Refuge on Wettest Day in 2 Years

They were wet.

They were also tired, dirty, cold and a few were drunk as they scrambled out of the rain and into the van parked near Ventura’s Plaza Park on Wednesday afternoon.

The van was bound for the National Guard Armory in Oxnard, which had been converted into the county’s largest homeless shelter, as it has been every night since Dec. 15.

The van arrived at 5 p.m., 75 minutes early, and the eight men who climbed in were crowded but grateful.

“I haven’t been dry all day,” said Steve, who declined to give his last name. “I’ve been ditching and dodging the rain all day.”

So it went for the more than 100 weary souls who straggled into the shelter Wednesday after enduring the wettest day Ventura County has experienced in the past two years. Even some of the so-called “hard cores,” who live on the Ventura River bottom, for the first time sought refuge in the armory, which has 120 cots but will house everybody asking for refuge.

“The river’s rising quick. No way I’m going to chance it,” said a muddied Pancho Oliver, 41, as he adjusted his eye patch. Oliver said the last time he left his tent on the river bottom for a government shelter was after the Northridge earthquake nearly a year ago.

Oliver was one of the last to arrive at the shelter, having caught the third and final van ride from Ventura. The van service started three years ago after city officials complained that Ventura was not being served by the Oxnard shelter. The van and driver are provided by the nonprofit organization Turning Point.

Normally, a driver each night would stop on Main Street near the river bottom at 6:15 p.m. and at Plaza Park 15 minutes later. Wednesday night, however, the van made three round trips and carried 26 people to the shelter.

Oliver and two river bottom neighbors caught the last van of the evening and arrived at the shelter a little before 9 p.m.

Volunteers managed to serve him and two neighbors a dinner of beef stew and carrots, though the rest of the shelter residents had been served about 30 minutes earlier and had begun assembling their cots.

While Oliver ate, the Alcala family prepared their cots and blankets for the night as the television set blared loudly in a corner.

Shelter officials turned down some of the lights in the cavernous warehouse about 9:30 p.m., but safety lights remained illuminated and only the most exhausted residents were able to fall asleep immediately.

“We are not used to this,” Carlos Alcala said as he looked tearfully at his wife Maria and their children, 15-year-old Francisco and 8-year-old Erica. They were the only two children in the shelter Wednesday night, while Maria remained one of the few women.

The Alcalas lost their Camarillo apartment Dec. 31 after losing their jobs as custodians. Alcala said the family was waiting for the landlord to return a security deposit before heading to Santa Rosa in search of better fortunes.

The four spent the entire day huddled against the rain in the cab of their pickup, waiting for the shelter to open. The shelter opened at 5:30 p.m., 90 minutes earlier than usual.

“We were expecting them to be colder, wetter and hungrier,” said Marion Holzwarth, American Red Cross shelter manager. “We were right.”

After serving a small breakfast, the shelter clears everyone out at 7 a.m. and turns back into a concrete-floored, National Guard basketball court and warehouse.

Holzwarth said she expects this to be the busiest winter at the shelter, having housed 460 people as of Dec. 31. Last winter, 863 people spent at least one night in the shelter, which remained open until March 15.

The Ventura County chapter of the Red Cross contracts with the county to manage the shelter. This is the seventh and last winter Red Cross will do so.

“When we were asked to manage the shelter, it was on an emergency basis,” said Richard Rink, coordinator of the shelter program.

Rink said a nonprofit agency that deals specifically with the homeless is better equipped to run the shelter than the Red Cross.

Officials with the nonprofit, Ventura-based Project Understanding said they will ask the county for the homeless shelter contract next winter, Executive Director Rick Pearson said.