The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California is suing Orange County, Anaheim and operators of three homeless shelters over allegations of sexual abuse and harassment of female residents, poor living conditions, and overly restrictive rules.
The lawsuit echos charges made by the ACLU in its 2019 report about Orange County homeless shelters. It was filed Thursday, Dec. 10, in Orange County Superior Court on behalf of eight former shelter residents — seven of them women — who had stayed at the Courtyard in Santa Ana, and La Mesa and Bridges at Kraemer Place shelters in Anaheim. A homeless outreach group, Oma’s Angel Foundation based in Anaheim, is also named as a plaintiff.
The 57-page suit describes purported incidents of women being groped and subjected to “physically invasive” searches, and being propositioned by male staff members at the shelters. It also chronicles allegedly unsanitary conditions in the shelters, such as backed up toilets, unclean and broken shower facilities, insect infestations and exposure to harsh weather conditions. And it details restrictions and rules for shelter residents that the ACLU argues hamper job searches and make it hard for residents to tend to basic needs.
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The Bridges at Kraemer Place shelter in Anaheim, pictured here in October 2017, is one of three Orange County shelters being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of eight homeless people over alleged abuses by staff, poor living conditions and civil rights violations. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Contributing Photographer)
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The Courtyard Shelter in Santa Ana, CA, pictured here in November 2020, is one of three Orange County shelters being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of eight homeless people over alleged abuses by staff, poor living conditions and civil rights violations. The Courtyard is set to be replaced by the Yale Navigation Center on S. Yale Street in Santa Ana. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)
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An artist painted a colorful mural at the La Mesa Emergency Shelter in Anaheim before it opened in March 2019. Now the homeless shelter is one of three in Orange County named in a lawsuit filed Dec. 10, 2020, by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California over alleged abuse by staff, poor conditions, and civil rights violations. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)
The lawsuit claims the alleged incidents and conditions are civil rights abuses. It seeks an injunction and damages on behalf of the plaintiffs.
“The horrific conditions in the shelters, as well as punishment for merely objecting to them, are not just inhumane, they’re illegal,” a news release from the ACLU stated about the nature of the lawsuit, which seeks a jury trial. The ACLU is joined in the lawsuit by the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP, which has offices in Los Angeles.
Neither the county nor the city had been served as of Friday afternoon, according to government spokespersons.
Molly Nichelson, public information manager for Orange County, declined comment. But last year, after the ACLU cited problems at Kraemer Place, the Courtyard, and a shelter not named in the lawsuit — the women-only SAFEPlace in Santa Ana — the county issued a letter rejecting the charges: “The County believes that the complaints in the Report are unfounded, have already been remedied by the County, or are in the process of being remedied.”
The La Mesa shelter in Anaheim was newly opened at the time of the ACLU report. Now the facility is being sued, and Anaheim officials said Friday the city is assessing the ACLU’s charges.
“Resident well-being and dignity are always priority, and we hold our operators to high standards with a process for concerns to be heard and addressed. We are reviewing what is being asserted here and defer any further comment for now,” Anaheim spokesman Mike Lyster said.
The nonprofit shelter operators named by the lawsuit are under contract to either the county or Anaheim. Midnight Mission has managed the county-funded Courtyard shelter at the Santa Ana Civic Center since it opened in a defunct bus terminal in October 2016; Mercy House Living Centers has overseen Kraemer Place since May 2017, when it opened with financial contributions from the county and several cities; Illumination Foundation has operated the La Mesa Emergency Shelter for Anaheim from its start in March 2019.
The 2019 report, titled “This Place is Slowly Killing Me: Abuse and Neglect in Orange County Emergency Shelters,” relied heavily on interviews with dozens of unnamed homeless people, volunteers, advocates, and one shelter staff member, along with government records collected over a year’s investigation. It also included excerpts of one woman’s handwritten journal.
In the lawsuit, plaintiff Cyndi Utzman is the source of personal complaints about the Courtyard, Kraemer Place and La Mesa, where she resided at different periods of time from August 2018 to May 2020. She is the only one of the plaintiffs that the lawsuit says stayed at all three shelters.
At the Courtyard, Utzman said she experienced sexual harassment and “harmful” living conditions. At Kraemer Place, she called the living conditions “unsanitary” and says she lost job opportunities because of the strict policy on coming and going by either a shelter-provided shuttle, a private vehicle, taxi or ridesharing. At La Mesa, which she left in May 2020, she said she again was subjected to sexual harassment that included invasive body searches, and endured “substandard” living conditions and violations of her freedom of movement.
In describing the type of body search Utzman alleges took place at La Mesa when she returned excursions away from the shelter, after smoke breaks outside, or after using the restroom, the lawsuit states that staff members would require Utzman to “stand up straight, spread her feet apart, pull out her bra, shake her breasts, and pull out her waistband away from her hip so that staff could look down her pants.”
The lawsuit also alleges that a male staff member at La Mesa would repeatedly enter the women’s dorm to watch the residents as they changed clothes, observing Utzman naked at least once, along with several other women.
She said she was written up for complaints about her treatment and that of other women at La Mesa, leading to her being kicked out in May.
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