Fixing Local Homelessness by Looking Abroad
If you were to take a trip through Orange County, your eyes would most likely catch the giant palm trees lining the freshly paved streets of Huntington or Newport Beach. You then might decide to venture into the wealthy neighborhoods of Orchard Hill in Irvine to check out the mansion-like houses. Since Orange County can be thought of as a bunch of beach cities inhabited by the rich, it’s become very easy to ignore the growth of the homeless population in recent years. What most will overlook while sightseeing in OC is the countless individuals taking shelter under the bridge of The 73, Target shopping carts becoming mobile homes along Fairview, and families holding signs as you walk to school. As the numbers of these homeless individuals grow, we should strive to look for an effective, lasting solution to this issue because, at the moment, it doesn’t seem like the City of Costa Mesa has a visible endgame. Multiple temporary homeless shelters have been set up around the city and talks of more are in the air, but how can the city set up a lasting solution? Even with a permanent shelter, what good does it do when these people are still having to rely on the city’s aid?
Homelessness has surged in many places especially with the growth of the CoronaVirus pandemic, but it’s been a major focus within the Costa Mesa City Council for many years now. Many individuals are living unsheltered on the streets as well as families struggling with financial instability. As of 2012, Vanguard University found that there were about 117–122 homeless individuals across the city on any given day and those numbers have only grown over the years. Moving into 2019, a federal annual count of homeless people within certain communities found that Costa Mesa had 193 homeless people with 187 people unsheltered. Luckily, since these numbers have increased over the years, there has been a much larger push to build shelters to accommodate these individuals, especially from former Mayor Katrina Foley. As stated in a 2019 article in the Daily Pilot by Susan Meyer, “Foley’s first priority as Costa Mesa’s directly elected mayor was to change the city’s approach to resolving homelessness”(Meyer). Foley’s method of combating homelessness is focused more on transitioning homeless individuals towards being able to provide permanent housing for themselves rather than keeping them in temporary shelters around the city. I believe this is the best course of action since the only way to truly eliminate homelessness is to indefinitely get these people off of the streets and make sure they can function in society. Without some sort of path towards permanent housing, there won’t be any lasting solutions for homeless people. If no further steps are taken, they would just continue to bounce around from shelter to shelter as long as space is still available. The city won’t be able to endlessly provide for every homeless person without finding some way to help them recover.
Although permanence should be our goal for getting people off the streets, it seems like the majority of Costa Mesa’s plans within recent years have included temporary housing for homeless individuals, specifically a 70-bed shelter with occupancy as soon as mid-April this year. For the time being, getting temporary housing facilities up and running could have an impact on reducing the number of people living on the streets, especially those who are unprotected from Covid. In an article stressing the issues homeless people are having to face with Covid, Daily Pilot writer Sara Cardine explains that Costa Mesa has been supporting and housing “151 homeless individuals in the past year and a half” but “officials are bracing for a tsunami of need”(Cardine). This need is due to the major impacts the pandemic has had on the economy, and in the wake of these issues, many individuals have lost their jobs which led to financial instability and homelessness. What this means is that there is an extreme rise in people who are now unprotected from Covid and they lack the resources and shelter to stay safe. The addition of more temporary beds for the homeless would help prevent further exposure since it would be giving them a safe place to stay. But to what extent can the city provide for them? What happens when there’s no more room to shelter these individuals? The city of Costa Mesa can’t just shelter and provide for everyone forever. There needs to be a next step to resolve homelessness long term. There needs to be space in the city’s plan going forward to allow for growth within these shelters so eventually, homeless people won’t need to rely on the city.
These temporary shelters do offer a temporary solution, as the name may suggest, but the city council should be looking towards a more permanent and effective solution such as work accommodations and job training. If Costa Mesa were to make “transitional shelters” where people are provided housing as well as job training and application resources such as computers and tutors, homeless people would be more likely to get back on their feet and be independent instead of dependent on the city. By providing this type of aid, the city would be pushing those individuals towards having an income in which they can use to find housing of their own. This route is imperative to fixing the homeless issue in Costa Mesa because it would mean “people are off the streets and are receiving help to find permanent housing”(Meyer). For us to help decrease the homeless population, the city needs to aid and guide them towards getting their life back on track. What I mean by all of this is that it is imperative that those who are physically and mentally able to work be given the proper resources to get a job to lead them down a path that could restore their life, and through a standard temporary shelter, that just isn’t possible. Providing a safe place to stay as well as effective aid in getting a job which they can use to find permanent housing is the best feasible option the city can take towards resolving the homelessness issue. Continuing to move homeless individuals from shelter to shelter over the years isn’t going to help them in any lasting way. They need to be able to transition back into society and eventually live without the city’s aid.
Getting a job puts one foot through the door, but after that, the city needs to continue to accommodate those that are working. A lot of the time, standard temporary housing shelters do not put homeless people in the best position to find a job and keep it. For example, a lot of shelters like this have a certain curfew for when the residents need to return to the shelter. This heavily constricts people who might have found a night job like restocking shelves or any janitorial work because those individuals would not be able to stay out late as the job would require. Along with that, most shelters don’t offer child care for those who have children and need to work. What this means is that it would make it nearly impossible to maintain a job because if there’s no one to take care of their child during work hours, they wouldn’t consistently be able to leave for their job. These factors can be a major barrier for homeless people that want to work, but can’t because of their basic restrictions. That is why these shelters need to be reformed and adapted to accommodate these individuals who can work but don’t have the proper resources to allow them to effectively have a consistent job. Even though this method hasn’t made its way to Costa Mesa yet, there are many cities across the world like London and Trieste that have shown how affecting these accommodative and transitional shelters can be, and cities like Costa Mesa should really take note.
A great example of these transitional shelters is in London, where they’ve come up with the unique idea of transforming some of the iconic red double-decker buses into housing units, classrooms, dining rooms, and health care centers. The social enterprise group called Buses4Homeless has creatively found a way to bring people of the streets by “offering care and support to get them back on their feet”(World Economic Forum) as well as the necessary resources to get them ready to re-enter society. Another organization from London called Change Please has been giving homeless people the opportunity to receive training to become baristas by working for their number of mobile coffee shop carts. These makeshift shelters throughout the city have given the homeless population an amazing and welcoming opportunity to get themselves ready to rejoin the world and take care of themselves. By going beyond the minimum of providing a bed and food to the homeless, these organizations are able to give them a meaningful experience which in turn can lead them towards taking back their life.
Other than lack of housing and a stable income, mental illness is one of the major risks for homeless people. Trieste, Italy has proven itself well versed in dealing with this issue, unlike many other cities across the globe. There are hardly any homeless people in Trieste and it’s mainly due to their mental health system. The way they’ve gone about combatting this issue is by giving “mutual respect to people who have a mental illness”(Emily Mendez). This mainly means that in Trieste, there are no locked institutions and very rarely are there involuntary hospitalizations. Mental Health workers go straight to the patients to emphasize the support that is necessary for dealing with these illnesses. By focusing on social inclusion and respect, people suffering from mental illnesses are more inclined and encouraged to participate in the community. Cities like Trieste have realized that there are other options for combating homelessness that give a more lasting effect than simply providing them with a bed and food.
These courses of action are what our local cities should be taking inspiration from. It’s been made clear that a lot of people end up on the streets because of their inability to work and house themselves along with suffering from mental illnesses, so we should be focusing on helping them in that aspect. You can’t simply tell a homeless person to “go buy a house”. They need these special accommodations like job training and mental health care provided by transitional shelters. Even though temporary shelters can be helpful for a period of time, majority of the time, they do not offer the outlets needed to build a persons life back up. It’s like getting furniture from Ikea but they left out the instruction manual and a small allen wrench. In other words, someone can be given something helpful but without the correct tools and instructions, it’s going to be nearly impossible to improvise your way to success. If the cities we reside in truly want to look for a permanent end to homelessness, they should invest their spendings on these job training and accommodation programs instead of continuing to add more dead-end temporary shelters. Without that next step, we will only continue to grow the population of people having to live on the street with little resources to get them out.
Works Cited
“City of Costa Mesa.” About Homelessness | City of Costa Mesa
“Costa Mesa Reflects on Homelessness Efforts, Braces for New Wave of Need from COVID-19.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 24 Sept. 2020
Elattar, Hosam. “Permanent Homeless Shelter in Costa Mesa to Be Built Near John Wayne Airport.” Voice of OC, 8 Dec. 2020
Emily Mendez — Sacramento, California. “What Los Angeles Can Learn From Trieste, Italy About Homelessness.” WatchOurCity.com, 18 Nov. 2019
“Homelessness Is Not Inevitable and Can Be Solved — These Cities Show Us How.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 10 Dec. 2019
“Letters to the Editor: Mayor Katrina Foley and New Council Took the Lead on Addressing Homelessness in Costa Mesa.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 2 July 2019
Sean Fleming, Senior Writer. “How to Solve Homelessness — Lessons from around the World.” World Economic Forum
