Council OKs Expanded Shelter Plans : Ventura: Over objections of businesses and residents, Turning Point will be allowed to provide sleeping quarters for the hard-core homeless.

A Ventura drop-in center for the mentally ill--already planning to open a low-rent dormitory for its clients in September--has also received permission to expand its operations to provide sleeping quarters for some of the hard-core homeless who might otherwise end up on the city’s streets.

The Ventura City Council, voting 5 to 1, approved a request Monday night for the extra sleeping accommodations at the Turning Point Foundation, despite protests from some businesses and residents. Turning Point is on Thompson Boulevard near California Street.

According to the proposal, officials will clear out one of the building’s two downstairs rooms each night to make way for 10 roll-away beds and partitions beginning this fall. Guests will not be allowed to stay more than 180 nights in a row.

Turning Point already won approval from the Planning Commission in late 1992 for construction of 10 single-occupancy rooms on the center’s second floor to house long-term residents--a plan that attracted relatively little controversy at the time.

The rent on the dormitory-style rooms--which will also be available this fall--will be below market rate, and the tenants will share kitchen and bathroom facilities.

Business owners and residents who turned out to protest the additional beds Monday night said they would also have objected to the 10 upstairs rooms, but did not hear about them until the issue of the downstairs housing arose.

Turning Point’s homeless shelter will be one of three in Ventura and the first exclusively for the mentally ill.

Overnight shelters are one of the best ways to reach the homeless mentally ill population, said Clyde Reynolds, Turning Point’s executive director. “This may be our first chance to get to know them and learn how to help them.”

The downstairs program, due in large part to the controversy it generated, will have to operate under tight restrictions:

* At least two employees will remain on duty at all times.

* Lighting will be added to the back of the building to discourage homeless people from sleeping there.

* Guests who leave after 9 p.m. will be locked out for the night.

The Planning Commission approved the proposal for the downstairs sleeping area in June and, ordinarily, that would be all the review needed for the project to go forward.

However, an incensed landowner across the street from the center filed an appeal with the council, forcing it to hold a hearing on the expanded sleeping facilities.

“Must we, the working, tax-paying people, be forced out of our businesses or homes because this area is no longer safe?” asked LaVada L. Orcutt, who with her brother-in-law William Orcutt appealed the commission’s decision.

Other residents and business people joined the Orcutts at the council meeting, filling up long rows of chairs as they waited their turn to speak.

“I’ve had arson attempts on my building,” thundered Ventura Superior Court Judge William Peck, owner of an adjacent apartment complex, attributing the problem to Turning Point’s clients. “People are urinating on my property all the time.

“I’ll tell you--I’ve had it,” he said. “What I want you to do tonight is say no to this expansion.”

But after more than two hours of testimony from foes and supporters of the shelter, four council members voted down a motion by Councilman Jack Tingstrom to grant the appeal and overturn the Planning Commission decision.

Councilman Steve Bennett was absent. Councilman Jim Monahan voted for Tingstrom’s motion.

In the end, Councilwoman Rosa Lee Measures, who ran her campaign in the fall on a pro-business platform, sided with Councilmen Gary Tuttle and Gregory L. Carson, and Mayor Tom Buford in approving the downstairs beds over the objections of neighborhood business owners.

“It was an extremely difficult decision,” Measures said Tuesday. “But in the long run, I believe, this will better accommodate the businesses. (If the city did not approve the beds) in the long run, people will not be served and it will be more of a problem than if we served them.”

After the vote to kill the proposal failed, the council voted to approve the 10 extra cots with strict conditions, including a requirement that Turning Point officials meet with their neighbors every three months to work through problems.