Tustin City Council approves different site for homeless shelter, after outcry over proposed location near elementary school

TUSTIN — The Tustin City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night, Dec. 18, to relocate a yet-to-open temporary homeless shelter from its proposed site near an elementary school.

In a low-key meeting – especially juxtaposed to those in which parents passionately decried the original location – council members chose the former U.S. Army Reserve site at 2345 Barranca Parkway.

They also considered as an alternative a vacant parcel on the southeast corner of Armstrong and Warner avenues.

Both sites come with considerable drawbacks. The Barranca address, at the District at Tustin Legacy shopping center, sits directly across the street from Irvine. City officials have expressed concern that Irvine might file a lawsuit, embroiling the locale in lengthy litigation.

However, the second site is not convenient to bus lines, stores and other amenities that shelter residents need. Trailer homes, as well as some infrastructure, would have to be brought in. Preparation of the vacant lot would cost around $3 million, about $1.3 million more than at the Army Reserve building.

Tustin considered readying both locations for a shelter in the event the preferred one falls through, but council members decided against spending extra money simply as a precaution.

“If it turns out that it is legally challenged, staff should come back with another recommendation, but we should not be funding both,” said Councilman Allan Bernstein.

The city faces a nerve-racking deadline as it weighs three problematic sites for the shelter. In August, a judge determined that cities and the County of Orange must provide housing for 60 percent of their total homeless counts based on 2017 statistics.

Entities that fail to meet a February deadline cannot enforce anti-camping ordinances until they offer homeless people an alternative to the streets.

Tustin must produce at least 42 beds. City officials thought they had arrived at a solution when the Christian-oriented Orange County Rescue Mission agreed to add 50 beds. But they had to go back to square one in September when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a city cannot “coerce an individual to attend religion-based treatment programs.”

Adding to the stress, bordering cities including Santa Ana have begun to open shelters per the judge’s order — giving them the green light to cite or arrest people sleeping on public property. That means some homeless people who decline to stay in shelters have drifted into Tustin, City Manager Jeff Parker said at Tuesday’s meeting.

On Oct. 25, the city announced that it would place a temporary shelter next door to Heritage Elementary School at The Legacy for about two years, until it could find a more suitable location. That plan immediately drew an outcry from parents, who claimed the shelter would pose a risk to children

Residents quickly organized protests at a rally, town hall and city council meetings. At first, all five city council members dug in on their unanimous decision to place the shelter in the vacant building originally earmarked for a police station.

But the uproar continued, growing so contentious that parents began a recall effort of Bernstein, a vocal proponent of the disputed site. Taking their seats in early December, two new city council members sided with the residents in opposing the site near Heritage.

At a special city council meeting Dec. 6, Parker told the packed chambers that the city would cease renovations at the site while officials considered other options.

After Tuesday’s vote, Heritage parent Jeff Lawrence, the lead organizer of the protest, said residents were “ecstatic” over the change of events.

“To think that just five short weeks ago there were five votes for the site (near the school), it’s just incredible that we accomplished a complete turnaround in such a short period of time,” he said.

Lawrence added that the recall movement against Bernstein has been put on hold.

Bernstein closed his remarks after the vote noting that council members “heard the people speak.”

“The actions we’re taking tonight,” he said, “were edified by input from the community.”