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Orono, Norma From: Phil Schaefer < Sent: Friday, August 10, 2018 5:35 PM To: eComment; Pulido, Miguel; Sarmiento, Vicente; Martinez, Michele; Solorio, Jose; Benavides, David; Villegas, Juan; Tinajero, Sal; Godinez, Raul; Do, Andrew; shawn.nelson@ocgov.com; todd.spitzer@ocgov.com; michelle.steel@ocgov.com; lisa.bartlett@ocgov.com; frank.kim@ocgov.com Subject: Proposed 600+ bed emergency shelter in SA Categories: Correspondence I am writing to urge a NO vote on this in the city of Santa Ana. Hasn't Santa Ana shouldered the burden of the homeless long enough? Hasn't the city already done more than the rest of Orange County combined with little or no help form our neighbors?? • Best practices indicate no shelter should be larger than 200 beds. • The County of Orange Homeless Assessment report shows a 200 -bed emergency shelter for each of the three service planning areas: north, central and south. • Santa Ana currently has the largest emergency shelter, the Courtyard. The number of beds has exceeded 400 over the past several months. • This temporary site, the Courtyard, was only planned for 200-300 beds. The County's own numbers show more than half the people staying at the Courtyard are from areas other than the Central Service Planning Area. Using this information, a 200 -bed emergency shelter for the Central Service Planning Area would meet the need. Most of the shelter beds are not filled with Santa Ana residents. • If additional beds are needed in the Central Service Planning Area, then Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Tustin, Fountain Valley, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Orange, Villa Park and Westminster need to help. The County has 85 acres from the former Tustin Marine Base and 100 acres at the former EI Toro Marine Base. Any emergency homeless shelter over 300 beds would be larger than any emergency facility in Los Angeles County. This information is based on the LA County Homeless Shelter inventory and phone conversations with the LA Mission, Union Rescue Mission, and LA Family Housing Corporation. In addition to the Courtyard, we currently have Wise pIace/Safeplace for 60 women and are building a new facility for veterans. I believe most of our residents and businesses want to help the homeless by building more permanent supportive housing such as The Orchard and The Aqua Motel. It's time for other cities to seriously step up and share the responsibility for building necessary emergency shelters. We have seen a rise in crime and lost our feeling of safety with so many people wondering our neighborhoods at all hours of the night and day. Many are drug addicted breaking into our cars and homes looking for anything they can sell. Just providing beds is not a solution. We mental health and drug addiction services. Why isn't the Fairview Mental health facility being considered for these people??? I understand the state is closing it when we have an epidemic situation. That makes no sense at all. 10