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City officials throughout Orange County have been focusing their efforts to address the homelessness crisis through camp crackdowns these past few months.
It comes after a Supreme Court decision earlier this year overturned a requirement that municipalities had to have a certain amount of shelter beds before clearing out homeless camps.
The crackdowns also come on the heels of the statewide passage of a street crime bill – Proposition 36 – that proponents say will reduce drug and theft crimes, while critics say will disproportionately impact low-income residents and lead to another war on drugs.
Officials in Stanton, one of OC’s smallest cities with just 38,000 residents, declared homelessness a local emergency two days before Thanksgiving and joined cities across the county cracking down on encampments.
On Tuesday, city council members voted unanimously on a resolution declaring an emergency over the homelessness crisis – an issue that city officials say they spent over $15 million on since 2017 but have still seen a sharp increase of people living on the street.
It’s possibly the first Orange County city to make such an emergency declaration.
Councilman Donald Torres, who voted in favor of the emergency, said Stanton residents have been through a lot.
But at the same time, he said officials at the local, county and state level have to address the root causes of homelessness by improving “social mobility.”
“I am saddened that we have essentially been abandoned by the state,” Torres said.
Torres also said that the city needs to offer more services, more shelter beds and more mobile treatment for homeless people while dealing with people who refuse those services.
“Although I do not agree with the totality of what’s going on, I think we do have to address the issues with people who are service resistant. It makes me uneasy knowing that it’ll be harder for people experiencing homelessness to simply exist. Where will they go?” He said.
Ugochi Anaebere-Nicholson, a staff attorney with the Public Interest Law Project, said at Tuesday’s meeting that homeless people shouldn’t be criminalized.
“It is undeniable that the crisis of houselessness has been exacerbated by the high cost of housing, lack of adequate support and affordable and supportive housing in our state,” she said during public comment.
“However, the proposed resolution must be amended to identify, adopt and employ evidence based solutions that have been proven to address houselessness and reject draconian measures such as citation and arrest that are used to punish persons without housing.”
Stanton’s Homeless Emergency
The emergency declaration gives City Manager Hannah Shin-Heydorn the ability to make rules and regulations related to homelessness that must later be confirmed by elected officials.
Shin-Heydorn said the declaration can also help create strong political support and foster coordination between city, county and state officials – along with private agencies to address homelessness.
“While declaring a local emergency is not a magic panacea, it is a tool that can be used to garner local attention and leverage resources in a new way that may have a positive impact,” she said.
The declaration also allows the city to expedite hiring and contracting processes and develop mutual aid plans surrounding the issue.
Officials also approved an ordinance prohibiting sleeping and storing belongings on sidewalks and streets – along with another ordinance banning the sale of bikes on public sidewalks.
City council members also moved to offer voluntary relocation options to people living in city-owned buildings in the Tina Pacific neighborhood – an area in Stanton that officials say has been heavily impacted by the homeless crisis.
The moving opportunities come after officials say there’s an increase in resident complaints that homeless people have broken in and set fires in vacant units, threatened people with knives and left behind used syringes and pipes.
Council members also received and filed a report on increasing the city’s access to two more shelter beds in Anaheim – something they’re expected to vote on at a later date.
Stanton Joins OC’s Homeless Crackdown
Stanton’s homelessness emergency declaration comes after the Supreme Court overturned a ruling this past summer that required cities to offer shelter to homeless people before they could clear them off the street.
Following the court’s decision, at least six Orange County cities – Anaheim, Irvine, Garden Grove, Newport Beach, San Clemente and Aliso Viejo – have overhauled their anti-camping laws in a move activists say will only worsen the crisis.
Last week, officials in Santa Ana – home to OC’s largest homeless population – decided to delay a discussion on ordinance cracking down on encampments after some city council members said the proposed law went too far.
[Read: Santa Ana Delays Bolstering Anti-Camping Laws]
On Tuesday, Stanton also joined the list of OC cities revamping their anti-camping laws with official voting unanimously to adopt an ordinance that bans people from sleeping and storing personal belongings on public streets and sidewalks.
The ordinance also bans sleeping within 10 feet of restaurants, stores, ATM machines, fire hydrants, public restrooms, electric vehicle charging stations and within 200 feet of schools or day care centers.
The law prohibits people from sleeping on or under park benches, tables and playground equipment as well as storing property within 200 feet of playgrounds.
Shawver successfully called for the ordinance to also ban sleeping in drainage canals and near critical infrastructure like power plants, along with senior care facilities.
The new law comes as two homeless shelters Stanton helped fund in Placentia and Buena Park are at capacity, according to a staff report.
“In 2024, the City has only been able to successfully refer 18 people to the two navigation centers for assistance. County-wide, only 1 out of every 12 homeless individuals are successfully connected to housing,” reads the report.
On Tuesday night, Stanton City Council members also voted unanimously to adopt an ordinance that aims to crackdown on bicycle thefts and what officials describe as “open-air bike chop shops” – people dismantling and selling stolen bikes on public sidewalks and in parks.
According to a staff report, there have been about 140 bicycle thefts in Stanton in the past five years – with the number of thefts going up annually.
Homeless in Stanton
Stanton’s emergency declaration comes after county leaders reported an over 2,000-person increase in OC’s homeless population since 2022.
[Read: Orange County Homeless Population Continues Growing]
According to the latest count, there are 206 homeless people in Stanton and 169 of them are unsheltered.
Officials in the North County city say that’s a 138% increase in the unsheltered homeless population since 2019 and a 78% increase in the homeless population overall.
The increase comes after the city spent over $15 million in the past seven years to help address homelessness including $6 million on motel conversions and $2 million for homeless outreach coordinators.
This year, the Orange County Sheriff’s department released a report that showed nearly 500 homeless people died in 2022 – an increase of 25.6% from 2021.
About 2.4% of those deaths – 12 people – happened in Stanton, according to the report.
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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