I just got through watching the HBO documentary — “Homeless – The Motel Kids of Orange County”. It was on CNN. I decided to watch it, because last week Fullerton decided to evict their homeless from the library property that recently closed. There was a discussion about it on the Orange Juice Blog and one of the commenter’s wrote, “Many choose to be homeless”. I hope that person watched the same documentary I just watched.
The focus was on a few families in Anaheim who do not choose to be homeless and they have jobs. They are the working homeless. The ones who are lucky, live in motels that are in walking distance to the “happiest place on earth,” Disneyland. One of the motel residents is a 42 year old widow living in a cramped motel room with her 3 children. Her oldest who is around 12 has already been in trouble with the law. His crime? Acting out, theft and destroying public property. His younger sibling was asked, “What do you look forward to?”– his reply, “nothing.” He is 6 years old.
Their mother works at Disneyland and has been for two years. She makes $9.25 an hour. Disney just raised their rates to get in to their theme park this month. How much do you want to bet, that the employees won’t see a dime more in their paycheck? Tourists are under the impression that Disney is a great employer — if they only knew the story.
The only place kids have to play is the motel parking lots and dumpsters. Signs are posted by the motel office, “Sex Offender Registry”…”No Prostitution Allowed.” Kids showed the camera crew where the illegal drugs were stashed on the property. Cops showing up to “take people to jail” is a common occurrence — And we wonder why kids get in trouble at such an early age. Many motel mattresses have bed bugs, and the way the staff deal with that problem is — to “air” the infested mattress out in the parking lot a few days, then clean it and put it back in the room.
The only constant that seems to be in these kids’ life is their school, Project Hope School, which is open year round. They are provided breakfast and lunch and they are picked up by a school bus and dropped off to wherever they are living at the end of the day. Their living situation can change often and some of these kids have to sleep in parks with their parents if they don’t have enough money for even one night in a motel room.
Politicians have been hashing things out over the “farm bill” and food stamps is included in that bill. There are members of Congress who want to slash food stamps. I dare anyone of them to spend a week in the shoes of these children. Has any of them even missed one meal themselves? If we didn’t have food stamps, we would see soup kitchens and lines several blocks long of people just trying to survive.
I used to live in San Francisco and I saw soup kitchen lines back in the late 90s. These were people who came to Glide Memorial Church to get one meal and for many it was their only meal for the day. It was a mix of men, women, families, homeless and working poor. That was in the late 90s — I can only imagine how much longer those lines are today.
Is this the “safety net” that Mitt Romney was talking about when he was running for president? Politicians, mostly the GOP and Tea Party believe that Americans just need to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” — these people can’t afford boots!
We seem to always have enough money to send to other countries, and no money for those who need help at home. Don’t get me started about all the billions we send to countries who don’t need the financial help, like Israel and Pakistan. How about the millions we just found out that the CIA was giving to Hamid Karzai — can you say bribe? How about extortion? And that’s my tax dollars! Your tax dollars! And right here in America we have people, families — working families living in parks, cars and if they are lucky — motels.
We LOVE to tell people we are the “greatest country in the world”– We are a SUPER POWER! Is this how we show it — by turning a blind eye to those who need help? And don’t tell me these people just need to get better jobs, because there are no better jobs! I don’t care what the job numbers say — 7.5% unemployment? If that’s true then I am the Queen of England! I don’t know anyone who works full time anymore. Do you? Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck right now. So anyone of us could end up in the same living situation as these families. Think about it.
Just 30 miles south of where this was filmed there is a huge regional effort to get families like these out of the “churn” of motels and shelters and into affordable rental housing.
so where would that be? Newport Beach? 30 miles south of Anaheim puts you in the Pacific Ocean. Maybe that’s what you mean: just drown them.
In Orange County, we have two “norths,” regular north and northwest (following the 5’s and 405’s “north”), so I presume that (with south being the opposite of north) he meant the latter. At least we’re better off than Ventura County, where “north” (following the 101) means “west.”
Inge,
If you are referring to my comment…
I was specifically speaking of Santa Ana when I penned that, NOT Anaheim and many homeless do, from my live, personal experience, refuse the public aid that’s offered to them by PD and social services. I have even offered to several folks locally in my area that are always out begging for money on street corners.
I value my personal experience over an edited filmmaker’s viewpoint where you ONLY see what the editor wants you to see.
The motel kids projects/problems have been going on since I was a resident of Anaheim and that was 1970-79. Not always by that name.
To promote tourism for the Disneyland Resort and to ensure these motel children families remain impoverished, the City of Anaheim has one of the highest motel bed taxes (17% TOT) in the nation.
Anaheim HOME was the only organization in Anaheim that objected and spoke against at council meetings, the extending of Measure B outrageously high bed tax to non-tourist motels.
Oh, I’m sure that THIS City Council would just waive those TOT taxes. (These are FOUR-STAR motels, right?)
City of Anaheim has a 15% bed tax…an additional 2% is only for motels/hotels in the resort area..
How do you differentiate between tourist and non-tourist motels by the way? Impossible. The 15% TOT for all motels/hotels is appropriate as it is the leading revenue generator for Anaheim. Don’t forget that motel families are exempt from the “bed” tax if they reside 30 days or longer (most of these families are). No wonder no one takes you seriously Dennis. Your facts and argument are incorrect and flawed
How can I watch this? can anyone help me?
CNN featured a program in 2011, about a chef and restaurant owner feeding the children living in these motels. The program is still in the CNN website:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/03/24/cnnheroes.serato.motel.kids/index.html?iref=allsearch
Amanda… it might be rebroadcasted on CNN or you can find a copy on Amazon
Cheap motels are used as living places by no/low income individuals and families throught the nation. Orange County is not unique in that regard. To many the term homeless produces visions of people living on the streets, under bushes, riding a bus all night in order to catch some sleep, etc. Compared to that, are motel dwellers really homeless and needing help? Should the motel dwellers be called something other than homeless?
Only a few homeless people can gather enough resources to pay for a temporary cheap motel. Then half of those or better wind up back on the street. The answer to your question is yes. Motel dwellers are homeless but for a brief period they have a roof over there head if they get lucky.
I was one of these kids in the early 80’s. I lived directly across the street from Disneyland at what is now the very decent looking Anabella Hotel. There were many families living there at the time. We all moved around to the many motels and run-down, cheap apartments in the area at the time – there’s an Embassy Suites there now. There was actually a small, odd sense of community. We stuck together for the long walk to school on busy Katella Avenue, past bums and prostitutes. We would teach the younger ones not to touch needles or condoms, “they are NOT balloons!” We would get ice from all of the ice machines in the motels along the way. We were ostracized by both the students and teachers at school, but we have each other. I was about eight years old, my little sister was only five when we first moved in after living with a relative for a summer. Our mother worked the graveyard shift and we were left alone in our motel room overnight while she worked. She did the very best she could to keep us off the streets. We continued to move around from motel to motel or living with various people until I was almost 10 years old, when my mother remarried and we moved to a real apartment in Tustin. Needless to say, my upbringing wasn’t ideal, but so many others had it so much worse. We had a roof over our head, a loving mother and some semblance of a home. My sister and I turned out well, but I often wonder about the others.
Hi Gina! OMG! I think I remember you! You lived upstairs on the back row, right? i was the long haired teenager who played guitar. How have you been?
I can relate. I was in the same situation early 70s
Wow! Thank you Yvette! I enjoyed your article on Motel Child, Tawny Burgess. Idk how old it is but I loved it. I too stayed at the Golden Forest Inn during hard times in my youth. (circa 1980s). I was a high school drop out trying to work construction jobs that were few and far between. I don’t know where everybody went but I had a lot of friends there. Some died there. Some were arrested and I never did see them again. We were all, for the most part, just struggling to make a life for ourselves using the hands that we were dealt. Some made poor choices to say the least. I ran with the scary boys but we were of good heart. We looked out for one another and for the girls in the forest. We protected each other often from outsiders and from bad guys who would try to do harm to the ladies of the forest. We were for the most part just youth from the area coming of age and trying to make it on our own. We were all family to one another and also to others who lived nearby or at other cheap motels like the Caravan or the Fire Station or the Rainbow Inn on Beach Blvd or the motels on Lincoln, Ave. I do sometimes wonder how many survived or if anyone else actually made a life for themselves free from all the drugs and free from the poverty and despair that seemed to plague us all. We were the hard core unemployables in a time gone by where making a choice to get tattoos or keep your hair long made the difference between joining mainstream society or being permanently labeled as bad, oppressed and confined to a life of survivalism & destitute still unknown to most Americans today. Everybody had a street name or an alias. They called me Indian Robert of the Golden Forest. Today they call me Doctor. I went back to school and carved a new path for myself. Thank you for caring about our youth and looking out for our children lost on the dark side of life. You bring them hope. If there’s anything that I can do to help, please feel free to contact me.Thank you, Keep the Faith!
Robert Lame Bull McDonald, MD Indianrobert@msn.com
I lived there too. And the firestation and the caravan. I made it out. Living well. Crazy to see stories about us. I always thought it would be a great book.
I watched this documentary in 2010 on HBO. I really feel for these kids as I could have easily been one of these kids on a permanent basis on more than e occasion. I like the idea of more housing for Disney employees. Especially families. These kids are at an intolerable risk for unspeakable crimes. I’m am very happy with McKinney Vento act and was pleased to see it in our school.
Wow youre ryte on i was one of those kids my self i remember alot of bad stuff happening and the wierd thing is theres really no record of alot of old crimes in those areas in the 80s and 90s
These places are all over California, not just Anaheim. I wound up living at motels when my mom took off. It was just like you see in the film. We had to take turns sleeping on the flour, which had big stains and smelled.
There were drugs, fights, prostitutes. Some one got shot to death at one of the motels.
I was lucky, I was 14 when I went to live at the motels. These little kids in the film, man it’s sad, they don’t got much of a chance. When all you see is drugs, and gangs, chances are that’s where your gonna end up.
Why won’t the politicians do something? Oh yeah, no money in it for them. Hey Mr politician, if you got all the money in the world and you don’t help these kids in need then you failed big time. Helping these kids means more than money. They sure as h3ll didn’t choose to be homeless.
I just watched this on HBO – this was so eye opening and broke my heart. I would love to see a follow up on where there kids are today and what what can be done to help them. And – yes the politicians should be involved. Did anyone realize Nancy Pelosi’s daughter was the director? Don’t even get me started with CA politicians….. Worth billions of dollars – yet nothing gets done …
I was there at the caravan hotel many yeas ago and was one of a few families interviewed by the news when the rumor was going around of disneyland buying the property and getting rid of the ones who lived there. I was also one of the kids that went to project hopeschool along with my sisters and brothers. It was hard times for my family too andterrible environment but has made me a better person today after having that type of childhood. Today i live a happy healthy life with children of my own.
I lived there. And the golden forest. We knew a Karen, she had a younger sister and brother I think. I had a brother named eli.
This is heart breaking!
Watched it on HBO recently, very sorry for the kids, the one “widow” who got evicted with her 4 dogs seemed lazy. They all qualify for SNAP, Section 8, Medi-Cal, ACA, the adults seem comfortable in their poverty, the kids deserve better.
Cherie..you are quite uneducated in your fed govt benefit requirements:) that widow worked full time, her older daughter also worked, thats 2 incomes for 4, im sure she did rcv SNAP, she never said she didnt, but it would most likely be less than $100 a mth..
i luv the ppl who assume what ppl get in food stamps because of ignorant over dramatized figures, part of my job is to help find programs for ppl, the second you get a full time job they cut your benefits, making an extra $1.00 on ur pay can equal to a $100 to $200 benefit cut when it comes to snap..
those numbers u see as max incomes on state/fed websites are NEVER what families actually get, thats why we have so many families with non working individuals, there is no bridge for those looking for better jobs or getting promotions or more than one job without risking no food for 2 wks or a mth depending when ud get paid, nevermind saving up for a deposit somewhere and these programs dont look at what u end up with on ur actual ck, its gross(same for medicaid/state med cov)…
section 8?yeah, ever looked into the availability for said housing? there isnt enough and the program loses landlords every yr..
its NEVER as easy as people think and anyone who thinks getting benefits while actually working
Lor Sorry, I don’t buy it. All they need to do is apply for benefits, there is NO WAY they didn’t qualify for Sec8 but that would mean moving out of their comfort zone. Frankly, from the looks of the rooms, housekeeping isn’t a priority and I’d be wary of renting to any of them. I grew up in a NY housing project in a 1 parent home and my mother NEVER sat on her ass lamenting about how “nobody will help us” she worked 3 yeah, 3 jobs and as soon as I was old enough I was working and going to school…take a GOOD LOOK at those kids, the only parenting they get is in school. Rudee’s mother sat there in that filthy room when she should be out working. If they really wanted out, they’d figure a way to get out.
You sound uneducated on this topic and how expensive it was and still is to live in California. One does not automatically get a section 8 voucher for housing once you’ve applied. You first have to wait for a county to open up their waiting list and then you go on the list. It can take years before a county opens up a list and then years before your name comes up. It’s not as easy as you think.
Times are different from when you grew up, I’m assuming your probably 40 or older, everything has increased in price from the 70s to the 80s, 90s and so on. My mother was a single working mother raising my brother and I in Silicon Valley in the 80s and did ok. If my mother didn’t remarry would she have been able to do it alone as times went on and prices went up…doubt it. That documentary didn’t tell us the whole story so we don’t know if Rudys mother was disabled or had other issues so it’s very little of you to judge someone else’s life. You sound like a dummy.
Take a look at the financial statements for Hope School. The amount of money that comes in and how little of it goes to the families, and how much of it is used on Administrative costs. Something stinks.