Simi Churches Bring Homeless and Hungry In From the Cold

When Simi Valley church leaders got together to set up a temporary shelter program for the homeless, they had no idea how successful it would be.

The program, now in its fourth winter of operation, has served as a model for programs in Thousand Oaks and Santa Clarita.

“It has been absolutely amazing the way it has worked and the way people have been willing” to volunteer to help out, said the Rev. Barbara Mudge, vicar of St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church and director of the Simi Valley shelter program.

Mudge said 17 churches of various denominations participate in Public Action to Deliver Shelter, with seven providing shelter on a revolving basis every night, seven helping staff the shelters with volunteers and three providing dinner for the hungry six nights a week. The dinner program runs year-round.

The churches have been operating the shelter program from Nov. 1 through March 31 since 1987. It is funded primarily with donations from the congregations and the community.

The city of Simi Valley has loaned cots to shelters and last year awarded a $16,000 grant to the Simi Valley Coalition for the Homeless and the Needy, which operates the shelter program.

The Rancho Simi Recreation and Parks District participates by allowing the homeless to use showers on certain evenings at Rancho Simi Park while the shelter program is in operation.

But the primary responsibility for the program and its operation falls on the churches, which is fine with Mudge.

“When you get right down to it, it’s the church’s mission,” she said.

At the time the program was set up, there was no other shelter program operating in the east county city, Mudge said.

When Mudge became vicar of St. Francis in November, 1986, she found that the church’s parking lot had been transformed into a makeshift trailer park for dozens of people living in their cars, campers and trailers. She said the previous vicar had allowed the squatters to park at the church for several months.

But neighbors were upset because there had been several disturbances in the parking lot, including a stabbing and drug-related arrests, and the city was pressuring the church to evict everyone from the parking lot.

Soon after the last squatter left in April, 1987, Mudge called a meeting of Simi Valley church leaders to discuss ways to provide shelter for the homeless and the needy.

Church officials sent for information about a program in Chicago, and the program was born.

“I originally wanted to get a permanent type of facility,” Mudge said, but the city said no.

Mudge said the program is successful because it keeps people moving. “This way, people don’t get too comfortably situated,” she said.

Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said city officials are impressed with the program’s success.

“They have done a super job,” Stratton said. “We’ve been very pleased with it. It shows what you can do with volunteers. I think it’s important that it’s been the public and not a government organization doing it.”

Despite the program’s overall success, Mudge acknowledged that there have been problems.

Last year, she said, one church temporarily dropped out of the program because guests wanted to sleep in the parking lot so they could drink. The shelter bans those who use drugs or alcohol or who act violently. All guests are screened at the dinner sites before being given a pass to a shelter.

In another instance, Mudge said, a man broke into her church and ransacked her office because he was upset that he had been excluded from the program. Mudge said the man had been expelled because he continually tried to force his way into a shelter when it was locked up for the night.

The shelters require that people sign in and go to bed at specific times. After a continental breakfast, guests must help clean up and be out of the facility by 7 a.m. Volunteers usually give them a bag lunch consisting of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a piece of fruit.

“The risk in this type of program is that you always have abusers,” Mudge said. “That’s part of what you have to deal with, and so be it.”

Jerry Olson, a volunteer at the shelter at Our Saviour Lutheran Church for three years, said there have been arguments among guests but no major problems.

“By and large, people in the program respect the churches and the volunteers, and that’s important because people need to know there is a safe haven for them,” he said.

Simi Valley Police Lt. Robert Klamser said he has not received any complaints from neighbors about disturbances caused by overnight guests.

In fact, some church neighbors said they were not aware of the shelter program.

Lee Suer, who has been living in his car in Simi Valley for the past four years, said he was reluctant to use the shelter program because he had heard there were problems.

But Suer, 28, began participating in December and he says he has been more than pleased.

“The PADS program is set up for people to leave their problems out on the street,” he said. “We want to try and make this one, big happy family.”

In previous years, Mudge said, the shelter program usually started out with two or three guests and never had more than 20.

This year, however, she said the program started out with 16 people and within a week grew to 26. The guests are primarily single men, not all of whom are from Simi Valley.

“We’ve stayed fairly full,” she said. “We’ve never been below 16 this year. For the first time, we had to get more cots from the city.”

Also for the first time, a few families have come in.

Mudge said that on first glance Simi Valley may not appear to have a homeless problem.

But “along with the affluence comes the high cost of housing, and some people are not able to swing it,” said Paul Werfelmann, pastor of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church in Simi Valley.

Werfelmann and Mudge said that because the city does not have a downtown, where the homeless tend to congregate, the homeless are less visible. They said the city’s homeless and needy tend to sleep in their cars, in city parks or along the Arroyo Simi.

Current estimates of Ventura County’s homeless population range from 2,000 to 5,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Final figures and breakdowns of individual cities will not be available until early next year, officials said.

Nancy Nazario of the Ventura County Homeless Ombudsman Program said other homeless shelters throughout the county are more limited in what they offer.

For example, she said, the Oxnard Armory is open only when the temperature dips below 50 degrees or when there is a 50% chance of rain. The Oxnard Rescue Mission is open year-round, but guests are only allowed to stay up to five days. The Zoe Christian Center, also in Oxnard, is open year-round but is usually full, and the center itself is struggling to stay open.

Nazario said she is impressed with the Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks programs.

“My hat is off to them,” she said. “They do an incredible job.”

Meanwhile, officials in the Conejo Winter Shelter Program, which is run by a coalition of 27 churches and synagogues in the Thousand Oaks area, said they are averaging 15 to 18 people a night.

Mudge said her coalition plans to use the grant from the city to establish a drop-in center for the shelter program.

Mudge said the center would be used to check people into the program, to provide job counseling and housing assistance and to give people a regular place to shower.

“A drop-in center would really bring it all together,” she said.