Stop Throwing Away Property of Homeless, City Ordered

A Superior Court commissioner Wednesday ordered the city of Santa Ana to stop throwing away the bedrolls and other belongings that homeless people store on public property.

Under Commissioner Ronald L. Bauer’s 20-day restraining order, city maintenance crews must take any belongings with easily visible name tags to the Police Department’s lost and found area. The order defined belongings as things that a reasonable person would not think had been “discarded or abandoned.”

Bauer said the city’s policy of discarding belongings found in bushes and elsewhere “has a certain adverse impact on certain members of the community, and that it seems like the kind of irreparable harm that the court should address.”

Resolution to Recent Suit

The order came as a temporary resolution to a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society of Orange County on behalf of two homeless men and two residents of Santa Ana.

The suit alleges that the city is violating its own ordinance requiring that most belongings worth more than $10 be stored at the lost and found for four months. Bulkier items such as bicycles are stored for only three months, Santa Ana City Atty. Edward J. Cooper said.

Wednesday’s ruling appeared to please both sides. Contending that city workers do not throw away things of value, Cooper said the judge was “telling us to do what we are already doing.”

Robert Cohen, executive director of Legal Aid, said: “It’s an order that we can, and we will, live with. And we hope it will spur the city to enter into some serious negotiations so we can resolve this matter as soon as possible. . . . We’ve always wanted to settle this matter out of the courts. . . . Homelessness is something that we have to deal with in a humane way.”

Since the city launched a cleanup crusade at the end of May, park workers have carted off more than five tons of bedrolls, clothing and sacks from city parks and the Civic Center grounds, city officials have said. The sweeps will continue, city officials said, raising the question of how the Police Department’s lost and found will be able to store all the property that is removed from the parks.

Commissioner Bauer also wondered whether the Police Department might start charging the homeless for storing their property at the lost and found as state law permits. A spokesman, however, said the department does not charge for storage of lost belongings.

Urged to Tag Belongings

It was not clear whether the court’s decision, based on recommendations made by attorneys for the ACLU and Legal Aid, will protect homeless people from having their belongings carted off by cleanup crews, since most homeless people do not put their names on the bedrolls and bundles they stash in the bushes.

But Cohen said he and others who work with the homeless will try to persuade them to start doing so.

“We’re going to have to get the word out to people that property has to be tagged,” he said.

A few hours before the case was heard, maintenance crews conducted another sweep of the Civic Center grounds, according to Pat Ford and John Close, the homeless men named in the suit against the city.

Both said their bedrolls were taken in the latest sweep. The men said they later retrieved their things, when maintenance workers looked away and a friend pulled the bedrolls off the truck.