Financial Troubles Force Zoe Shelter to Raise Rent

Financial troubles have forced the county’s only year-round shelter for homeless families to impose sharp rent increases, throwing the Oxnard center into upheaval and pushing some of its residents to move out.

Until last week, the Zoe Christian Center in Oxnard charged working residents 30% of their incomes to live in small rooms at the aging shelter. The charge was designed to allow the residents to save enough money to move into their own homes. Residents without income stayed at no cost.

But after the United Way, Ventura County and the cities of Ventura, Oxnard, Camarillo, Port Hueneme and Santa Paula withdrew funding, Zoe’s founder and president, the Rev. Fred Judy, said he had few choices but to raise the rent.

Beginning Monday, residents must pay from $350 to $550 per month, depending on the size of their apartments and the families, Judy said. Instead of receiving three meals a day at no extra cost, residents will have to help pay for food by contributing food stamps.

The 85 residents now housed in the U-shaped, flat-roofed buildings will also have to contribute more time to chores around the shelter, including cooking and cleaning once done by paid workers.

Since they were notified of the rent increases, four families with 16 people have left Zoe and others are planning to move, center officials said.

“It was either shut down the shop or salvage what I could,” Judy said. “The people without jobs or money will have to go to Project Understanding or other places that have funding,” he said, referring to a Ventura center that provides 20 beds for families during the school year.

“This is what we have to do to survive,” said Annie Burney, who took over as executive director a month ago. She replaced the Rev. Jim Gilmer, who was suspended after a resident who worked in the office accused him of sexual harassment.

Judy said since then he has determined that the accusations were unfounded and Gilmer has returned as a consultant.

Two shelters that provide only 20 beds each in Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks operate only in the winter, as does the National Guard Armory in Oxnard, which provides about 100 beds. The Ventura County Rescue Mission in Oxnard has 52 beds but they are only for single men.

“Our shelter options are very thin in this county,” said Nancy Nazario, coordinator of the Homeless Ombudsman Program for Ventura County.

Wilford Williams, who has lived at Zoe with his wife and two sons since December, said that his small apartment is worth the $350 he will have to pay.

“Even with the increase, it’s still less than we could find a place for anywhere else,” he said. “And it’s safe here and the kids are supervised.” Williams, who was laid off from his job in accounting with an aerospace firm, said he hopes to have work next month and plans to relocate the family to Houston.

Donnice Cohen, a shelter resident for 18 months who plans to leave in June, said the center provided a home for her when she was having medical and financial problems. The increased rent is a small price to pay for the benefits that Zoe offers, she said.

But other Zoe residents said Saturday that the rent increase is unfair or impossible to pay.

“To stay here and pay $100 a month and give three days work a week, OK, but no more than that,” said Jose Fernando Aguillar, a single father of three who has lived at the shelter for five months.

A former plaster worker who now receives disability insurance for an injury, Aguillar said he had been looking for a new place to live and plans to move his family out before Monday.

“But we don’t have a lot of money to move,” he said.

Felicitas Equihua and Salvador Moreno said they simply cannot afford the higher rent for themselves and their son.

“We work in the fields and we just can’t pay that much,” said Equihua, whose rent is now $150 a month. But they don’t know where they will go or how they will pay their bills.

“It’s possible that we might live in the streets or on the beach,” Moreno said.

Judy said that financial problems at the 10-year-old center stem from the actions by the city of Oxnard, which until recently had wanted to move the center from its location at Fifth Street and Rose Avenue.

The city did not renew the center’s operating permit in 1989 because Fire Department officials said the center was too close to a yard where hazardous chemicals were stored.

That, Judy said, caused a gradual erosion of funding as public and private agencies learned that the center was under orders to move and was operating without a permit.

“We had $180,000 from the state that would allow us to redo the kitchen and put in bathrooms and put a new roof on the buildings,” Judy said. “These funds have been holding for two years because the city would not give us a place to go.”

But in December, the City Council agreed to let Zoe continue operating at its present location. Zoe was ordered to have an environmental impact report done, at a cost of about $50,000, to secure a new operating permit.

But Judy said that the financial burden is too much for the center, which already owes $50,000 in utility bills and has fallen behind in payments to other creditors. He said the center finds itself in a bind: Without the study, the center has no operating permit, and without a permit, public agencies are unwilling to contribute.

“It wouldn’t have looked good for the city to shut us down,” Judy said. “The only way to get us out is to shut down our sources of funding, and that’s the whole tactic of what they’re doing.”

Oxnard City Councilwoman Dorothy Maron, a leading supporter of Zoe on the council, agreed in general with Judy’s analysis. “It may be true that there is a hidden agenda to get rid of that place,” Maron said.

She said some city staff members and council members do not support keeping Zoe at its present location.

“I have tried to move things along but there are those on the staff who listen to different voices,” said Maron, who declined to name staff members or those giving them direction. “I think the city has not done nearly enough to help Zoe.”

Nazario said Zoe, with its increased rent, will still provide a valuable service to the working poor by providing long-term housing.

But, she said, losing an emergency shelter for families will be difficult for a county with an estimated homeless population 2,000 to 4,000.

“There are no other shelters that take families without income,” she said. “If we don’t get a shelter operating soon, the result will be more homeless families in the streets and in their cars.”