New Homeless Shelter Breaks Ground in Buena Park After Legal Settlement

The Buena Park City Council breaks some ground. Photo by Jackson Guilfoil

Wielding golden shovels, wearing hard hats and posing for photos, Buena Park city officials on Wednesday celebrated the construction of a navigation center designed to help the homeless.

The 150-person center, which is expected to be finished by Dec. 31, is part of a legal settlement in which 11 North Orange County cities voluntarily decided to try and combat homelessness regionally, with part of the strategy including new navigation centers in Buena Park and Placentia.

The North Service Planning Areas, or SPAs, settled in the Orange County Catholic Worker vs. Orange County case to avoid costly legal fights over how cities address homelessness, and to address the crisis regionally rather than individually.

“This is extraordinarily unique because thus far throughout the state, only individual cities have settled,” said U.S. District Judge David Carter during the settlement proceeding. “I hope you catch the governor’s ear. I think that you’re a role model in terms of coming together, first to cause benefits to your respective cities by having a regional approach.”

The settlement plan was brought to the various city councils’ attention by North SPA city managers, who saw the opportunity to address homelessness in a regional way. By combining their resources and working together, the cities hope to more effectively alleviate the homelessness crisis, according to Buena Park City Manager James Vanderpool.

The Buena Park shelter will cost around $8 million in construction, and $2.5 million annually in operational costs, according Vanderpool. The North SPA cities pooled together their state-allocated SB2 funds, originally meant for affordable housing, in order to cover the price of the navigation centers. Smaller North SPA cities will contribute all of their SB2 funds, whereas larger ones will give half.

The Buena Park navigation center, located at 6494 Caballero Blvd., is in an industrial area due to the initial backlash the city received about placing the shelter closer to a school and residential areas.

“As much as this is a humanitarian effort, we want to preserve public spaces for the public,” Vanderpool said. “We wanted to ensure that the public could have access to their parks, to their sidewalks, to their alleys, to their other public spaces that are currently being occupied otherwise by our homeless neighbors.”

Mercy House, a homelessness nonprofit, will be in charge of operating the Buena Park shelter.

A Buena Park digital rendering of what the shelter will look like

With 145 unsheltered homeless people in the city, Buena Park ranks third in the North SPA cities for such a population, surpassed only by Anaheim and Fullerton, according to the 2019 point-in-time count.

Placentia ranked eighth on the 2019 point-in-time count, with 55 unsheltered homeless people in the city, though Mayor Rhonda Shader said she disputes that number. The Placentia shelter will house 100 people.

Despite the relatively higher number of unsheltered homeless people in other North SPA cities, Buena Park and Placentia will contain the shelters because they had the best locations, according to Fullerton City Manager Ken Domer.

“I would have rather have had the shelter in Fullerton,” Domer said. “I have…excluding Anaheim, the most amount of unsheltered homeless, but we just couldn’t find a site.”

The criterion for deciding where to put the centers included how large the shelter could be and proximity to services, schools and residential areas.

Fullerton has 308 unsheltered homeless people, only surpassed by Anaheim’s 694 without shelter, according the the 2019 point-in-time count.

Anaheim was not part of the settlement because of their existing emergency shelters. Los Alamitos was originally part of the settlement process, but later removed itself.

Part of the settlement was legal protection from lawsuits against how the North SPA cities handle homelessness for four years.

“You could build numerous shelters for the money we’ve probably saved already in litigation expenses out in…Anaheim,” Carter said during the settlement proceedings. “You can almost build one or two shelters for the litigation expenses you’ve already saved.”

Legal protection will allow the North SPAs to spend more money addressing homelessness rather than on costly legal battles, according to Domer, who added that going through continual litigation “only enriches the lawyers; it doesn’t do anything for the homeless and it just spends the city’s money.”

According to Shader, more affordable housing with wraparound services could be a potential next step, but Buena Park and Placentia do not have any current slated plans to pursue more affordable housing.

Absent additional state funding, Buena Park would need to cut existing parts of its budget to provide affordable housing, according to Vanderpool.

“Are we going to solve it? No,” Domer said. “Can it be better managed and maintained and can we start focusing on creating more affordable housing and permanent supportive housing? Hopefully yes.”

7 Replies to “New Homeless Shelter Breaks Ground in Buena Park After Legal Settlement”

  1. For some reason it is not being stated in the article as to one of the major causes and reasons homelessness. Alcohol abuse and abuse of other drugs such as heroin and methamphetamine are not mentioned. What is also not mentioned is if anything is being done about this drug and alcohol problem. I hope set these homeless shelters will be very strict and alert and refuse to let anybody in who is either under the influence any controlled substance or alcohol or in possession of such things. The reason I state such a strong statement is because I have encountered and spoken with many homeless people who express no desire to get help for their alcohol and drug abuse.

  2. great , what happens if they get denied come inside? They will probably walk over the the closest neighborhood to commit crime in.

    1. You posed the question; “what happens if they get denied come inside?” And then stated; “They will probably walk over the closest neighborhood to commit crime in.”

      I will admit that some homeless become so disillusioned by people, become desperate due to bad programs or have an already habitual appetite for crime, that more crime is committed!
      Just like crimes are committed by so called, “law abiding residents everyday.”

      This happens when programs meaning to help people, comes up short or help comes only to but a few!

      Let’s examine the real issue and it’s not the “homeless people committing crime”, cause like it was said before, “so called law abiding citizens do too!”

      It’s uninvolved citizens and neighbors like yourself!
      Your statement proves my point that, “Buena Park Residents” like yourself, are so disinterested and uninvolved (basically lazy, let the other guy get involved) in your local community’s basic crime prevention programs like, “Neighborhood Watch”, that you can’t help protect yourself, much less a fellow neighbor!
      (Cities with neighborhood watch programs usually see a reduction of residential theft!)

      It’s been said that “Karma”, can be a real bitch!
      I say, “ If your that lazy, you deserve what you get! “

  3. How nice that is how they get their blue wave. No more middle class. No more whites. Just the poor who want big government and the globalist elites who want to enslave a compliant populace so they imported it into all the white countries in the 60s to make sure the great replacement Genocide began. Whites are ten percent of the world population yet in their countries they are being treated as evil for not accepting the demise of their race and the end of their Constitutional republic or Western nation under law. And this affordable housing act forced on every city was precision designed to inject non whites/Democrats into every city. Buena park already got the huge blocks long affordable housing apartments already a lot to absorb into the community. We did not vote o. It. Now 150 homeless and possibly more affordable housing? And still not a peep about if maybe dumping out all the people from mental hospitals? thanks

  4. Wow! Really? Like regular houses, working people don’t commit crime? Is that what you are stating?

    I think some individuals that don’t know the basic facts, need to volunteer some personal time at a shelter, food bank or at least get familiar with, “Where do homeless people come from”, before expressing such narrow, closed minded opinions! 🙏🏻

    Let’s remember the real truth; Not all homeless people commit crime or are thieves! Just like, not all city residents are honest, law abiding citizens! 🙏🏻

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