Measures Presses for Plan for Homeless : Ventura: The councilwoman calls for combining improved social services with stepped-up police enforcement.

Ventura Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures on Wednesday called for a comprehensive plan to deal with the city’s homeless, saying the city needs to move homeless encampments out of the Ventura River bottom and “work diligently at cleaning up downtown.”

Speaking at a city housing committee meeting, Measures said the plan should combine improved social services with some kind of stepped-up police program to monitor panhandlers or homeless people who become a public nuisance.

Her comments came after homeless advocates presented a proposal to build a campground for the homeless near the river bottom. Measures said residents will accept the campground only if they believe that it is part of a larger solution.

“If we can address other situations besides just assistance, that’s the way we’re going to get business and social acceptance of this (campground program),” she said.

Measures organized a committee made up of Police Capt. Randy G. Adams, representatives from four charities that deal with the homeless, the owner of a RV park near the riverbed and a representative from the business community. She and other housing committee members asked the volunteer group to draft a list of objectives concerning the homeless and bring the list back to the housing committee at its June 8 meeting.

Measures and others also expressed concern that successful homeless programs would turn Ventura into a magnet for transients.

“Yes, we want to deal with (homeless people), but we don’t want to be so attractive to them that we attract people from all over the area,” Adams said.

The solution, many at the committee meeting said, might involve a police crackdown on vagrancy to discourage the idea that Ventura is a friendly place for homeless people.

But police crackdowns can have pitfalls, such as lawsuits. Santa Barbara has so far circumvented the problem by combining tough vagrancy laws with a comprehensive social services program, noted Rick Pearson, executive director of Project Understanding, a homeless aid organization.

“That’s why Santa Barbara is getting away with doing more police things--because they have these other (social service) things in place,” he said.

Measures agreed: “If we provide more options for the homeless, then we have more latitude in law enforcement.”

Measures’ request for a wide-ranging plan, however, was met with skepticism from other council members and homeless advocates.

“As far as cleaning out the whole downtown, that’s an immense thing you are asking these people to do,” Councilman Jack Tingstrom told Measures.

“This is a very tall order,” said Clyde B. Reynolds, executive director of the Turning Point Foundation, which serves Ventura’s homeless mentally ill. Reynolds said he liked the idea of organizing a comprehensive plan, but worried that concentrating only on the long-term would prevent the city from making improvements that are needed immediately.

Homeless Ventura families and single homeless women can find shelter in the city. But single homeless men must either sleep outdoors or travel to Oxnard for a formal shelter program.

Homeless advocates said the campground proposal would solve this inequity because it would not limit who could park a vehicle or set up a tent at a yet-to-be-identified vacant lot.

As proposed, the campground project would also provide social and job search services to homeless residents, who could stay up to a year. The city is considering about half a dozen sites near the Ventura River.

Single men are “not the most popular group to do things for,” Reynolds said. “It’s much easier to do things for families or for children. But this is the group (that) people are expressing the most annoyance about.”