As homeless overdose deaths spiral, Santa Ana clamps down on business that helps homeless and drug users

As scores of homeless people continue to die of overdoses in Orange County, a business that provides care to homeless people and drug users in Santa Ana may have to shut down as the city threatens to revoke its occupancy permit.

But the founders of the Harm Reduction Institute at the American Addiction Institute of Mind and Medicine are not going quietly. They contend that the institute performs an essential function for the city’s homeless population by providing counseling, clean syringes, wound care and the lifesaving opioid reversal drug, naloxone, to people who rely on the resources for survival.

The institute has been operating out of an office at 1533 E. 4th St. since 2019, when it was co-founded by Dr. Faried Banimahd and Mahan Naeim, a UC Irvine medical student.

But on Nov. 17, the city sent a letter notifying the institute that the city plans to revoke its certificate of occupancy because the institute is not operating as a medical office….

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