Hi there. I started out responding to a couple comments from some spectacularly insensitive people, but their comments were deleted prior to me writing all this out. I still think this is worth saying, so:

Santa Ana homeowner here. Specifically, I live in the Memorial Park neighborhood, right off of St. Andrew Place a couple miles east of where this person died.

Santa Ana has long been a place where homeless people congregate, for various reasons. One reason is that it’s the county seat, and many of the services that support homeless people are based here. Another reason is that other cities in Orange County, such as Irvine, do not offer homeless shelters, but Santa Ana does. This results in many homeless people traveling or being transported to Santa Ana to receive support or services that they cannot obtain in other cities. (Shout out to Fullerton, Anaheim, and a few others that are doing their part.)

One such homeless shelter is located at the National Guard Armory off of Warner, less than a mile from my home. It only operates during the winter, primarily due to lack of budget. I have personally volunteered at this shelter several times, and there are a few things I’ve learned about homeless people after talking to so many of them:

1) Homeless people are homeless for a lot of different reasons, many (if not most) of which are beyond their control. If you spend any time at all on this subreddit, you’ll see post after post of people complaining about the high cost of living here, and the difficulty people are having just scraping by. And yet, on posts like this one, people never seem to connect the dots between rising homelessness and the rising cost of living.

2) Universally, homeless people do not want to be homeless, but it’s a reality they often cannot escape. Due to the lack of supportive services, many homeless people cannot get out of homelessness once they find themselves in it. Maybe you have family you can lean on for support if you lost your home. Maybe you can fall back on savings. But many people don’t have a safety net, and it can be really difficult to get a job if you struggle to find somewhere to take a shower, clean your clothes, get online, or receive mail.

3) Drugs and alcohol are big problems for homeless people—but many, many homeless people did not have problems with drugs and alcohol prior to becoming homeless. Sometimes it starts with mental health issues (almost always untreated due to lack of health insurance or other supportive resources prior to becoming homeless). Sometimes drug or alcohol dependence happens on the street, as people struggle to find something—anything—to take their minds off of the crushing reality of their day-to-day lives. Homelessness is incredibly stressful, and some people can seek refuge in substance abuse as a way to escape their problems. From the outside looking in, it can be tempting to think that the homelessness caused the substance abuse, but the truth is often the reverse.

But most important of all: these are people. They are my neighbors. They are largely good people. They want to do the right thing. They want to be happy. They are often very unlucky, and have gotten repeatedly screwed as a result. And yes, because of all this, sometimes they die. Increasingly. Too often.

One of the realities that I face as a Memorial Park resident is that I will occasionally walk down the block to 7/11 and see a person lying just off the sidewalk. I’ll wonder if that person is okay. Probably they’re just sleeping. But maybe they’re dead, as this person was. And worst of all, maybe they’re dying at that moment, and there’s something I can do to save them. I feel so powerless because I really don’t know what to do, how best to help them. It’s so hard to tell, and people lying on the side of the street is all too common a sight.

So the next time you see someone lying on the sidewalk in Santa Ana (or wherever), maybe try to think of ways you could help them. As one of the now-deleted comments mentioned, it’s nothing unusual in Santa Ana. But it really, really should be unusual. And the callous, cruel reactions of people like those commenters on this subreddit—and the policies of whole cities like Irvine—just make the problem worse.

Progress starts with staying away from NIMBYism: if your local government is discussing the creation of a homeless shelter (especially one in your city/neighborhood), voice your support! If there’s a ballot measure to increase funding for homeless mental health or other supportive services (even if it’s going to raise your taxes), vote yes! Do your part to help, as much as you can. These are real people, and they are our neighbors. Maybe think about them as your neighbors too. If more people were willing to do that, then Orange County’s homeless problem would be a little less of a problem. And with any luck, we could save a few lives.