Karen Bass fires back at Santa Ana's homeless arrests: 'Santa Ana is a tiny city'

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had a blunt answer for Santa Ana. In an interview clip Juice Unlocked shared on Sept. 9, 2026, Bass was asked about Santa Ana's approach to homelessness, where the city offers services and can put people in jail if they refuse help.

Bass said she believed Santa Ana's mayor had criticized her for not doing the same, then argued the model would not work in Los Angeles. She said L.A.'s jails do not have room, that most people held at the Twin Towers jail are mentally ill, and that locking people up costs more and leads to a cycle in and out of jail.

Then she went bigger: "Santa Ana is a tiny city anyway. You could put Santa Ana in a neighborhood."

What Bass said

Bass pointed to Sheriff Luna, who she said is in charge of the jails. "If you talk to Sheriff Luna, who's in charge of the jails, he will tell you they don't have no room," she said. "So you can't do that anyway."

She described L.A. as the nation's second-largest city, with 3.8 million people, and said its system for dealing with homelessness is a combination of the city and the county. The caption credits the clip to @sbrbnla.

“If you talk to Sheriff Luna, who's in charge of the jails, he will tell you they don't have no room.”

Santa Ana's approach

Santa Ana's enforcement had drawn TV coverage shortly before the clip was posted. FOX 11 reported Aug. 30, 2026, on a Sunday evening ride-along with the city's Quality of Life Team as police, city workers and outreach teams cleared an encampment outside the DMV. At least 11 people were detained.

Officials told FOX 11 people are not arrested just for being homeless, but for conduct such as camping and trespassing. Those detained are offered services three times: before arrest, at the jail and on release. People who are not from Santa Ana are offered a paid trip home.

Mayor Valerie Amezcua defended the arrests to FOX 11. "It's inhumane to leave them here," she said, adding that "when people truly reach the depths of hell, they'll seek out help."

“What we've decided to do as a society, instead of taking care of them, we lock them up. That costs more money, they get less services and they cycle in and out of jail.”

Background

In December 2024, the Santa Ana City Council approved new rules on loitering, camping and storing personal belongings in public areas, with violations chargeable as a misdemeanor or an infraction. The council also approved a contract of more than $3.7 million with City Net for homeless outreach and a non-law-enforcement response to non-emergency, homeless-related calls, PublicCEO reported. At the time, the city operated a 200-bed navigation center.

Amezcua called the rules "a matter of quality of life for the City of Santa Ana."

The latest counts show the two cities moving in opposite directions. The 2026 Orange County Point-in-Time Count found 714 unsheltered people in Santa Ana, down 18% from 871 in 2024. In Los Angeles, LAHSA's 2026 count showed unsheltered homelessness up 7.9% to an estimated 29,115, FOX 11 reported.

“Santa Ana is a tiny city anyway. You could put Santa Ana in a neighborhood.”