An OC Public Works project set to get underway today is expected to displace hundreds of homeless people living in tents and shelters built from tarps on the east bank of the Santa Ana River south of Angel Stadium.
But a showdown could be in the making over plans to turn property adjacent to a county maintenance road from Chapman to Orangewood avenues into a storage area for tons of sand and boulders used in flood control.
Homeless advocates have vowed to show up early in the morning, along with representatives of legal organizations worried about civil rights violations.
For months, the number of makeshift dwellings staked out in a motley line parallel to the southbound 57 Freeway has grown by the dozens, a de facto community of homeless people who say they have nowhere else to go.
Estimated at several hundred people, many of the homeless had been living down in the sand of the river bed until the storms of winter arrived.
The homeless mostly have been left alone by law enforcement and OC Public Works crews, who maintain the access road and the grounds next to it.
Until now.
Bulldozers were moved in last week, ready to shift mounds of sand trucked in from other watersheds and drop huge rocks called riprap – materials to be used in flood control – where the tents and tarps are. Some grading and storage of the boulders also began on the edges of the tent encampments.
Notifications warning of the impending work have been staked in the ground and taped to the concrete of freeway underpasses over the past two weeks.
Information about the winter shelters at the Fullerton and Santa Ana National Guard Armories was included with the notices, and county health care workers, who routinely visit the area, stepped up efforts to provide information.
But limited shelter space and restrictions, such as a prohibition on pets, leave many homeless people little or no choice but to remain outdoors.
“What’s posted right now says people can go to the armories,” said Morgan Denges, who planned to demonstrate along with members of the Orange County Poverty Alleviation Coalition and other groups. “But they fill up too fast and also they prioritize who gets in and who doesn’t. So it’s not a real solution. They are essentially being displaced with no place to go.”
The reaction of the homeless inhabitants – on both sides of the river – ranges from shrugs to anxious tears. In the days before the bulldozers arrived, many weren’t taking the notices seriously, pulling them up out of the ground after the departure of county workers, who returned daily to replace them.
“It’s just a scare tactic,” said Shawn “Chowda” Carroll, whose nickname harks to his New Hampshire roots. He set up a tent halfway between Chapman and Orangewood back in July and has seen similar notifications posted to no effect.
“They’re just giving us free firewood.”
The county initially gave notice last year, but postponed the work.
The maintenance project involves relocating 370,000 cubic yards of sediment and sand scooped from such places as the San Diego Creek watershed in Irvine, said Shannon Widor, public information officer for OC Public Works.
About 5,100 tons of the dark riprap boulders will be stockpiled with the sand.
The county’s plans also call for installing cemented rocks below the east side of the 22 freeway south of the storage area and repairs to both sides of the levee slopes beneath the 5.
The county plans to fence off the storage area with taller and heavier gauge wire and new gates to prevent the vandalism evidenced by holes cut in the existing chain link fencing that has given the homeless and others access to the property.
The location, Widor said, affords a central staging ground for public works crews to easily ship flood control materials to other parts of the county. The sand can be used to fill sandbags or repair beach erosion.
Widor insists there will be no sweep of the homeless encampments to clear people out all at once.
“The current plan is to start around Chapman Avenue and gradually move south, then come back to the Chapman Avenue area moving north,” Widor said. “We’re trying to give people plenty of time and not impact the entire area at the start of the work.”
The homeless and their supporters see the impending project as an excuse to remove them.
“They don’t want us here,” Carroll said of adjacent business and property owners. “I understand that. They don’t want us at their shopping malls. They don’t want us by their property.”
Carroll, 48, said he became homeless when his car was towed a year ago. Carroll plans to take his dog, Honey Cup, and go across the way or “if the water’s gone, I’ll move back down into the river bed.”
The tent encampment has angered residents of the gated Renaissance at Uptown Orange apartment community tucked up against the west bank of the river at Chapman Avenue. They complained to police and Orange city officials.
They blame homeless intruders for car break-ins, bicycle thefts, vandalized snack machines, unauthorized use of showers and the jacuzzi in the pool area, loud partying, open drug use, public sex acts and constant litter.
Keith Alves started a petition early last year on Change.org addressed to the county, the city and the sheriff’s department, demanding “the removal of the homeless encampments along the riverbed adjacent to Renaissance.” The petition has more than 1,600 signatures, including from people who live in other cities.
Alves, who is disabled, moved into the apartment complex four years ago with his wife and pays $1,800 a month in rent. There were no homeless people camped out then, he said, but the population has ballooned in the past two years.
“We have compassion for them, but it could be handled better – and it’s not,” said Alves, who has taken food and clothing down to the river but is tired of the growing scene and the problems he says have come with it.
“There’s a mess here. I don’t pay nearly $2,000 a month to look at that.”
His worry that the homeless dislocated by the county works project will simply move to his side of the river, closer to Renaissance, is shared by other homeless people whose tents were among a scattered few on the west bank until recently.
Sharon Sweat, a 48-year-old homeless woman who has lived with her dog under the 5 since October, said she bothers no one and is concerned for her own safety. Sweat has stayed at different spots along the river for 16 years, describing herself as “shocked” by the explosion of tents across the way.
“This is no party place,” she said, crying. “Some of us out here really have no place to go. Some of these other people have places to go. They just want to come out here and party up. Oh, my God, it just floors me.
“We just want to be left alone.”
Contact the writer: 714-796-7793 or twalker@ocregister.com or on Twitter @TellTheresa
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