FULLERTON, Calif. – At 9 p.m. at night Jess Martinez and Katherine Coursey walk to where they will spend the night.

“We’re on the street now and we just learn to survive. I learn this is my first time being on the street. I always worked all my life,” said Jess Martinez, a military veteran.

Martinez says he met his partner, Coursey, when he became homeless about two years ago. They wandered around at night trying to find a safe place to rest their heads for a long time before they found Father Dennis Kriz, who is a pastor at St. Philip Benizi Church in Fullerton.

Since then, the couple has been camping out on the church grounds overnight. During the day, the two try to keep themselves busy. Martinez says he keeps the church grounds clean by sweeping and picking up trash.

Father Kriz has been allowing homeless people to sleep overnight at the church for more than two years. Parishioners who don’t want to help the homeless fear giving them a place to stay will become a bigger issue. Amidst the neighborhood complaints, Kriz keeps advocating for the homeless because there aren’t many options for them.

According to the 2019 Point in Time Count, which is a federally mandated biennial homeless population headcount, there are 473 homeless people in Fullerton and more than 300 of them are unsheltered. Kriz has been allowing up to 30 people to sleep overnight at St. Philip Benizi Church.

“This world is a tough place to live and be at times. Certainly, the homeless are as marginalized as they can be,” said Father Kriz.

However, after more than two years of trying to help and find a way to get homeless people off the streets and into housing, Kriz has decided to shut down the encampment effectively on Saturday, June 22. He says it was not an easy decision for him to make.

“We and the parish have decided to bring the encampment here to a close. We did it really for two reasons. With over two years of this, it was just growing and growing. The parishioners were just slowly and surely or simply becoming more and more tired or frustrated,” said Kriz.

Kriz goes on to say that he believes the encampment on church grounds was “ineffective.” He believed that if city leaders and government officials saw just how much housing was needed for the City of Fullerton by visiting the church grounds and seeing the encampment, more would have been done to get them off the streets.

“It was absolutely clear to me that there were not going to be changes soon,” said Kriz.

Currently, city leaders in Buena Park and Fullerton are working on a joint homeless shelter. However, it’s unclear when the shelter will be up and running. Kriz has been told that it could take a year. He is hoping that shelters will reconsider some of the rules they have for people staying there.

“When one looks at the rules that they have there, that they’re not particularly good. They are designed for reasons of course, but they seem to consider almost every other interest except for the folks that are there,” said Kriz.

The Orange County Armory Emergency Shelter in Fullerton has been closed since April, which forced people to leave the building at 5:30 a.m. every day.

“Most of us after a week or two of this would decide that you know what, let me just get myself a tent or it’s really all that cold here to find some place else to sleep,” said Kriz.

In his mission to help unsheltered people, Kriz began keeping track of how many homeless people die in Orange County every month, and holds a church service for them. He gets his numbers from the Orange County Coroner Division. He says 14 homeless people died this month in Orange County.

Kriz says even though he won’t be able to allow people to sleep overnight on church grounds anymore, he will continue to advocate for them and find ways to help them.

While most people there say they don’t know where they will sleep after the encampment closes, some are hopeful. Martinez says he has an appointment with the United States Department of Veterans Affairs this week. He hopes they can help the couple get off the streets and into a home of their own.