VENTURA : Panel OKs Opening of Homeless Shelter

The city of Ventura’s Planning Commission voted to allow a nonprofit agency to open an 18-bed homeless shelter for families on Ventura Avenue, despite objections from people who live nearby.

Project Understanding, a coalition of local churches, will open a shelter in the building vacated by Avenue Pharmacy at Ventura Avenue and East Vince Street.

The commission voted Tuesday to impose 34 conditions on the project, however, before it is allowed to begin operating.

Conditions include adding a second exit door in the sleeping area, not allowing visitors after 9 p.m., requiring at least two employees to be present in the shelter at all times and banning alcoholic beverages on the site.

The shelter will be open between Nov. 15 and April 15, and homeless families will be allowed to stay up to 45 days.

Community Development Director Everett Millais said the shelter is geared toward helping families in temporary need of housing while they save enough money for the first month’s rent on an apartment.

The homeless shelter is the first permanent one in the city and the second in the county.

For the past three years, Project Understanding has operated a temporary shelter on Laurel Street during the winter in conjunction with the county Commission for Human Concerns. The new shelter replaces the temporary one.

Several area residents opposed the shelter on grounds that homeless people would become a neighborhood nuisance.

“Right now we have a number of problems with Project Understanding,” said Todd Sohn, an electrical engineer who lives in the area. “The homeless are out in the middle of the night, and there’s drinking and that sort of thing.”