Countywide : $5,200 Approved for Homeless Coalition

The Ventura County Board of Supervisors has awarded $5,200 to a coalition of area advocacy groups for the homeless Tuesday, contingent upon the coalition’s ability to raise another $20,000 from area cities.

The Ventura County Homeless Coalition will use the funds to hire a director, who would coordinate fund raising and countywide efforts to assist the homeless.

“I think that the board needs to lead the way for the rest of the county and contribute to this position,” Supervisor Maggie Erickson Kildee said. “Homelessness is a growing problem, and we need someone to coordinate a countywide plan.” Clyde Reynolds, president of the coalition and director of the Turning Point, a Ventura drop-in center for the mentally ill, said he has already asked all 10 cities in the county for funds from Community Development Block Grants from the federal government.

Reynolds said the cities of Thousand Oaks, Ventura, Oxnard and Simi Valley have not yet decided whether to contribute to the coalition. The other six cities have already declined the request to contribute money from limited block grant money. But Reynolds said they may yet decide to contribute money from sources other than the block grants.

“The county also turned down our request for block grant funds,” Reynolds said. The money appropriated Tuesday came from the county’s Public Social Services Agency.

A paid director is needed to begin planning and coordinating an emergency warming shelter, to replace or expand on the shelter that is opened every winter at the National Guard Armory in Oxnard.

Reynolds said that the Red Cross may not be willing to run the shelter much longer and that the state may withdraw its permission to use the armory.

“We need to do some serious planning,” he said.