Orange County Leaders Claim Homelessness Drops as More Get Imprisoned
A homeless person sits on a Santa Ana sidewalk on July 17, 2025. Credit: JULIE LEOPO, VOICE OF OC
Source: https://voiceofoc.org/2026/06/orange-county-leaders-claim-homelessness-drops-as-more-get-imprisoned/
BY NOAH BIESIADA Jun 8, 2026
Orange County leaders say they found a significant drop in the number of homeless residents as they searched the streets earlier this year, but there’s one place nobody checked – the county jails.
A Voice of OC review found that the county’s incarceration rate of homeless residents has gone up over 40% since 2022 amid a series of shifts in state and local laws that make it easier for police departments to imprison homeless residents.
That’s opened questions on how much the county has actually done to improve homelessness as they claim they can’t answer how the drop in homelessness came.
“Unhoused residents make up about one fifth of one percent of Orange County residents, but 28% of nonvehicular stops in 2024,” said Eve Garrow, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union. “The sheriff’s department is primarily stopping unhoused residents simply for existing in public places.”
Why Is It Easier to Lock Up Homeless People Now?
For years, Orange County leaders were blocked from evicting homeless people from encampments by a legal precedent dubbed Martin v. Boise, which required local agencies to offer shelter beds before they can move people off the streets.
Read: Lawsuit Seeks End to Santa Ana Riverbed Homeless Evictions; County Says It Won’t Stop
But that all changed when the Supreme Court threw out the Martin v. Boise rule in June 2024, saying that sleeping on the street is a crime, reopening the door for cities and the county to again enforce anti-camping ordinances.
[Read: Is Orange County About To Enforce Anti-Camping Laws Again?]
City and county leaders quickly moved to beef up their anti-camping laws, reauthorizing police officers to arrest homeless residents for camping and a host of other offenses.
Those efforts also swelled again after California voters approved Prop 36 in Nov. 2024, which turned several petty theft and drug possession crimes from misdemeanors into felonies.
[Read: What Does California’s New Street Crime Law Mean for OC in the New Year?]