{"id":352445,"date":"2026-06-09T01:44:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T01:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/352445\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T01:44:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T01:44:20","slug":"orange-county-leaders-claim-homelessness-drops-as-more-get-imprisoned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/352445\/","title":{"rendered":"Orange County Leaders Claim Homelessness Drops as More Get Imprisoned"},"content":{"rendered":"

Orange County leaders say they found a significant drop in the number of homeless residents as they searched the streets earlier this year, but there\u2019s one place nobody checked \u2013 the county jails.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Voice of OC review found that the county\u2019s incarceration rate of homeless residents has gone up over 40% since 2022 amid a series of shifts in state and local laws that make it easier for police departments to imprison homeless residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s opened questions on how much the county has actually done to improve homelessness as they claim they can\u2019t answer how the drop in homelessness came.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUnhoused residents make up about one fifth of one percent of Orange County residents, but 28% of nonvehicular stops in 2024,\u201d said Eve Garrow, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union. \u201cThe sheriff\u2019s department is primarily stopping unhoused residents simply for existing in public places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why Is It Easier to Lock Up Homeless People Now?\u00a0<\/p>\n

For years, Orange County leaders were blocked from evicting homeless people from encampments by a legal precedent dubbed Martin v. Boise, which required local agencies to offer shelter beds before they can move people off the streets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read: Lawsuit Seeks End to Santa Ana Riverbed Homeless Evictions; County Says It Won\u2019t Stop<\/a><\/p>\n

But that all changed when the Supreme Court threw out the Martin v. Boise rule in June 2024, saying that sleeping on the street is a crime, reopening the door for cities and the county to again enforce anti-camping ordinances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

[Read: Is Orange County About To Enforce Anti-Camping Laws Again?<\/a>]<\/p>\n

City and county leaders quickly moved to beef up their anti-camping laws, reauthorizing police officers to arrest homeless residents for camping and a host of other offenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those efforts also swelled again after California voters approved Prop 36 in Nov. 2024, which turned several petty theft and drug possession crimes from misdemeanors into felonies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

[Read: What Does California\u2019s New Street Crime Law Mean for OC in the New Year?<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Garrow also said the end of several eviction moratoriums and rent relief programs during the COVID-19 pandemic saw a large chunk of people hit the streets at once in 2022, while the county\u2019s efforts to expand permanent supportive housing haven\u2019t created enough units to keep up.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019re under investing in affordable housing and over investing in law enforcement \u2026 I don\u2019t think it\u2019s surprising that the number of unhoused people within our jail population has surged,\u201d Garrow said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

How Many Homeless People are in County Jails?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Orange County Sheriff\u2019s Department, which manages the county\u2019s jail system, asks prisoners to identify their home address or disclose that they\u2019re homeless when someone gets booked into the jail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sheriff\u2019s data does have some limitations, namely that if a homeless person is released and rearrested later, they\u2019re counted twice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sheriffs also don\u2019t track how long the homeless are in prison for, just that they were booked into one of the county jails at some point.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2022, sheriffs recorded 7,025 times that a person claiming to be homeless was booked into the jail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By 2025, that number had risen to 9,857, a 40% increase in three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Jan. 2026, when county leaders did their bi-annual Point in Time count of homeless on the streets, there were over 800 times a homeless resident was booked into a county jail that month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

County Can\u2019t Explain Drop in Homelessness\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last month, county leaders claimed homelessness dropped by 13% from 2024, pointing to their biannual Point in Time Count looking for homeless residents on the street.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But when asked how that drop occurred, they weren\u2019t sure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cToday starts the journey of looking into the data and understanding,\u201d said Doug Becht, director of the county\u2019s Office of Care Coordination. \u201cI think it\u2019s too early for us to be able to give an exact answer on how we got to the 13% reduction.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read: How Did Orange County\u2019s Homeless Population Shrink?\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

When asked about why homeless people in jails weren\u2019t included in the count, county spokesperson Molly Nichelson said they weren\u2019t part of it because of federal regulations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Point In Time Count, in accordance with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guidance only includes people residing in emergency shelters and transitional housing programs, and people whose primary nighttime residence is a public space not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodations for people, including but not limited to outdoors, cars, abandoned buildings, bus or train stations, airports, etc,\u201d Nichelson wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When Voice of OC reporters pointed out the increase in homeless residents in the jails, county leaders said they couldn\u2019t explain what the impact was to the point in time count.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are countless factors that impact the number of people experiencing homelessness in our community,\u201d Nichelson wrote in a Wednesday statement. \u201cAs such, we don\u2019t have any information that would allow us to provide a definitive answer to your question.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org. <\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orange County leaders say they found a significant drop in the number of homeless residents as they searched…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-352445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}