VENTURA : Grant to Assist People With AIDS
The Christopher House foundation will receive a $260,000 grant from the city of Ventura that will be used to purchase and renovate a house in downtown Ventura for homeless people with AIDS.
The Ventura City Council awarded the grant in May, and council members agreed Monday to release the money. The council waited to release the money until Christopher House could provide the city with detailed plans of its operations.
The foundation will use the funds to buy a house in the 800 block of Thompson Boulevard. The existing house will be renovated into a residential-care facility that will serve six homeless AIDS patients.
Christopher House will provide a 24-hour staff for meals and transportation to medical appointments. A home health-care agency will also send nurses to the facility.
“There are people who are dying in the riverbed, in their cars,” said Trisha Davis, president of the foundation’s board of directors. “This is long overdue.”
The facility will be the first of its kind in the county and will be named after Davis’ brother, Christopher Dye, a Ventura AIDS activist who died in June, 1990.
Davis said the foundation is in escrow with the homeowners, and the city’s grant will help close the deal. Christopher House is expected to open in the fall of 1993, Davis said.
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