County Issue / Homeless Shelters :...

Karen Ingram, Coordinator, Conejo Valley Winter Shelter

I think the numbers speak for themselves. Obviously, if we’re only providing a couple hundred seasonal beds and we’ve got a couple thousand homeless we’re not addressing the total needs of the community. If there were but year-round facilities that were available to meet the needs, that would certainly eliminate the need for the temporary programs. But you’ve got to address some of the underlying causes of homelessness, you can’t just build a shelter. You need to work on getting people out of the cycle by providing education and opportunity. Most of the folks that we have in our shelter right now are single men with marginal work skills. We need to be able to provide training for the skills that the job market is asking for, whether it’s computers or whatever. There are only so many manual labor jobs out there. Single-parent families have to have child care provided, so they can go out and support the family, and we have inadequate child-care facilities in the county.

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James Isom, Director, Ventura County Public Social Services Agency

I think the answer to the question is that it’s too small and it is a Band-Aid (solution). We recognize that we are short of resources. I think the problem we’re wrestling with now is what kind of a program do we want to see in Ventura County to address the homeless population. We have gotten into this program at the National Guard Armory to address the emergency housing need. What that does not address is the problem of homeless families. We need a coordinated homeless program for the county. We’ve had several groups try to put a handle on how many homeless we’re talking about. It’s very difficult to know what the scope of the problem is. Given the limited amount of funds, I think the answer is probably that we’ll continue to look at a winter warming shelter. I can’t think of a simple solution that would resolve the issue satisfactorily and within the economic restraints that we have to deal with. It’s going to be a patchwork response until we can come together, all of the agencies involved.

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Brian Bolton, Executive director, Ventura County chapter of the American Red Cross

The emergency shelters are one of the answers in addressing a very complicated issue. The programs that are being provided at the emergency shelters are a very basic way of providing people who are homeless an opportunity to get out of bad weather, to protect them from the possibility of damaging their health or losing their lives because of exposure. It’s never been projected as the answer, it’s simply one answer. There are many types of homeless and one shouldn’t try to categorize them and feel that the same answers are appropriate for everyone. The emergency shelters are there to make sure that people are protected from the effects of bad weather. It’s not designed to meet the needs of every person that’s homeless. In a long-term response, every community in California or in the country needs to take steps toward providing appropriate assistance to the people in their area that have needs. It can’t be done by one community alone, every community has some basic responsibility.

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Nancy Nazario, Coordinator, Ventura County homeless ombudsman program

It’s not enough beds, countywide. It’s kind of a limited response to make sure that people don’t die from exposure, and they’re all really vital programs. (But) shelters don’t address the lack of affordable housing for low-income people, they don’t ultimately resolve the problem of homelessness. They just keep homeless people from dying of exposure. Ultimately, low-income families need access to affordable housing and without access to affordable housing, homelessness is always going to be an issue in this county. Thank God for the warming shelters. I’m really impressed with all the operations, because they’re really done on a shoestring, and I think they’re saving lives. The biggest problem with homeless folks, or one of the biggest problems, is that they just don’t have access to housing, and I don’t think there’s anything we can do about the problem unless we address that. Homeless people are people who cannot compete for housing, for any number of reasons. I see real hard-working people who can’t keep a roof over their heads.

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Elsa Carman, Coordinator, Public Action to Deliver Shelter

It’s adequate as it is at the present time, but I also feel there are many homeless who are not using the winter shelters. Now, when I had my coordinator’s meeting last night, the increase in shelter nights was 60 shelter nights (compared to this time last year) and we’ve only been (open) 30 days. According to the numbers right now, it’s adequate. I don’t think that the (Public Action to Deliver Shelter) program is a Band-Aid, because over the five months we are open, we have quite a few successful stories of people living in the shelter who got themselves into permanent housing. Just in the last two weeks, we were able to get a single woman to rent a room, and a family into an apartment. What I would really like to do would be to prevent homelessness. We could do it if the city or the county or the federal government would put out enough money to assist the people who are homeless.