Development May force Homeless From Hilltop Haven : Thousand Oaks: Squatters for years have camped out at the site with scenic views. But two new projects planned would transform the locale.
Doug Mattson doesn’t mind the mice, except when they nibble at his pillow.
He’d rather they went for the oatmeal he set out for them, a gray, gluey mess congealed at the bottom of a waterlogged carton. But they prefer the ragged triangle of foam he rests his head on.
The mice annoy him most nights, but Mattson says there is little he can do--he lives in the crumbling remains of a burned shack, open to the mice as well as flies and rank odors from a nearby garbage pile.
Mattson’s shack is the centerpiece of an enclave of homeless men and women on a hilltop just south of Thousand Oaks Boulevard and Erbes Road. Squatters have lived there for years, preferring the privacy and the relatively smog-free air to the cramped crawl-spaces under bridges where other homeless people congregate.
But the camps may soon be demolished.
The Thousand Oaks City Council last month approved a retail and office building on a vacant, 2.4-acre parcel that stretches across the front yard of the makeshift shelters. A similar project has been approved on an adjacent lot, just east of the homeless camp.
The developments will transform the hillside, which sweeps up from the boulevard to a flat crest overlooking the Ventura Freeway.
A three-story office building, a mini strip mall and a two-story parking garage will cover up the chaparral and tall grass. Well-lit rooftop parking will displace the nighttime shadows. And substantial grading will alter the hill’s contours.
In addition, the developer has promised to clear away everyone who hangs out on his property, including a homeless woman who gave birth to a daughter there in November. The action, while viewed by some as necessary, has provoked consternation among advocates for the homeless.
“Morally, we all have an obligation to take care of these people, but legally, private property owners have the right to ask them to leave,” said Jim Kinville, vice president of the Conejo Homeless Assistance Program. “That’s a dilemma with no easy solution. It’s a challenge for us all.”
While Kinville frets about where the hilltop squatters will go, Mattson doesn’t seem troubled by the prospect of being evicted from the shack where he has spent the past year.
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Nothing seems to faze the 25-year-old, a former Westlake High student who spends much of his time just sitting in a swivel chair on the hill’s grassy plateau, his unwashed red dish-blond hair slicked back, his blue eyes placid, his inch-long pinky fingernail caked with dirt.
“This is a nice place to hang out,” he says. And, even upon learning about the proposed office complex, he feels sure he will find a way to stay on the hill he regards as his home.
But city officials think otherwise.
“I don’t have much compassion when people are poaching on private property,” said Councilman Frank Schillo, who has proposed various measures to help Thousand Oaks’ homeless residents over the years.
“They’re not bothering anyone up there, but there is a fire danger, and also there’s a danger that something could happen to them,” Schillo said. “You can let your imagination run wild about the kinds of problems that could happen with people living up there.”
Just last week, the Fire Department responded to two small nighttime blazes on the hill, which scorched a bit of grass and burned part of a tarp that serves as a shelter. Fire Capt. Charles Sitton said he would have to warn the squatters to stop cooking over a campfire.
Frank Moody, who owns the Thousand Oaks Glass and Mirror Service adjacent to the hill, said the fire alerted him for the first time to the danger of allowing homeless campsites on the grassy knoll.
“They’re all friendly up there, but the fire could have wiped me out, and if they were the cause of it, that bothers me,” Moody said.
Rent-A-Wreck Manager Alladin Premji, whose business also abuts the hill, has a different concern. He said homeless men have inadvertently stuck him with an “atrocious water bill” by using the faucet outside his building to wash their clothes.
“They don’t bother us,” Premji said. “But they make a bit of a mess.”
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With his shelter scheduled for demolition, his campfire ruled illegal, and the spigot by Rent-A-Wreck periodically sealed off, Mattson has few options.
Many of the estimated 100 homeless people in Thousand Oaks live in their cars or crowd in with friends. Some have mental illnesses or drug problems. But Mattson, who seems lucid and healthy, just seems to prefer his loner lifestyle.
He does recognize its drawbacks.
He doesn’t take showers or eat square meals too often and admits that he doesn’t have much of a life beyond doing a few odd jobs and picking through garbage cans for tossed-out treasures. Plus, when it rains, the raw patches of exposed chicken wire on his walls leak.
Nonetheless, Mattson said he has grown to like his routine.
His parents booted him from their house a few years ago, fed up with his refusal to find work, he said. He quickly ran through his meager savings, and found himself broke and alone, homeless and apathetic.
“I don’t do much,” he said. “I guess I sometimes get bored. Sometimes I miss my friends from high school, the guys from the wrestling team. But to be honest, I don’t really have any plans.”
Many of Thousand Oaks’ homeless residents are more diligent than Mattson in seeking work, either by sending out resumes or by standing on street corners pleading for day jobs.
“It’s not just people with mental health problems or substance abusers, it’s people who have been working really hard all their lives and no longer have a roof over their heads for one reason or another,” said Karen Ingram, director of the Conejo Valley winter shelter program, which houses about 15 homeless people per night in churches and synagogues.
The knowledge that they, too, could find themselves down and out as the economy continues to sag has spurred some Thousand Oaks residents to help the homeless. The hill dwellers grabbed their attention especially after the much-publicized outdoor birth in November.
Since then, advocates for the homeless have accelerated their drive to build a homeless drop-in center, which would include showers, laundry machines, telephones and mailboxes. The city has applied for a federal grant to help the effort.
And a few people have hiked up the hill to drop off cartons of food--instant oatmeal, TV dinners, hot dogs.
But the visitors rarely stick around to talk.
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When he wants company, Mattson heads half a mile down the boulevard to the unabashedly filthy apartment of Josie Piombo, a 68-year-old woman who has taken in a crew of homeless men as her surrogate family.
“I don’t have a house, but I have my friend Josie, and she takes care of me,” said Juan Pescada, 29, sipping a beer and sucking on a lemon as two of his friends prepared a beef stew using ingredients from Thousand Oaks’ Manna Food Bank.
To the neighbors’ dismay, as many as a dozen men a night crash on the mattresses tossed around Piombo’s cluttered apartment, making space to sleep amid the crushed crackers and cheese curls that litter the floor.
During the day, Piombo--a feisty, chain-smoking, stout woman missing two front teeth--plays cards and dances with them, while they fix her food and make cigarette runs.
Piombo explains the relationship simply, between telling stories about her children and showing off the multicolored hats she weaves from rags. “They’re good to me and I’m good to them,” she said. “It’s better than living alone.”
Most of Piombo’s entourage drift between her home, where they can shower and cook hot meals, and the hillside, where they can bunk down in a nest of sleeping bags under a blue tarp.
Mattson prefers his quiet shack on the hill, with its million-dollar view: tiers of gentle mountains, clusters of red-tile roofs, and a swath of the Ventura Freeway. He’s lived there for more than a year, and though he knows he might soon be evicted, he can’t really conceive of moving.
“I don’t have any plumbing, running water or electricity, but it doesn’t really matter,” he said. “This is a good place to sleep.”
Glancing at a wet suit he picked up in a trash can somewhere--good as new, almost, and roughly his size--Mattson added: “I’d like to live by the beach, but I look at the real estate ads and each house is $300,000. I don’t even have 2 cents.”
He does, however, have an astounding array of random junk, from a turquoise Easter basket to an electric adding machine to abandoned ski-boot bindings.
Even though he has misplaced his broom, Mattson keeps his home neat, decorating it with care whenever he comes across a find.
Shards of glass serve as mirrors, creased pin-up photos adorn one wall, and a stack of never-read paperbacks--including a Spanish translation of the Bible and a baby name book--sits atop a rusty ironing board.
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Like sculptures, corroded old batteries line a beam, and a dirt-encrusted yellow rug stretches easily from wall to wall, with a fat roll of carpeting left over at one end.
“If I didn’t take this stuff, it would just be buried in a landfill,” he explained. “I don’t even look for the stuff--it just shows up.”
Mattson earns a few dollars, or a solid meal, almost every day from taking out the trash at the nearby Donut Depot and Jensen’s Restaurant. Managers there said they welcome the chance to help him out after he does the chore.
“That’s just the way I was raised, to help those who are less fortunate,” said Bob Lott, the cook at Jensen’s. “There are two or three (homeless) men who come by sometimes and we ask them if they’re hungry. Sometimes they say yes, sometimes no.”
Although he knows about Thousand Oaks’ free-meal program and winter shelter, Mattson rarely takes advantage of the services--especially since he often would have to walk miles to reach the host congregation. As for the proposed homeless drop-in center, he’s not sure he would use it.
“I don’t really consider myself homeless,” Mattson said, gesturing around the hilltop he thinks of as his domain. “I guess you could say I’m content here.”
