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Mexican cultural center to sign agreement with city to clear homeless encampment
About 40 people live on two parking lots at El Centro Cultural of Mexico in Santa Ana on Feb. 24.
(Raul Roa / Staff Photographer)
March 16, 2021 6:57 PM PT
After facing fines and the threat of an abatement court order, a Mexican cultural center in Santa Ana has agreed to work with the city to clear a homeless encampment in its parking lots.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, homeless people have been living in the El Centro Cultural de México’s lots. The numbers have steadily grown to an encampment with more than 40 people.
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Ben Vazquez is an optimist by nature, so the high school teacher tried to smile as he walked around El Centro Cultural de Mexico in Santa Ana last week.
He’s a longtime volunteer at the 25-year-old nonprofit, which has forged a generation of Latino activists in Orange County via a variety of classes music, dance, language, art, even self-defense. It also holds a yearly Día de los Muertos festival that attracts over 40,000 people and is one of the largest of its kind in the United States.
The pandemic moved all of this to Zoom, so El Centro’s two-story building, within walking distance from multiple schools, no longer buzzes with kids and parents. It’s still busy, though.
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After four years in operation, Orange County has quietly shut down its only low barrier walk-in shelter without any public announcement.
The closure last Friday of the Courtyard shelter in downtown Santa Ana – which once was home to over 400 homeless people – comes as the county opens a new, more restrictive shelter in a different part of the city.
The replacement Yale shelter offers more services for homeless people but has more limits on who is eligible – requiring a referral from police or health workers – and does not allow residents to walk in or out.
That’s prompting concerns that the closure is pushing people back to nearby streets – as well as frustration from local officials about why county officials like Supervisors Chairman Supervisor Andrew Do – who also represents Santa Ana – didn’t reach out to them with a plan.