With the wind howling, flapping against her faded tent, Laura Kasten leaped awake before dawn because for the homeless, “sleep is elusive,” she says. It only happens in spurts.
“You close your eyes and get up, then close your eyes and get up again. You never feel at peace. You need to watch your back,” says Kasten, 51, who until late January called the Santa Ana River bed encampment in the shadows of Angels Stadium in Anaheim home.
She and her husband John lived there with Sebastian, their wire-haired terrier mix, surrounded by people of all ages. Some smoked night and day, not knowing the time or caring when they last ate. Others tried to score drug deals, hook up, unwind or jump in as “spotters” — guarding stuff for fellow residents when they had to leave the tent city on errands.
“We hang out. We can’t make plans. We don’t know where we’ll be tomorrow,” Laura says, her eyes starting to tear up. “You’d be surprised how many guys here just make a mistake and bingo, they’ve lost everything.”
Drug addictions propelled her and John onto the streets, having lost their jobs and their Fullerton home, forcing them to barter and rely on basic government programs to fuel their day-to-day existence.
At the camp, the population — estimated at more than 1,200 at its peak — had come to symbolize the biggest eyesore in affluent Orange County, where housing costs skyrocketed in the last several decades, pricing renters and buyers out of the market.
Yet Laura said she was grateful for a place “to crash.”
John, 61, said “we have pieces of everything we need here — and the ability to use drugs. I don't want someone looking over my shoulder every time I light up or to judge me.”
Making a home on the riverbed
Folks around the riverbed call John “Doc,” citing his background that includes advanced degrees in clinical psychology. He says he used to write computer programs for cities to help officials predict traffic patterns and plan for growth.
But inside the tent city, lacking the discipline of a daily schedule, John and Laura spent their days doing choresand scrounging for food, drugs or transportation.
Sometimes, Laura called on pals outside the tent city for rides to collect a government-issued stipend. Occasionally she napped or grilled burgers, making sure to share her basic meal with more needy neighbors.
John rarely sat still. Locals would often see him whizzing down the Santa Ana River trail on his bike, stopping to catch up with buddies, chatting about one another’s health, the news or music. In his youth, John was a heavy metal rocker. He played bass, flute and organ. He called himself a Grateful Dead groupie. He said his mother also allowed him to grow marijuana.
Settling in at camp, where theft and other crimes ran rampant, real-life needs would intrude. Living without running water meant squeezing in regular treks to a nearby park to fill their huge jugs from a public faucet.
Week to week, the couple struggled to pay their cellphone bills and lost contact with all their “normal” friends, Laura says, meaning those with a roof over their head.
Word spread quickly around the encampment when church volunteers would arrive, carting soup or sandwiches. If Laura was awake, she’d walk toward the gathering to get the noodle cups, going past rows and rows of tents and the hypodermic needles that littered the grounds.
A lot of the riverbed residents liked to go to Mary’s Kitchen, near Angel Stadium, a social services group offering post office boxes, clothing or showers.
“We make do,” said John.
Every day I ask myself: What will happen next?” Laura said. “Will we ever find safety?”
‘It’s so hard being us’
On the east bank of the Santa Ana River, county officials started posting signs this past January about closing the trail for environmental cleanup. They urged the homeless to sort through their stuff, explaining that they would be provided limited storage space.
John and Laura refused to heed the urgency.
“We are staying until the last moment,” John said at the time, simply unbelieving that his beloved riverbed community, would “simply disappear. They want us to start over — but we’ve already started over here. We should be moving into a Goodwill or Salvation Army-type of model — working and training at the same time — instead of a halfway house,” he added angrily.
“Those county folks are thinking to themselves: ‘If we could just get these people off the riverbed, things will be better for them.’ The problem is these people are not stupid — but their motivation to change their lives is low. Instead, help them to write a resume and sign them up for a class.”
The couple kept to their tents as their neighbors lined up at a makeshift station to collect motel vouchers. Finally, in late January, it was the Kastens’ turn. Officials told them they had no choice.
After scoring meth the evening before, Laura grabbed a checked blanket for Sebastian, pulled on a windbreaker and rushed toward the vouchers line.
‘I just need a chance’
At the Anaheim motel where several dozen riverbed residents are relocated, including John and Laura, no one is allowed to have visitors — not even family members, according to a contract each person must sign before moving in.
Going in and out of their ground-floor room, Laura says the homeless are constantly harassed. Security guards call them “inmates,” constantly reporting their movements, she says.
“It’s heaven to sleep on a bed” the first night. But then motel managers ordered their rooms stripped of all amenities, including phones, linens and microwaves, and the riverbed group watched in silence as a huge truck pulled up to the parking lot and workers loaded it with gym equipment removed from the motel’s fitness room.
“Gone — everything we would want to use in our new life,” John says. “Instead of freedom, we’re now in a new prison.”
Back in his room, John flung piles of used clothing into the air. As the night darkened, he proved eager to take on another persona. For decades, he said, he had “explored my gender.”
“I dream of transitioning to the person I truly want to be.”
‘I want to be real’
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Los Angeles Times staff photographer Gary Coronado contributed to this report.
Credits: Produced by Sean Greene. Audio editing by Yadira Flores.