ACLU report alleges abuse, unsanitary conditions common at Orange County homeless shelters

Homeless people residing in three county-funded shelter programs are subjected to dangerous squalor, sexual and physical abuse by shelter workers, and fear of retaliation if they complain, the Orange County office of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California contends in a just-released investigative report.

The ACLU spent nearly a year compiling a litany of alleged harm at the Courtyard shelter in Santa Ana, Bridges at Kraemer Place in Anaheim, and the women-only SAFEPlace in Santa Ana.

The report — released to the public and Orange County officials early Thursday — relies heavily on interviews with dozens of unnamed homeless people, volunteers, advocates, and one shelter staff member.

Government documents acquired through public record requests, such as complaints lodged with the county and calls for service from the county fire authority, and photographs taken by shelter residents, also were used in chronicling the report.

Bearing the title “This Place is Slowly Killing Me: Abuse and Neglect in Orange County Emergency Shelters,” the report calls on the county to enact immediate reforms and set acceptable standards at a time when the county and several cities are ramping up the number of shelter beds to temporarily house its homeless street population.

The ACLU also is requesting follow-up investigation by several state agencies.

ACLU: Read the full report

Frank Kim, Orange County’s executive officer, said early Thursday that he and others in the county will take the report seriously.

“Our goal always is to find better ways to do the work that we do. We will look at the report and look at it fairly. Where there are accurate and legitimate concerns identified, we will respond to those.”

As a whole, the report presents a disturbing portrait of vulnerable people – some elderly or suffering with serious mental and physical disabilities – whom the ACLU alleges are living in dehumanizing conditions.

“They want shelters that are safe and clean,” the report states, referring to homeless people. “They call for services that respect their human right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being. They want shelter staff to treat them with dignity and respect.”

Among the claims made in the report:

• sexual, physical and verbal abuse from shelter staff
• restrooms with constant overwhelmed toilets and persistent mold in showers
• pest infestations and extreme temperatures
• theft and confiscation of personal property by staff
• threats and acts of reprisal, including being exiled to the street
• violation of constitutional rights; discrimination on basis of race, gender and disability

The harshest spotlight falls on conditions at the Courtyard shelter, which the county opened in October 2016 to address the burgeoning homeless population at the Civic Center. The report notes that seven homeless people have died at the Courtyard since it opened and references an average of 78 calls a month to Orange County Fire Authority for emergency medical services from July to October 2017.

The county is working to develop an enhanced shelter at a different location in Santa Ana that would replace the Courtyard.  Elected officials have pointed to other progress being made to house and care for homeless people.

ACLU investigators said they found the same pattern of poor conditions and treatment at all three shelters cited in the report.

The ACLU outlines 10 recommendations that the organization believes will bring the three shelters up to what the report describes as “at least the minimum standards of fitness for human habitation.”

The recommendations include establishing “clear and binding” uniform health and safety standards for all shelters; creating a county office of civil rights and a civilian oversight board; and establishing due process for “denials, evictions and other sanctions.”

The ACLU planned to forward copies of the report to state agencies that include the office of the attorney general, the Department of Housing and Community Development, and Fair Employment and Housing.

The organization wants the state attorney general to investigate the issues raised in the report and bring whatever action his office deems appropriate, said ACLU policy analyst Eve Garrow and staff attorney Julia Devanthery, who researched and authored the report together.

The organization has not ruled out legal action of its own, but hopes the county will enact the recommendations as speedily as possible.

“Instead of leading with a lawsuit, we’re leading with a road map for them to follow to address the issues we uncovered,” Devanthery said. “We hope the results will be that a lawsuit is not necessary.”

Garrow called it a matter of “political will” for the county to improve conditions at the shelters and hold the nonprofit organizations contracted to operate them accountable. She asserts that the county has the resources to correct problems at the shelters.

“It’s just a matter of the Board of Supervisors making this a priority,” she said.

Each of the shelters in question are run by different nonprofit organizations.

Los Angeles-based Midnight Mission operates the Courtyard shelter in the Santa Ana Civic Center, which typically sleeps about 425 homeless people a night. Mercy House Living Centers, a longtime homeless shelter operator in Orange County, runs the 200-bed Bridges at Kraemer Place in Anaheim. WISEPlace in downtown Santa Ana added 60 beds in May 2018 to its gym to create the SAFEPlace shelter for traumatized homeless women at the Civic Center.

With few exceptions, the names of the homeless people and others interviewed for the report are not disclosed, a decision made in order to protect them from retaliation, the ACLU researchers said.

But the 2018 diary entries of one formerly homeless woman, Roberta Filicko, provide a first-person glimpse into a 60-year-old woman’s experience living at the Courtyard shelter for nearly a year, along with insight into her personal life. Her grammar and spelling may falter over the 53 handwritten pages, but her concerns over conditions at the shelter are clear.

In one passage included in the report, Filicko describes conditions in the Courtyard’s women’s facilities: “Showers are a rent-a-shower trailer with three stalls on each side. They’re never clean and most of the time it’s only cold water … [The women’s bathroom] always has black mold in and around the bathroom stalls and sinks. Most of the time, they don’t even put [out] soap or paper towels.”

PDF: Read Roberta Filicko’s diary

Filicko, who left the Courtyard late last summer to live in a group home for the mentally ill that the ACLU researchers said she found on her own, writes in one entry about an older woman she helped clean up who was infested with bed bugs so large, “I don’t know why someone didn’t notice them before.”

The ACLU report references Filicko describing how the skin of four elderly women she assisted in showering and de-lousing bled and peeled off as she removed their clothing. The women had gone without a shower for three months, Filicko asserts, because they needed help to do so and staff failed to assist them.

“No one really cares about you here,” Filicko writes. “Some people here have had no shower since I came here. 3 months ago. No clean clothes. No cleaning bedding. There hair unwash (sic) and uncomb (sic). You would think the staff would notice that.”