Homeless Advocates Seek Extension of Services : Aid: Shelter program and other county assistance to displaced Ventura River bottom dwellers is set to end March 31.

Scrambling against a fast-closing deadline that will scrap housing and other assistance to displaced residents of the Ventura River bottom, homeless advocates Wednesday called on officials throughout Ventura County to keep alive a campaign to help the homeless back on their feet.

In an emergency meeting of the Ventura County Homeless and Housing Coalition board, the advocates agreed to draw up a proposal for continuing services to more than 100 river bottom squatters uprooted by floodwaters last month.

With shelter and other services set to run out March 31, coalition members have scheduled a mid-March meeting to pitch their plan to city and county leaders.

“We think what’s been going on has been working, and it’s our desire to ensure that it does not all turn into a pumpkin on March 31,” said Rick Pearson, executive director of Project Understanding, the agency most directly involved with helping river bottom residents over the years.

“This is stuff we’ve been working toward for years,” Pearson said. “And now that we have some of it in place, we don’t want to lose it.”

Since floodwaters ripped out homeless encampments along the Ventura River on Jan. 10, the city, the county and nonprofit agencies have worked together to create a one-stop assistance center aimed at matching the homeless with badly needed social services.

To date, 236 people have signed up for assistance at the Ventura Avenue center, officials said. About half of them used to live in the riverbed.

In addition, officials were able to find emergency shelter for dozens of homeless people, including 30 who are being housed at a sprawling complex on the grounds of Camarillo State Hospital.

But the city of Ventura’s funding for those programs--the center, housing assistance and other flood-related emergency services--is scheduled to run out March 31. The city has funneled $79,500 toward that effort.

Members of the homeless coalition want to find the money to continue those services uninterrupted. And they want to build on the progress they have made, with the aim of creating permanent shelter, transitional housing and other long-term forms of assistance.

“Obviously, it is an urgent matter,” said coalition board member Clyde Reynolds, executive director of the Turning Point Foundation, which serves the mentally ill.

“We are working feverishly to try to come up with some proposal or plan to allow there to be a continuation of services,” he said. “We don’t want to see everything come to a stop on March 31.”

Key to their success, Reynolds and other advocates say, is broadening the effort so that cities and agencies from throughout the county will be encouraged to pitch in.

Officials from every city in Ventura County will be invited to participate in the mid-March meeting.

“I see this as a problem that has been brewing for many years . . . and now the search for a solution has fallen on all of us at the local level,” said coalition board member Dinah Lockhart, who works for Oxnard’s housing department.

Ultimately, despite the looming deadline, advocates for the homeless see this as a golden opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives.

“I believe that the same partnership that allowed us to develop what we currently have in place could allow us to continue these programs into the future,” said Randall Feltman, the county’s mental health director and a key player in creating the assistance center and finding shelter beds after the flood.

“We have piloted something that has great potential,” he said. “To let up now would represent a serious loss of potential for our county.”