Ventura City Council OKs Setting Aside $400,000 for 2 Homeless Shelters

The Ventura City Council this week reaffirmed a $400,000 commitment to two groups planning housing projects for the homeless--one of them in Oxnard and the other just outside the Ventura city limits off Ventura Avenue.

The council voted 4 to 1 to set aside $200,000 for Project Understanding to build a shelter somewhere in the Ventura area and another $200,000 for the Zoe Christian Center to use in building a planned shelter in Oxnard.

The action by the council--which avoided formal commitment to any specific site for either proposed project--came despite a growing public controversy over Project Understanding’s plans for a Ventura housing project.

The council also acted despite the protests of Ventura Mayor Jim Monahan, who voted against funding the proposed shelters on grounds that any city contributions to the homeless should be reserved for homeless projects inside Ventura.

Residents Protest

For the third straight week, the council meeting was dominated by protests from residents of an unincorporated county area two miles north of Ventura opposing construction of a homeless shelter by Project Understanding.

Project Understanding recently abandoned plans to convert the DeAnza Hotel in Ventura into a homeless shelter in favor of a plan put forward by land developer Richard Komorowski to give the homeless group 4.5 acres of land on which to build apartments, a day-care center and other facilities.

No formal proposal for the project has yet been made to the city, however, and the donation of land to Project Understanding is tied by the developer to city approval of plans to build 77 new homes on an adjoining 21 acres of fallow lemon orchard.

While council members Richard Francis and Don Villaneuve argued Monday that citizens should not judge the city’s intentions until a specific proposal is under consideration, critics of the proposed project, calling themselves the North Avenue Coalition, repeated charges that the city is planning to dump “drug addicts and criminals” in their neighborhood.

‘They Need Our Help’

The homeless people “happen to be all of our neighbors,” Villaneuve responded. “These people are real people. They need our help. I think it is unutterably selfish to blindly oppose helping them.”

While some city officials have privately questioned whether Project Understanding’s proposed homeless shelter site outside the city limits will ever be approved, a majority of council members made it clear that they will support a homeless shelter somewhere.

“Project Understanding is going to have a homeless shelter in this city,” Councilwoman Nan Drake said.

Like Project Understanding, the Zoe Christian Center has also switched proposed sites for a homeless shelter. Its plans call for the purchase of a 7.5-acre parcel on the Northfield Business Park site in Oxnard at a proposed cost of about $2 million.

Ventura city officials said the two groups will be given until next June 30 to complete plans for their projects. If they fail to do so, the money could be withheld and given to other groups for similar projects.