Will Disneyland become the Happiest Homeless Shelter on Earth?
It will if online petitioners get their way.
“Those who have signed the Care2 petition are asking Disneyland to step up and help its community, since it clearly has the means to do so,” says Rebecca Gerber, Care2’s senior director of Engagement, in an email. “Disney could make a real impact by providing shelter in one of its hotels, or donating money for shelter.”
Care2 points out the the Walt Disney Co. is a multi-billion dollar concern that, besides two theme parks and the Downtown Disney retail/restaurant/entertainment area, owns three hotels in Anaheim’s Disneyland Resort District, which is just around the corner from the doomed homeless camps.
Meanwhile, the county has a shortage of beds for those being forced out, according to ACLU estimates that show for every two homeless people in OC, there is just one shelter program space.
“Homelessness is right on Disney’s doorstep, and Disney has built its brand on magic,” Gerber says. “What’s more magical than manifesting help in the face of hardship?”
Disneyland officials have been contacted, and this post will be updated if they get back to us.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.