AIDS Patients Home Gets Ready to Open : Health care: Ventura’s Christopher House is still scrambling for funds to cover operating costs.

The painters are putting the finishing touches on the white-trimmed Victorian house. The carpenters are hanging the cabinets.

Christopher House, Ventura’s first home for AIDS-infected residents, is finally ready to open. But even as organizers prepare for their grand opening next Saturday, they are scrambling to find the money they will need to run the facility day-in, day-out.

“We can house 12 people, but we need the finances to care for those people, to feed them,” said Teri White, a Christopher House board member.

Supporters are trying everything from grant applications to garage sales for the money they need. The open house will include a silent auction to raise funds for the home.

“We really want to make this happen the way it should happen,” said Betty Jean Dye, standing among the used furniture and racks of clothing for sale in her Ventura Keys driveway.

Dye’s son, Christopher, dreamed up the project after seeing scores of low-income AIDS sufferers stuck in run-down hotels or actually left homeless as they died. Christopher succumbed to the disease in 1990, but his family and community activists carried on his idea.

Four years of labor have produced a beautifully restored house on East Thompson Boulevard, furnished and stocked with donations from businesses and residents.

Just Thursday, Sears Roebuck and Co. gave them 568 towels and 37 pillows. On Friday, Westside Electric in Ventura saved the home $1,500 by installing electrical fixtures for free.

The Christopher House management has also negotiated a maze of regulatory steps to line up necessary certification for the facility, which will provide medical care as well as room and board.

After a final inspection June 1, the first two or three residents should move in, said house manager Tim Rawle. The home could be full with 12 to 15 people by July, he said.

“It’s going to take time and a lot more money for the facility to get into full operation,” Rawle said. “We’re opening our doors, but we’re opening them slowly.”

The six-bedroom house and two cottages behind it will function as a home for the AIDS-infected and HIV-positive residents there. The residents will have keys to come and go, and each will pay a minimal rent, about 30% of their Social Security payment.

The rent buys them a room and three meals, as well as treatment by four attendants and visits from public health nurses and doctors.

The home will cost about $206,000 a year to operate, with a quarter of that covered by the minimal rent and by low-income housing certificates from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Developments.

That leaves about $150,000 that the Christopher House board must raise from grants, private donations and fund-raisers. As soon as the home is operating, it will become eligible for more grants.

In addition, volunteers hope to raise $10,000 at the grand opening next week. A silent auction will feature an autographed poster from the movie “Philadelphia” with signatures from stars Tom Hanks and Mary Steenburgen; a signed print by artist David Hockney, and a weekend at the Erawan Hotel in Palm Springs. Mugs and T-shirts will also be for sale.

And don’t underestimate the garage sales. The five sales so far this year have brought in a total of $10,000. Betty Jean Dye is holding her second sale of the season this weekend.

After four years of work, she is not planning to let the project die for lack of money. “It’s a dream and it’s coming true,” Dye said. “Very few people get their dream, and Christopher gets his.”

FYI

Christopher House’s grand opening will be held May 21 at 2 p.m. The ceremony, which is open to the public, will include live music, a silent auction and tours of the house at 856 E. Thompson Blvd. A garage sale benefiting the project is going on today and Sunday at 1338 Beachmont St. in Ventura.