Home for AIDS Patients May Open in 1993 : Health: A group of activists is considering using a Victorian house near Ventura County Medical Center.

A Ventura woman whose son died after contracting AIDS says the county’s only residential-care facility for AIDS patients may open next year near the Ventura County Medical Center.

“It’s one of the things we need,” said Betty Jean Dye, whose son died in June, 1990, after a long illness.

The facility is to be named Christopher House after Dye’s son--Ventura AIDS activist Christopher Dye--who helped establish a county-operated clinic for AIDS patients and served two years as president of AIDS Care, an organization that helps AIDS patients find care.

A newly established Christopher House board of directors is considering a six-bedroom Victorian house with two houses behind it near the medical center, board President James Gilden said. That location would allow AIDS patients to live close to medical services.

Six to 10 people would live in the main house. Their families or women AIDS patients with children would live in the detached houses, Gilden said.

“We’re trying to keep it homelike,” Gilden said. “We want to provide a clean, safe, comfortable place to live.”

The need for housing for AIDS victims has become critical in the county, the activists say. Now, many Ventura County residents diagnosed as having AIDS are forced to seek shelter in Los Angeles or Long Beach residential-care facilities, board members said.

In the past two months, at least five Ventura AIDS sufferers have been referred to residential care facilities outside the county, said Trisha Davis, board vice president and Christopher Dye’s sister.

Too sick to continue working and unable to find affordable housing, many AIDS patients resort to cheap hotels or extensive hospital stays, said Davis, who knows of two AIDS patients who are homeless and live in the Ventura River bottom.

“It’s pathetic,” Davis said. “To be ill and homeless is a double whammy.”

According to the county health department, 215 people in the county have been diagnosed as having acquired immune deficiency syndrome since 1985. Of that number, 145 have died.

A residential-care facility in Ventura County would let AIDS victims stay with their families and friends, board members said.

“It keeps family and friends together, and that’s what keeps people going,” Davis said. “We want to create a place where people can live and die in dignity.”

Board members modeled Christopher House after Heath House, a residential AIDS shelter in Santa Barbara. The Central Coast Congregate Care Inc., a nonprofit group, established the facility and plans to establish another in Santa Barbara.

That state-licensed facility--which charges $500 a month, $200 of which is subsidized with public funds and donations--has seven beds and a waiting list.

Board members say they hope to fund Christopher House the same way.

It would have a 24-hour staff to provide meals and transportation to medical appointments. The board would contract with a home health-care agency, which would dispatch nurses to the facility.

Laundry facilities would be available, and all food and utilities would be included in the rent, Gilden said.