Ex-River Residents Return as Hired Crew to Clean Up Area

It could have been called a housecleaning of sorts.

Carrying large plastic bags, a small group of men and women who once lived in the Ventura River bottom returned to the riverbed Friday to remove debris--ranging from underwear to shopping carts--left behind by the winter rainstorms.

Recently hired by a Ventura County job-training agency for a six-month program that aims to prepare the county’s poorest residents for steady employment, the 10-worker crew was retained by the city of Ventura to assist in the cleanup that began Friday.

Crew member Mike Ferguson, a 51-year-old Ventura native who lived in the river bottom for about a year and now lives in a local shelter, said he was happy to be employed.

“It’s good,” said Ferguson, who has been homeless since losing his job in a munitions plant in Hawthorne, Nev. “I’d rather be working than not. We’re just out here cleaning things up for everybody.”

And there was much to clean up, workers said. Eugene Hill, 38, who now lives in Oxnard with his parents, rattled off a list of what he had come across since he set foot in the riverbed at 6:30 a.m.

“Oh, I found blankets, a microwave, a TV with a radio on it, steel-toed motorcycle boots, shoes, chairs, buckets and lamps,” he said. “But no dead bodies yet,” he added with a laugh. “At least none we can see from the topsoil.”

The workers, who are employed by the Jobs Training Policy Council of Ventura County, seemed pleased to be earning the $8.10 an hour that the council pays them.

The council, a federally funded, nonprofit corporation composed of local business and community leaders, received an allocation of $1 million from the state in February. The council then asked cities around the county what type of work they needed done, said program manager Roberto de la Selva.

The job-training council whittled down to 100 the 260 work orders it received and began to organize crews that would work at various cities in conjunction with their public works departments, he said.

“What these folks are doing is they go out at 7 a.m. to (clean up) various beach sites, clean up sewer drains, do painting, repairs, you name it,” he said.

The state Employment Development Department screens the applicants for eligibility. They must be seeking employment and have been unemployed 15 of the last 26 weeks, de la Selva said.

In addition to Ventura, he said, Fillmore, Oxnard and Port Hueneme now have crews. There are 78 participants in the program.

The objective is not only to help people with temporary employment, but “we also encourage them to keep seeking employment during this period,” de la Selva said. “We’ll be working with these people after this program is up.”

He said the program will “be working to put them in vocational training, help them with resumes and referrals to jobs.”

For Roger Cline, 42, who worked as a shipyard mechanic in San Diego until continued layoffs forced him into homelessness, just to be working was good; he was hopeful about his prospects for jobs in the near future.

“This is a good-paying job,” said Cline, who lived far upstream in the river bottom for two years before the storms came. “Anything that can keep me in a home, that sounds great.”