Cuts in Aid to Homeless Attacked : Government: The budget reductions could mean more people will end up on the streets, advocates say.

Ventura County could lose tens of thousands of dollars in grants to aid and shelter its homeless under county budget cuts approved earlier this week, advocates for those without housing said Wednesday.

The decision Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors to slash 65 jobs and millions of dollars in services has nonprofit caregivers worried that more people will slip through the cracks and that more homeless will drift about the streets.

Homeless Ombudsman Nancy Nazario, who coordinates information and services among nonprofits and generates the data they use in writing grants, was told Wednesday that her job was eliminated.

Instead, the 15-year county employee will become a caseworker in the adult services division of the Public Social Services Agency.

“I’m grateful to have a job because I have a daughter to support,” Nazario said. “But it’s quite a change from the rough-and-tumble world of homelessness.”

During the past six years, Nazario has scoured homeless camps in the Ventura River bottom to help residents get assistance, and built up a clearinghouse of information used by other agencies to apply for state and federal grants.

“We’ve tried to establish a relationship of trust with some of the more mentally ill patients who won’t have anything to do with the system,” she said.

But when supervisors made the decision to close a budget deficit of almost $15 million, they told Public Social Services Director James E. Isom to pare his costs by $363,000, by any means necessary.

Isom said he had little choice but to close out Nazario’s job because it is among a handful of county services that are not required by state law.

“It’s simply a matter of economics,” said Isom, who also was told by supervisors to cut his department’s budget without hurting veterans’ programs.

“There are a number of nonprofit organizations who can do the same thing and do it with their money,” Isom said. “The homeless population does not belong to Ventura County per se, it belongs to everyone.”

Eliminating Nazario’s job will save $46,500 a year, county Budget Manager Bert Bigler said.

But with 2,000 to 3,000 homeless people shuffling through the county, the news was disappointing to many directors of the 30 or more nonprofit agencies that coordinate with Nazario to offer services to homeless clients.

“Nancy is so well-known in the county that a lot of our referrals come through her,” said Jean Gartlan, who manages the Vince Corner Family Lodge in Ventura for Project Understanding.

“She’s extremely well-versed in the whole homeless situation,” Gartlan said. “Because of her intervention, there have been a lot of people who were homeless that got the help they needed.”

Nazario said the worst effect of eliminating her position would be in coming years.

“A lot of these agencies are under a lot of pressure to provide immediate assistance,” she said. “We were able to take a long-term approach to assist people in finding housing, getting a landlord to rent to them, putting a deposit together and getting the kids in school.”

Mary Ann Decaen of Catholic Charities said there will be no way to replace Nazario. “We’ll just have to coordinate and collaborate that much more closely with the other agencies,” she said.

The budget cuts should have been made elsewhere, Decaen said.

“When there are so many homeless and such desperate situations, to eliminate this position is absurd,” she said. “It just seems like those who are the least able to fend for themselves and are in the most desperate situations get the short end of the stick.”

But Supervisor John K. Flynn, who sat on a homeless task force in 1988, said Nazario already has made an impact on the homeless situation.

“You have to make cuts someplace, and there are a number of organizations helping the homeless,” Flynn said. “She helped bring about a lot of the organizations we have now, so she may have completed her job.”