OXNARD : Board Won’t Open Armory Every Night

The County Board of Supervisors, citing budget constraints, refused Tuesday to open the Oxnard National Guard Armory to homeless people every night this winter.

But the supervisors did direct county officials to be flexible when deciding whether it is cold or rainy enough to open the K Street armory.

“I heard the board say I could be humanistic in my approach,” said Nancy A. Steinhelper, who oversees the program for the county. “What I’m hearing is to be a little generous.”

Gov. Pete Wilson announced last month that National Guard armories statewide would be open to homeless people for three months regardless of weather conditions. But the state provided no money to pay for the program’s extra expenses.

So the supervisors voted to follow the same guidelines that they have used since the county started opening the armory as part of a statewide program in 1988. That policy allows the homeless to sleep at the armory only when temperatures are expected to drop to 40 degrees or when forecasts call for a 50% chance of rain combined with a low of 50 degrees.

While refusing to open the armory each night, the supervisors said they did not want the old guidelines to be rigidly followed.

Supervisor Vicky Howard said she gets “darned chilly” when she lets the temperature in her house drop to 55 degrees in the winter.

“You’ve got to treat people decently,” Supervisor John K. Flynn said, “and sometimes you can’t do that if you have a 40-degree standard.”

Flynn asked Steinhelper to be flexible and to report back weekly on how many days the armory has been open and whether its $47,500 budget will need to be augmented.

“If you run into trouble, then we’re going to have to make some adjustments,” Flynn said.

Steinhelper told the board that the $47,500 budget provides for 70 nights of shelter, 12 more than last year. She had said that an extra $45,000 would have been needed to open the armory nightly from mid-November to mid-February, as allowed by the governor, and then in bad weather after that.

Steinhelper said she sometimes opened the armory last year though temperature standards had not been met. She said she would do the same thing more often this year, especially when it is windy or cloudy.

For example, if a 45-degree temperature is predicted, she might open up the armory if the day was not sunny and clear, she said.