VENTURA : City Advised to Get Tough on Homeless

Ventura should get tougher on the homeless, encouraging them to get out of the Ventura River bottom, their cars and city streets, and into a designated campground area, an informal task force told a City Council committee Wednesday.

Local homeless people “would have a choice,” said Ventura Police Capt. Randy Adams, head of the task force. “If they refused to cooperate, they would subject themselves to arrest. That would be a last resort, of course.”

Adams said the task force, also made up of a city staff member and representatives of local charities, believes that the homeless campground should be surrounded by an area where homeless people who did not want to obey the campground’s many rules could live.

The campground, he said, would help homeless people make a transition into being productive members of society. To that end, no drugs and little if any alcohol would be allowed in the campgrounds, and residents would have to show tangible progress toward self-sufficiency, he said.

The three council members on the committee said they liked the idea.

“We want to be giving (homeless people) a tool to say ‘Enough is enough,’ ” said Councilman Jack Tingstrom, a member of the council’s housing committee.

The committee will take the issue up again in July, when Chairwoman Rosa Lee Measures said she hopes to also include county supervisors and council members from neighboring cities in discussion of a regional solution to the homeless problem.