The Brief

In 2019, Orange County settled a years-long legal battle that marked a turning point in the way the county addresses homelessness. In the years since, there has been significant progress on the number of shelter beds and standards of care at those shelters. But those signs of progress are accompanied by more troubling indicators.

The shift started in 2017 when county officials sought to clear out a large homeless encampment that had become a health hazard and an embarrassment for public officials. Advocates for people experiencing homelessness sued, arguing that because of a dearth of shelter beds — and appropriate beds for people with disabilities — there was no place that people experiencing homelessness could sleep without violating the law.

The result: What's come to be known as the Catholic Worker settlement (Orange County Catholic Worker was one of the plaintiffs), which is actually a group of similar settlements involving more than a dozen O.C. cities.

Four years later:

• People sleeping on public property have to be assessed by outreach workers and offered appropriate shelter before law enforcement can enforce anti-camping rules. 
• There are more emergency shelter beds. But often with more restrictions on who can use them. 
• Shelters have to adhere to standards of care and there's an appeal process when disputes arise. 
• There's more permanent supportive housing. But not nearly enough to meet demand. 
• Federal emergency housing vouchers have helped fill the need for affordable housing. They expire in 2030. 
• There are no longer massive encampments in places like the Santa Ana riverbed. But there are still more than 3,000 people without shelter on any given night, many of them in encampments that are more hidden and, advocates say, likely more dangerous. 
• The number of unhoused people dying annually in Orange County has more than doubled in the last five years — to some 500 people last year.

The pre-pandemic lawsuits that led to many of these changes are similar to ones currently playing out in Los Angeles. LAist talked to officials, lawyers, homeless service providers, and people experiencing homelessness in Orange County about what's unfolded over the past several years.

From riverbed encampment to permanent housing: One woman's long journey

Kathy Schuler was living in a tent next to the Santa Ana River channel in central Orange County when I met her in early 2017. Eventually, an estimated 800 to 1,500 people ended up in the sprawling encampment, including Schuler's adult son and daughter.

It stretched for about two miles behind Angel Stadium and the Honda Center. Advocates sued each time county officials tried to clear the encampment.

[Read: The Court Case That Forced OC To Stop Ignoring Its Homeless]

During a survey of the encampment in April 2017 with Judge David Carter — the same federal judge who oversees several big cases on homelessness in L.A. — Schuler showed off the homey details of her tent, including a framed photograph of her with her kids and their bevy of dogs. The area in front of Schuler's tent was neatly swept and decorated with potted plants.

Kathy Schuler in front of her tent next to the Santa Ana riverbed in central Orange County in 2017.

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Jill Replogle

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The following year, in February 2018, Schuler and everyone else in the encampment were told they had to leave. The county promised motel vouchers and help finding permanent housing as part of a deal between advocates and county officials brokered under Judge Carter's watch.

A line of people experiencing homelessness at the Santa Ana riverbed.

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On a sunny February morning, Schuler and her encampment neighbors packed up their things and waited for buses to take them to their assigned bed.

Six years later … 

I visited Schuler, now 66, and her dog Freeway this spring in their one-bedroom apartment in Tustin, where they've lived since 2021. The apartment is in a breezy, well-kept complex.

Schuler's walls are covered with jigsaw puzzles she's finished and mounted. Her patio is filled with plants, including a few she's been caring for since her time at the riverbed encampment.

Kathy Schuler and her dog, Freeway, in their patio in Tustin.

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What she likes most about her apartment: "Mine," she giggled, a smile spreading across her face. "Mine."

But it took Schuler more than three years of shuffling through motels and shelters to get her apartment, and only with a lot of help from advocates.

"How long is it gonna take?" Schuler remembers thinking on many occasions. "I'm glad I had people helping me out that know what's going on, you know," she said. "Because I had no clue."

Schuler's adult son and daughter still don't have permanent housing. Her daughter lives in a motel that's been converted into interim housing, part of Project Homekey. Her son and his girlfriend live in their vehicle, Schuler said.

Carol Sobel, a lawyer who's been involved in many of O.C. and L.A.'s most consequential cases on homelessness, said Schuler's too-long road to housing is "not a success."

"How many years to get them stability?" she asked of Schuler and other plaintiffs in the riverbed eviction case. "It is a constant battle."

What the data shows

There is some evidence of positive changes around homelessness in Orange County. There are also much more somber signs.

Point-in-time

The latest point-in-time count, from 2022, found nearly 17% fewer people experiencing homelessness on a given night compared to the previous count in 2019. Still, there are more than 3,000 people who sleep outside or in their vehicles with no shelter.

The 2022 count also revealed stark disparities: The share of the unhoused population identifying as Black or Native American was much higher than their percentage of O.C.'s total population.

Additionally, the percentage of the unhoused population considered chronically homeless (for more than a year) rose from 19% in 2017 to 42% in 2022.

Housing inventory

The county's inventory of short- and long-term housing available for people experiencing homelessness has increased substantially since 2017, according to annual data submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Orange County "Housing Inventory Count" for people experiencing homelessness, 2016-2023.

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Orange County Homeless Management Information System, http://ochmis.org/housing-inventory-count-hic/

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The county has added close to 1,000 emergency and transitional shelter beds to its inventory since 2017.

Available rapid rehousing, which provides short-term rental assistance, and permanent housing have both doubled since 2017, according to county data. Much of this increase is thanks to emergency housing vouchers provided by the federal government as part of the pandemic-induced American Rescue Plan.

Funding for those extra vouchers runs out in 2030.

People living off of Beach Boulevard in Garden Grove regroup during a break in the rain and after a raid on the encampment that periodically sprouts up here.

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Despite these gains, a recent county report shows the county has failed, year after year, to build enough permanent supportive housing for chronically unhoused individuals, despite pledges to do so in Carter's courtroom. And there's no improvement in sight, by the county's own estimates, given the steep rise in construction costs in recent years.

In 2018, the county projected this type of housing with built-in social services would cost $344,444 per unit. The report notes that the real, average cost per unit of developments funded between 2018 and 2022 was nearly 45% more — $497,570.

"If current development cost trends continue, it is projected that the average per unit cost for supportive/affordable housing in Orange County will be approximately $550,000," the report reads. Nearly 60% of that total is construction costs.

In the absence of permanent housing, homeless service providers told LAist that people are staying in emergency shelters much longer than intended. Data show the average length of stay in shelters here is more than five months. The data also show that more people return to homelessness after a shelter stay than move on to permanent housing.

Deaths of people 'without fixed abode'

Perhaps the starkest contrast to O.C.'s improvements in addressing homelessness comes from a committee convened by the sheriff's department to review deaths of unhoused people. The committee's report, released earlier this year, found that deaths doubled between 2017 and 2021. They've only increased since then — to some 500 people last year.

COVID-19 seemed to claim a relatively small number of the deceased — 17 people in 2021, according to the report. The main causes of death were drug overdoses — especially fentanyl — heart disease, and getting hit by a vehicle.

[Read: The Explosion In Unhoused People Dying From Fentanyl And Meth Is A Wake-Up Call For LA, Service Workers Say]

In defense of the Catholic Worker settlement 

Brooke Weitzman is a lawyer with the Elder Law and Disability Rights Center, one of the groups that initially sued the county. She worked closely with Sobel on the case and has a more optimistic view of its success.

For one thing, she said, people living on the streets are getting assessed for and offered, when possible, shelter and treatment options before they're ticketed for sleeping or loitering in public spaces.

"In the areas that are a part of the settlements, we aren't seeing anti-camping enforcement anymore," Weitzman said. "Certainly law enforcement is still enforcing other non-poverty related crimes like substance use or theft. But … being unhoused, sleeping in the park, those we're really not seeing tickets for the way we did before the litigation."

Weitzman said suing officials over homelessness was never going to solve the housing crisis, but forcing cities to build more temporary shelters has also made them realize just how hard it is to move people into permanent housing.

"Coming out of the cases, no city in Orange County can honestly tell you they don't have a problem with access to housing," she said.

Doug Becht, who oversees homeless services for the county, said he's proud of the progress since the lawsuits, especially of the standards of care to which all county-funded shelters now have to adhere.

"So regardless of what shelter either an individual or a family go in, they are assured that their service and the atmosphere and the environment and the care that they receive will be high," he said.

The county's legal settlement also establishes a grievance and appeal process — for example, if a shelter or treatment program wants to kick out a participant — and the right to appeal disputes all the way up to Judge Carter.

A volunteer with Wound Walk OC takes the vital signs of a man sleeping in an underpass in central Orange County.

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But Becht said a lack of housing options remains a major challenge, along with limited capacity to act quickly.

“When someone’s ready, and interested in help and is interested in working towards ending their homelessness, we gotta be there and ready to receive that," he said. "And in a lot more cases than ever, we are. But we’re still not able to do it for everyone at every point and that’s where we want to be.”

What critics say

David Gillanders, executive director of the homeless services organization Pathways of Hope in Orange County, questions how much positive change came out of the riverbed lawsuits.

"It has not resulted, I don't think, in enough people getting housed," he said. "But what I do hope it's done is stimulate some conversation around what homelessness is, how homelessness actually works, why people go homeless."

Without a right to housing, which doesn't exist in the U.S. or California constitutions, Gillanders is skeptical about how much progress on homelessness can be accomplished through the courts.

"The ultimate lawsuit is one that makes housing a human right literally," he said, "not just as a slogan that we sometimes say, but actually makes it an entitlement. Short of that, there's nothing that will solve homelessness."

Sobel, after more than two decades of suing elected officials to force them to open shelters, told LAist she no longer believes it's an effective strategy.

"I think we've fallen into this trap about this being a solution when all the evidence around is it hasn't worked and it doesn't work because at the end of the line, there's no housing," Sobel said.

The O.C. Catholic Worker case has served as a template for a federal lawsuit filed by a business group against the city and county of Los Angeles over the lack of shelter and mental health treatment for people experiencing homelessness. The city of Los Angeles settled their part of the case last year.

L.A. County is currently appealing a ruling by Judge Carter rejecting its settlement. The judge said he wanted to see more beds and more court oversight in the settlement.

Despite Sobel's doubt about fighting homelessness through the courts, she doesn't plan to stop.

"I think about how much worse it would be if we weren't doing this," she said. "You just have to keep fighting and you have to hope that one day, somebody's going to say, 'Look, this is not making sense.'"

Big surf from distant hurricanes in the Pacific could bring coastal flooding to Southern California starting this weekend.

Hurricanes Polo and Odalys are expected to cause coastal erosion, flooding and high surf along Southern California's already battered coastline. Swells from Polo are expect to arrive as early as late Sunday and peak Monday and Tuesday.

Bryan Lewis, National Weather Service meteorologist, told LAist that high tides could reach 7 feet. He said Long Beach and Avalon are among the more vulnerable areas for potential flooding and erosion.

Long Beach and Los Angeles warned residents to prepare for potential flooding and other effects through at least Wednesday.

In early September, Hurricane Marie brought coastal erosion and flooding that led homes being red- and yellow-tagged in L.A. and Orange counties.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Friends & Family Flea, a new market from the team behind Maum Market, will make its debut Saturday in Koreatown. 

For organizer Arnold Byun, the launch is something of a homecoming. 

Nearly five years ago, Byun and his co-founder, Kioh Park, were living in Koreatown and spending months at Document Coffee Bar dreaming up what would eventually become Maum Market, the Asian makers market they launched in January 2022. The market now has a regular presence at ROW DTLA, where it hosts pop-up markets on Dock Street several times a year.

“The genesis of Maum Market is actually really embedded in Koreatown,” Byun, 31, told The LA Local. “And we have a lot of affection and personal history with Koreatown, so it’s a very personal thing for us just to return to our roots.” 

Most of the 24 vendors participating in the first Friends & Family Flea have some connection to Koreatown, Byun said. Some grew up in the neighborhood, some still live there and others have moved away but retain ties to the area. The vendor list includes apparel brands, artists, jewelry makers, beauty and wellness businesses and food vendors. 

“We’ve been trying to be pretty intentional about curating from the community as much as possible,” Byun said.

There will be plenty of food and shopping, including “sogeum-bbang,” or salt bread, tea, handmade candles, soaps and vintage clothing, as well as flash tattoos and burgers and fries from Love Hour. The LA Hwatu-Hanafuda Club will teach visitors about hwatu, the Korean deck of playing cards with roots in Japan. The club will also offer $5 tarot card readings.

Friends & Family Flea, a new market from the team behind Maum Market, will make its debut Saturday in Koreatown.

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Eena Cho, founder of the LA Hwatu-Hanafuda Club, was born and raised in Koreatown. She remembers living with her mother in an apartment on Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue and volunteering at the senior center near Seoul International Park, where she spent time with older Korean residents.

She also grew up playing go-stop with her grandparents during Korean holidays, like Chuseok and Seollal. 

“That was a big part of my childhood,” said Cho, 24. “Another part is that living in LA where there’s so many different groups of people together, I remember my best friend Maria growing up, she was Mexican, and we would be playmates because both of our parents were working overtime.”

For Cho, joining Friends & Family Flea felt like a natural fit.

“Koreatown is a beautiful diaspora of many different cultures,” Cho said. “And I think that makes Koreatown, Koreatown.”

Friends & Family Flea, a new market from the team behind Maum Market, will make its debut Saturday in Koreatown.

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Courtesy Eena Cho

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The local focus is a big part of what Byun hopes will distinguish Friends & Family from other flea markets and fairs. He said organizers wanted to create something that “intentionally celebrates a specific neighborhood,” in this case, Koreatown. 

For the Koreatown market, that also means highlighting small businesses beyond the restaurants that often get the most attention.

“It’s more about, you know, where do we get our dry cleaning, where do we get our shoes done, or these kinds of services that I think don’t get highlighted as often as maybe restaurants do, but are really core and essential parts of a community business,” Byun said.

Byun’s own history with Koreatown also makes the neighborhood an especially fitting place to start.

His family immigrated to the South Bay from Korea in 2002, when he was 6. He remembers coming to Koreatown with his parents on the weekends for Korean meals and grocery trips.

Byun still thinks of the neighborhood as a second home for Korean immigrants, while appreciating how its community has grown more diverse.

“I’m just really happy to see it become a really beloved neighborhood,” he said.

The market is also giving back locally. Hats sold at the event will benefit the Koreatown Youth and Community Center, Byun said.

And this may not be a one-time run. If Saturday goes well, organizers hope to bring Friends & Family Flea back to Koreatown on a monthly basis. They also plan to offer discounted vendor fees to Koreatown residents.

“I feel like there was so much opportunity for us to really hone in and create something more hyperlocal and also really embed ourselves in the community as well,” Byun said.

When I lived in the UK, I worked on a BBC television show about birding. It was a strange experience as I couldn’t exactly book guests — “Hello Mr. Sparrow, could you be on location for an interview at 2 p.m.?”

So instead I spent a lot of time with the crew climbing up mountains with a large tripod on my shoulder. Did you know there’s a bird in the Scottish Highlands whose plumage turns white in winter to blend in with the snow? (It’s called a ptarmigan. Don’t pronounce the p.)

But it did mean I was attuned to British bird calls. I could hear something and pronounce solemnly: “Ah yes, that’s a lark. And that one's a chaffinch."

Moving to LA meant learning a new set of bird calls

When I moved to the U.S., however, it was a whole other story. I really didn’t recognize any of the bird calls. They were all so different. I just shrugged and figured they were part of the backdrop. But one day recently, a woman told me about a free app and said it was life-changing. "Hmm, I’ll see about that," I thought.

Merlin bird app

It’s called Merlin, from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and it’s kind of like Shazam for bird calls. As in, you click it, and it tells you what bird song you can hear around you. When I opened it in my backyard for the first time, a whole orchestra of bird sounds opened up around me. I admit: it was kind of life-changing.

Of course it first picked up a crow, which I know only too well, given its loud, raucous sound. But then it identified a house finch. Huh. Who knew they were in my backyard? And as I listened closely, I realized … I knew that sound! It’s the first thing I hear when I wake up at dawn, lovely and melodic.

The house finch, awakening the day.

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Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library

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So now when I open my eyes in the morning, I say, "Good morning, house finch, communing with fellow beings alive on a vibrant California morning!" It kicks off my day, although I guess I’ve been reading too much Mary Oliver.

The backyard birds you're probably hearing right now

But then other birds I didn’t know would pop up on my phone during the day, with names as intriguing as their calls: the spotted towhee, the orange-crowned warbler, or Cassin’s kingbird.

I mean, they do realize they’re in a backyard in Los Angeles, not some estate in Georgian England? My favorite for a while was the dark-eyed junco. Now we’re talking romantic heroes. Imagine him slyly popping across the apple tree limbs to call to you. Dark-Eyed Junco, at your service.

Dark-eyed junco, at your service.

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Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library

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Meet Swinhoe's white-eye, a non-native bird spreading across SoCal

And then there’s Swinhoe’s white-eye. Which sounds a little like an eye ailment, but there you go. It’s a tiny bright yellow bird with a white ring around each eye. So cute! I first noticed them when there were a bazillion of them in a tree outside my house. It was such an unusual sight that I mentioned it to a woman walking her dog, and we stood there, oohing and aahing, until we both realized we’d oohed a little too much, and it was time to go.

Swinhoe's white-eyes are not native to SoCal, but are thriving.

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Cornell Lab of Ornithology | Macaulay Library

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When I researched them, I was surprised to find they’re not native to SoCal. They’re actually pretty new to the area. There were just a handful in Orange County 20 years ago, probably having been brought over from Asia as pets and escaped. And now, they’re thriving and have spread everywhere from Baja to San Luis Obispo. Who knows where they’ll end up next? If anyone sees a chartreuse cutie in New York, let me know. It'll probably be very tired.

Yes, you can see I’ve become slightly annoying with my newfound bird interest. I’ll be asking my family what they want for dinner, and I’ll say, “Wait, is that the spotted towhee?” and turn to my phone, and my teenager will wrest it out of my hand and say, “Mom, be in the present!” Which is right. But my morning serenade as the birds come online one by one and greet the new day — well, that’s as present as you can be.

Walk through the automatic doors at the Carson Library and you’ll see on your left a 1973 painting called "Dominoes" by John Riddle.

Riddle, a prominent Black artist, has worked in the L.A. County Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum, and has been collected by Jesse Jackson and Roberta Flack.

Riddle's work was previously owned by the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company in West Adams. Over two decades, the company’s art director, William Pajaud, an L.A. artist himself, carefully collected hundreds of pieces of Black art. Each piece in the collection, Pajaud said, would be a chapter telling the story of African Americans in the U.S. The collection included oil paintings, watercolors, and sculptures in clay, wood and metal.

When Golden State Mutual Life Insurance shut down, the company sold most of the best pieces at a private auction in 2007, with some selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. L.A. County was able to acquire about 120 works, including Riddle's piece.

To keep the works accessible to the public and free of charge, county officials chose four public libraries and three community centers to show the work. Earlier this year, the county arts department created a new website with a map to make them easier to find. The locations include the Golden State Mutual historic building in West Adams, plus:
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Libraries

• Carson Library (Carson)
• A.C. Bilbrew Library (Willowbrook)
• Masao W. Satow Library (Gardena)
• View Park Bebe Moore Campbell Library (View Park/Windsor Hills)
  

Community centers:

• Curtis Tucker Behavioral Health Center Health Services (Inglewood)
• Willowbrook Senior Center Aging and Disabilities (Willowbrook)
• Mark Ridley-Thomas Behavioral Health Center Health Services (on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Medical Campus).

“All of these are county-owned spaces that are available, accessible to the public and to patrons to be able to live with the works, learn about the works, see the works, learn about the works,” said Kristin Sakoda, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.

Dominoes by John Riddle. The painting was part of the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance collection but is now part of the Los Angeles County Civic Art Collection.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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As you walk past the checkout desk at the Carson Library, toward the teen section, you’ll see another remarkable piece from the county’s holdings. It’s a two-foot-tall sculpture made from one piece of mahogany. It’s called "The Embrace" by artist Elizabeth Catlett, whose work is in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, among many other institutions. Catlett depicted two people hugging, their faces and bodies fused together, their eyes looking at the viewer.

Detail of El Abrazo (The Embrace) by Elizabeth Catlett.

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In the auction catalogue for the Golden State Collection, Catlett wrote: “I still work figuratively, trying to express emotion through abstract form, color, line, and space. I attempt to reach out to ordinary people who have little or no experience or understanding of art principles, and extend to them what I may feel about a subject."

Ancestral Fragments by Stanley Wilson.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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Meanwhile at A.C. Bilbrew Library, north of Compton, there’s a piece by Charles White, who lived in L.A. County for decades and mentored many artists in the region. His paintings and drawings in the 1960s took on the issues of the Black Civil Rights Movement, and that led well-known Black Americans like Nat King Cole and Eartha Kitt to buy his art.

County officials are hopeful that the communities around these neighborhoods enjoy the art’s benefits, including “mental health, in our education, our youth development, our sense of inclusion and belonging,” Sakoda said.