Welcome Mat Not Out for Many Projects : Neighbors: ‘Not In My Back Yard’ syndrome hampers plans to place shelters for the homeless or mentally ill, pick prison sites and build low-cost housing.

The battle lines are being drawn on an almost daily basis in neighborhoods from Ojai to Thousand Oaks.

For every attempt to bring cheap housing or some new mental health or other social services facility to Ventura County, at least some local residents raise their voice in opposition:

* A proposal to bring the first daytime homeless shelter to the east county is defeated after residents living near the proposed site pack the Thousand Oaks City Council chambers to speak out against it.

* A proposed low-income housing project in Ojai prompts a petition with 425 signatures from neighbors who don’t want it. A final decision is pending, but opposition remains strong.

* Plans to move the Zoe Christian Center, Ventura County’s largest homeless shelter, to the poorest neighborhood in Oxnard, is opposed by 250 residents of La Colonia on grounds that it will ruin their community.

* A low-income housing project in Moorpark is vetoed by the City Council there after 100 enraged residents complain that it would increase local crime.

* Six months after 228 neighbors sign a petition asking that mental health officials shut down a home for mentally ill patients in Thousand Oaks, county officials do just that after a late-night beer party at the facility.

* In Santa Paula, a proposal to build a new county jail in a greenbelt area triggers an uproar throughout the community. The Santa Paula City Council sues to block the project.

The phenomenon is a familiar one to community planners as well as activists. They call it the “Not In My Back Yard” syndrome. Or NIMBY for short.

Many planners say that Ventura County is experiencing the phenomenon as never before. If the trend continues, they warn, the result will be an increasing polarization between the haves and have-nots throughout the county.

“The fewer resources for poor people, the more chaos,” said Nancy Nazario, a county social worker. “It means more people out on the streets roaming around, displaying anti-social behavior, with no opportunity, no way to hook into the system.”

For policy makers, NIMBY projects pose difficult questions: How involved should neighbors be in the siting process? How to balance regional needs with the wishes of constituents who voted them into office?

But community leaders who have opposed homeless shelters, jails and low-income housing projects in their neighborhoods fault their governments for the way they present such controversial projects to local residents.

Thousand Oaks resident Carl Schattke said he was appalled when he found out that county and state officials had decided to locate an independent-living house for mentally ill patients in his quiet residential neighborhood.

As word of the house got around, county and city officials hastily called a town meeting to discuss the project. Close to 200 outraged neighbors attended, Schattke said.

“The county just said, ‘This is a piece of cake, this is the way it’s going to be, but thanks for coming.’ Their attitude was ‘We know best,’ ” Schattke said.

In Moorpark--when the issue was a low-income, 100-unit apartment project in the heart of the city--residents also felt that the city was trying to slide another controversy through the planning process.

The Moorpark Planning Commission had endorsed the project, but after 100 residents forcefully protested, the City Council bowed to public pressure and turned the project down.

“I’m not against low-income housing, I understand the need,” Moorpark resident Susan Moody said. “But cramming a project next to two apartment complexes is not fair to the neighbors. The whole thing was outrageous.”

When county planners chose the outskirts of Santa Paula for a planned new jail, the issue focused more on the environment than on the addition of crime elements to the area. But the protests were equally strong.

“We’re talking about prime agricultural land,” said Santa Paula Councilman John Melton. “The jail would violate our greenbelt agreement with the county and the city of Ventura.”

Moreover, he said, the jail would be just the beginning. Soon, he added, the entire greenbelt would be free game for developers.

Melton and the city of Santa Paula have sued the county to block construction of the jail, scheduled to open in 1997. The county won the first round, but an appellate decision is still pending.

Even in the poorest areas of the county, there can be strong opposition to a new project if it is seen as detrimental. For Oxnard resident Carlos Aguilera, the question of whether Zoe should be allowed to open a 200-bed homeless shelter in La Colonia came down to a matter of fundamental fairness.

La Colonia already houses its fair share of shelters and social service agencies, Aguilera said. The Latino neighborhood is working hard to overcome blight, gangs, poverty and crime. The last thing it needs is a homeless shelter, Aguilera said.

“The city has neglected La Colonia for years. We need affordable housing. We need services. Where is our help? Once these problems are addressed, we’ll be able to talk about homeless shelters.”

Two months ago, Aguilera and a group of about 100 angry La Colonia residents protested against Zoe at an Oxnard City Council meeting. Zoe continues to pursue a site in La Colonia, but final City Council approval is still pending.

For those trying to get their foot in the door in a new neighborhood, NIMBY is difficult to understand. The sentiment is particularly strong for those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Dozens, possibly hundreds of homeless people have pitched tents and built wood-and-tin huts under bridges crossing the Ventura River, surviving on handouts from charitable organizations, an occasional day-laborer wage and money collected from scavenged aluminum cans.

Thousands more, mostly farm workers, share small apartments with two or three families in Oxnard and Santa Paula to make ends meet.

“All those people who don’t want a homeless shelter in their neighborhood, I would invite them to sleep in my sleeping bag for a week,” said Louie Duarte, 41, an unemployed auto repairman who lives by the Ventura River.

“These people make me angry,” said his tent mate, Timothy John Atherholt. “Where do they get off thinking they are better than us? They shouldn’t treat us like that. We’re not gonna devalue their property values by simply having a place to live in.”

Maria Sapien sleeps in a closet with her 17-year-old son in a south Oxnard apartment. Her other son, 18, sleeps on a mattress on the living room floor. The Sapien family pays $150 a month for their share of a one-bedroom apartment, also occupied by six other people from two different families.

“Here we are, barely squeaking by,” Sapien said recently. “My room gets all wet whenever it rains, but what can I do? It wasn’t meant to be a room, but the onion harvest was very poor this year and we barely have enough money to buy our rice and beans.”

The prospect of moving into a subsidized apartment intrigues her, but she finds it unrealistic.

“The government should build more houses, but it never does,” she said.

Should anybody be concerned about the Sapiens moving into their neighborhood?

“Just because we are humble doesn’t mean we are bad,” she replies.

While many low-income housing projects have recently touched off controversies in the county, the NIMBY syndrome is not all-encompassing. Some similar projects receive approval with little or no community opposition.

Casa Pacifica for battered children is scheduled to open in Camarillo next year, and as yet there have been no major complaints. A low-rent apartment complex opened in east Ventura in August without incident, and the Salvation Army’s plans to open a homeless shelter in downtown Ventura have so far been quietly received by neighboring businesses.

But experts say a combination of factors make the NIMBY syndrome more prevalent--and serious--than ever before in Ventura County.

A steady rise in the county’s real estate prices is one possible explanation for the increased sensitivity to anything that might reduce property values, the experts say. The county’s slow-growth movement, a lingering recession and social service budget cuts at federal and state levels are additional factors.

Also mentioned are the steady flow into the county of low-income residents, a lack of community participation in the decision-making process and the rise of grassroots community groups to oppose local government.

“The life of the poor has gotten much worse in the past 10 years. While the need has gotten stronger, we’ve eroded every program that existed for the poor,” Nazario said. “The trickle-down theory did not work.”

As the holes in the state and federal safety net get bigger, city councils and nonprofit organizations are increasing their efforts to fill the void, Nazario said. The result is more local involvement with the problems of the poor and, by extension, more opposition to such involvement.

“People all over the country hear about how great it is out here, how fast our economy is growing. There’s a false sense of opportunity,” said the Rev. Jim Gilmore, chairman of the Zoe Christian Center.

This gap between reality and expectations has increased the demand for social services dramatically, Gilmore said. Unfortunately, he added, most people don’t want to deal with the problem.

“In the 1960s, there was an attitude of sharing, but things have changed a lot. Now people are saying ‘I’ve got mine and I don’t care if you get yours.’ ”

The uncertainties created by the current recession have further encouraged communities to circle their wagons, said Karen Flack of the Cabrillo Development Corp., the county’s most active low-income housing developer.

“The recession feeds into fear, and residents become more sensitive to how a project may affect their property values,” Flack said. Ventura County is one of the most expensive real estate markets in the state, she said, “and in times of recession, people get concerned.”

In recent years, several Ventura County communities have made efforts to put a cap on their populations by becoming more selective in their approval of controversial projects.

In cities with financial problems, those permits tend to go to upscale projects that contribute heavily to the city’s property tax base, Oxnard Councilman Manuel Lopez said.

“When people look at all the growth that is taking place, they tend to focus on the negative side--crime, homelessness and overcrowding,” Lopez said. “The anti-growth mentality makes it worse.”

Another problem is that while the political clout of social service advocates remains dormant, residents of neighborhoods throughout the county are quicker to organize against a perceived threat than in the past, city planners say.

“These days any issue can get a neighborhood organized, and that wasn’t the case in the past,” said Everett Millais, Ventura’s Community Development director.

The force behind this new activism, Millais said, is the growing perception that elected officials no longer represent their constituents effectively.

“I think there’s an inherent, deep-seated suspicion of local government,” Millais said. “So neighborhoods of all types feel they can get organized and fight the government decision-making process.”

The cost of NIMBY is difficult to measure. But, in dollar terms, the price is in the millions.

“We stand to lose close to $30 million in state funding and site selection costs,” if the Santa Paula jail project falls through, said Assistant Sheriff Richard S. Bryce.

Zoe Christian Center hopes to receive close to $2 million in state and federal funds, but only after it secures a new site.

“All these grants are awarded on a competitive basis, and unless you have secured a site, you don’t score nearly as high as other projects,” said Zoe’s Gilmore.

“NIMBY advocates don’t understand economics,” Gilmore said. “You have bookings of young people selling drugs to pay the rent, doing what they have to do to survive. You have hospital bills from sick, homeless people exposed to cold weather. All those things cost money.”

Not housing the poor impacts the entire economy, Thousand Oaks Councilwoman Judy Lazar said.

“These are the people who work in our service industries, our restaurants and assembly lines, and those services are not being provided because businesses can’t find low-income housing,” she said.

In some cases, the threat of local opposition to a new social service project is so strong that officials simply place their plans on hold rather than go down to certain defeat in a struggle with the community.

County plans for a mental health facility to house 30 severely ill patients on a long-term basis have been put temporarily on hold because officials can’t find a suitable site, said Kate Allen, director of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

“The stigma doesn’t help,” Allen said. “It’s tough when you find a location and the money is there, but you run afoul of the neighbors.”

All affected parties agree that reconciling the NIMBY syndrome with the county’s legitimate social needs will not be easy.

For low-income housing developers such as David Fukutomi of Bibo Inc.--whose project was turned down recently in Moorpark--community rejection can be a frustrating experience.

“It’s like an athlete training for the Olympics, then being denied the chance to go,” he said. “You have to wonder if you’ll ever do it again.”

For homeowners who have opposed having low-income families or the mentally ill as neighbors, the answer is for government to spend more time looking for acceptable locations--usually someplace just a little farther away.

“The alternative to confrontation is consultation,” said Schattke, referring to the now-closed halfway house for the mentally ill in Thousand Oaks. “Had the county looked for other solutions, they could have found an acceptable alternative.”

Schattke believes a downtown location in Thousand Oaks--”perhaps a nice apartment on Thousand Oaks Boulevard, where they can blend in better”--would have been a better choice.

And in the aftermath of the fight over low-income housing in Moorpark, there is a different suggestion from Susan Moody, who said she believes a downtown location would not have been good for anybody involved.

“Maybe put them on a more rural area, where there are playgrounds for the kids,” she offered.

Some developers and social service providers say more time should be spent educating the public about the myths and realities that are part of the NIMBY syndrome.

“NIMBY is lack of education,” said Gilmore. “If you sit across a table from a homeless mother and her kid, you have to be a hard-core person to turn that mother down.”

On the other hand, Allen says education simply doesn’t work.

“I wish I could say something nice about educating people, but I don’t think that’s the solution,” she said. “When you meet with people who are well off and comfortable, with the ability to behave like ladies and gentlemen for heaven’s sake, and they act like a bunch of rednecks, it leaves me feeling harsh.”

Allen said she believes the ultimate solutions will have to come through the court system, or the state or federal governments. Unless communities are mandated to accept projects they don’t want, she said, people will continue resisting.

“NIMBY puts elected officials in a very difficult spot,” Millais agreed. “For the big-ticket items--homeless shelters and low-income housing--I think some sort of state preemption of local authority is needed.”

But preempting local government would leave residents with even less say in what goes into their neighborhoods. Some local officials believe it’s up to them to make the unpopular--but necessary--decisions.

“Either you bite the bullet or you cave in,” Lopez said. “Sometimes you have to do whatever it takes, and if this is your last term in office, then so be it.”