Floodwaters Sweep Away Inertia : Aid: Torrents that destroyed Ventura River encampment spurred the creation of a center to find housing for the homeless. But some fear the commitment to help them will end when the facility closes in March.

It is being called the opportunity of a lifetime, a great chance to help the homeless and reverse decades of community apathy that allowed the creation of a shantytown along the bottom of the Ventura River.

When floodwaters ripped out homeless encampments along the riverbed earlier this month, the city, the county and nonprofit agencies worked together as never before to establish an assistance center aimed at matching displaced squatters with housing and social services.

To many, the effort was nothing short of miraculous.

“We have been talking about this kind of concept for a long time,” said Rick Pearson, executive director of Project Understanding in Ventura, the agency most directly involved with helping river-bottom residents over the years.

“There are some people for whom this is going to be a golden opportunity,” Pearson said. “They are going to look back on the flood of 1995 and say, ‘This is the best thing that ever happened to us.’ ”

But there is also some suspicion surrounding this drive toward fostering self-sufficiency.

The assistance center, which in its first week registered more than 130 homeless people, is scheduled to close March 31. Housing, food giveaways and other flood-related services offered there also are scheduled to end on that date.

Officials hope that most former river-bottom dwellers will be well on their way to getting back on their feet by then.

Key to the creation of the center was the city’s prohibition against camping along the river. Come March 31, that will still be in force.

So what happens then? Advocates for the homeless, and some transients themselves, worry that the commitment to helping the displaced river-bottom residents will last only as long as the center stays open.

And they fear that the only thing that will have been accomplished is the city’s long-stated goal of rooting out the river-bottom dwellers and wiping out their community for good.

“I support the concept of the assistance center . . . and I think it will probably get us through the worst part of the winter,” said Clyde Reynolds, executive director of the Turning Point Foundation, which serves Ventura’s mentally ill.

“My concern is that it’s only two months,” he added. “And I am concerned that once they’ve done this, they may feel they have done all they are legally required to do.”

Such concern extends to former residents of what was, until the flood, Ventura County’s oldest and largest community of the homeless.

“I hope they’re not just trying to humor us,” said longtime river-bottom resident Rick Wells. “I think if they do what they say they are going to do, they will have a good foothold on helping the people on the river bottom.

“If not, they’re going to have a mess on their hands.”

What the community has had on its hands for decades was a mess it never could figure out how to clean up, advocates and officials agree.

As many as 200 people subsisted on the river bottom, carving out a community of plywood shacks and nylon tents below the point where the Southern Pacific train trestle straddles the river. County officials estimate that about one-third of the people had some type of mental illness.

The old squatters’ camp was thought to hold the largest collection of homeless people in Southern California outside of inner cities, according to advocates for the homeless and other authorities.

During the torrential rains earlier this month, one river-bottom resident died when the rain-swollen Ventura River swallowed him up as he slept. More than a dozen others were plucked out of the torrent by helicopters; dramatic rescue scenes were played out on televisions from coast to coast.

In response to the disaster, the Ventura City Council last week allocated $13,900 to operate the assistance center. In addition, the council earmarked about $30,000 to help house and feed the displaced squatters for the next few weeks.

So far, officials have been able to string together more than 50 shelter beds by renting space at various facilities around town.

Federal officials have promised that Ventura will receive up to 200 emergency housing vouchers that will allow homeless people to move into apartments or motel rooms and pay subsidized rent. Those vouchers have yet to materialize.

“What you see here is an enthusiastic effort to help people without status, who don’t vote and who many people don’t care about,” said Randall Feltman, director of mental health services for Ventura County and a key player in establishing the assistance center.

“The question is: Are we committed to sustaining this effort or will it go on for a month or two and then go back to business as usual?” he asked.

But some people worry that some transients could end up worse off than before they were displaced.

“My contention has always been that it’s ill-advised to remove them from the river bottom when we have nothing else to offer,” said Bob Dailey, the last county mental health worker to have regularly visited the river bottom.

Ventura officials say they have no intention or desire to shirk their responsibility. But at the same time, they say no city by itself can solve the homeless problem.

Ultimately, advocates and officials agree, the assistance center could hold the key not only to the question of whether the river bottom settlers can rejoin the mainstream, but to the larger question of homelessness in Ventura County.

If the center works, it could provide a model for similar programs countywide. And it could provide the impetus for creating a permanent homeless shelter.

“If we can sustain the effort, this is really a solvable problem,” Feltman said. “This isn’t Los Angeles; we’re talking about 200 people. We are going to get to know these people and we are going to help them solve their problems.”