Community Leaders Rally to Support SOS : Charity: Share Our Selves supporters plan a 50-hour fast to end on eviction day.

COSTA MESA —  Warning Orange County residents to be wary of a “me-first attitude,” the Diocese of Orange’s vicar for charities pointedly urged the City Council Monday to rescind its decision to evict the Share Our Selves charity from a residential community center.

“It is a sad indictment of the world we live in that SOS would even need to exist,” said Michael P. Driscoll, who is also the diocese’s auxiliary bishop-elect. “It is a sadder thought that those people elected and entrusted with responsibility for the common good could not find another solution to the problem.”

“It strikes me that if Jesus lived today,” Driscoll continued, “the city of Costa Mesa would find him undesirable.”

Driscoll made the remarks Monday as he and other community and religious leaders rallied at a news conference in front of SOS offices and offered support for the beleaguered agency, which has been ordered to leave the Rea Community Center by next Monday.

Driscoll said the SOS decision illustrates a trend away from “responsibility for the common welfare.”

The Rev. John McReynolds, pastor of Santa Ana’s Second Baptist Church, branded the council “the Pharaohs of Costa Mesa” for attempting to cast out the city’s neediest residents.

“Who is undesirable, the hungry, the poor, the person who has to raid the trash can to feed himself?” McReynolds asked. “What is undesirable is a political system that refuses to live by the Constitution--to promote the general welfare, to provide for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Share Our Selves executive director Jean Forbath said members of the agency’s board of directors and other supporters will begin a 50-hour fast in front of City Hall after a rally and prayer vigil Saturday. The fast will end at 7:30 p.m. Monday, just as the council is scheduled to review a Jan. 2 decision not to provide money to help SOS relocate. At that meeting, the council also denied a request to extend the agency’s stay at the Rea center.

“We know our fast is brief and will not discomfort us too much, but we do it as a small gesture of solidarity with the hungry and homeless in our midst,” Forbath said.

The charity is a private, non-profit volunteer organization that has been a fixture in the community for nearly 20 years, providing food, clothing and financial and medical assistance to needy people throughout the county.

Complaints Grew

But as its role has grown over the years--it now serves up to 20,000 people a month--so have complaints among some neighbors who say the agency has attracted an “undesirable” element to the community who have caused major disruptions.

The council voted in July to cancel SOS’s lease at the city-managed community center and gave the charity six months to relocate.

The city offered to assist the group in finding a new home and came up with a proposal to house it in a 5,700-square-foot warehouse on Superior Avenue. By a 4-1 vote, however, council members rejected the proposal--estimated to cost the city more than $100,000--as too expensive.

Council members who voted against SOS before said they are not likely to change their minds on Monday.

“I wish all of those folks (who attended the press conference) had been available when we were trying to move this thing off the dime in the last six months,” said Mayor Peter F. Buffa. “SOS dragged its feet on this and thought that when it actually got down to the wire, they could turn things around politically. But it’s not going to happen.”

Councilman Orville Amburgey also accused SOS of being uncooperative and dismissed the pleas of SOS supporters.

“Most of the people (at the news conference) do not live in Costa Mesa,” Amburgey said. “The City Council operates for the benefit of the citizens of Costa Mesa, and as long as the city is paying the bills, we have a right to do what is best for the community.”

SOS board chairman Scott Mather said at Monday’s news conference that the group will begin a campaign to raise enough money to purchase a new facility without city assistance. Mather said it will take at least $1.6 million and said the group will need a year to 18 months to raise it.

Merritt Johnson, president of the United Way of Orange County, said his group will consider providing money to SOS.

“We have already committed funding for 1990, so we will be looking at flexible funds, anything we can dip into to help,” Johnson said. “We encourage all of the leadership in the community to come forward and speak out and not let SOS die.”

And on that issue, Forbath said her group will oppose the upcoming eviction and will remain at the Rea center until the city takes “overt action to put us out.”

Others who attended Monday’s news conference included the Rev. Bob Ewing, pastor of South Coast Christian Church in Costa Mesa; Kathy Braum, a United Way board member; Father Ken Krause of St. Joachim’s Catholic Church in Costa Mesa and Sister Carmen Sarati, representing the order of Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange