two hotel managers also spoke at the meeting in favor of the new laws, with one arguing many of their staff members need to take the bus but are too scared because of people taking drugs there .
Armendariz said there have been homeless people from outside Orange County coming into the resort district and they have increased police officers in the resort district.
Councilman Jose Diaz praised the Supreme Court ruling and said people who want the help can get it.
“Now we can go and say, ‘Hey, you don’t belong here. You take services. You don’t want to take the services? You need to get out,’” he said. “ For 10 years now, we have been putting millions and millions of dollars trying to help these people, but it’s a lot of resistance to help.”
According to the latest homeless count on OC, there are 1,417 homeless people in Anaheim and 601 of them are unsheltered.
This year, the Orange County Sheriff’s department released a report that showed 97 people died living on the streets of Anaheim in 2022 – the most deaths in homeless people out of any of 34 cities in OC.
The deaths in Anaheim account for close to 20% of the 496 homeless deaths in OC in 2022.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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