Every city has homeless individuals but not every city is willing to help those in need. People have different opinions on the homeless but let us all remember that they are humans. In some cases veterans, disabled individuals, and people with mental illness remain homeless.

The homeless population have increased by 60 percent since 2017. There are about 352 homeless people and 233 staying in the streets. Fullerton has given shelters about 150 beds for the homeless. 90 of the beds are for overnight staying and 60 of those beds are for the ones that are recovering from medical issues.

Fullerton has provided a bus for the homeless to be able to get to the Armory Night Shelter that is located in Fullerton. This Fullerton shelter provides photo IDs for the homeless, meals, showers, and sleeping blankets.

Just like every places, the Armory Night Shelter does have rules for individuals that go there which are:

– No weapons, drugs, or alcohol permitted anywhere in the shelter

– Limit personal belongings have to be two handheld bags

Fullerton has taken action and contributed with the Ilumination Foundation. The city of Fullerton has contributed with $500,000 to the foundation. The purpose of the Ilumination foundation is to remove all the homeless people in the streets and place them in a shelter.

Unfortunately, shelters can only have a person up through 90 to 120 days. After the days are up they have to find a permanent home.

Most of the time it is hard for a homeless person to get back on their feet and end up again in the same thing which would be the streets which is why it is still an issue.

Due to COVID-19 the shelters have indeed taken extreme measures to keep the shelters a good place for the people to stay. They are disinfecting surfaces daily in the shelters, they have added extra hand washing stations, they are keeping reachable hand sanitizers available and most importantly checking up on each person to make sure they are feeling okay.

Having homeless people in a city is very expensive and expensive to help them and sometimes difficult. Orange County has considered a North Spa Organization that carries meetings for everyone in the county and they focus on collaborating a plan to address homelessness.

Fullerton is planning to help more and more people as they can but there is a huge amount of people suffering from the high costs of Orange County. Many fall into the drug abuse world and wind up losing everything.

They have estimated to having 2700 housing units for homeless people all around Orange County. A lot of shelters have provided drug and alcohol abuse treatments and as well as clinics.

Our plan as a community should be to help the homeless people as much as we can. A quote we should acknowledge, ” God helps those who help themselves but he blesses those who help others.” This shows us that we should help those get back on their feet and while doing that we help ourselves as well.

As a community we should donate food, clothing, and necessities. We should not look down on them if not treat the homeless as a human being.

Some homeless people had their life straight once they just fell down. Our job as a community should be to help them. We should donate things to our local shelters. If we see a homeless person we can provide them with information of shelters.

We should acknowledge them and engage in helping them. If you are interested in contacting them for more info. :

City of Fullerton

Housing & Neighborhood Services – Homeless Resources Coordinator

303 W. Commonwealth Avenue | Fullerton, CA 92832

(714) 738-6562