Waiting Until Dark : Some Ventura Area Transients Are Sneaking Back at Night to Camp in City’s Forbidden River Bottom

Despite efforts to prevent squatters from returning to the Ventura River, some homeless campers have been sneaking into the area at night after spending their days on the streets, homeless people and community members say.

What’s more, the higher number of transients shuffling around Ventura Avenue have some residents complaining that city officials are forcing them to bear the brunt of a communitywide homelessness problem.

Only a handful of scofflaws have violated the city ordinance prohibiting camping at the river bottom so far. But scores of others wander the streets, searching for somewhere to eat or sleep.

They huddle in alleyways, curl up under bushes and make camp near freeway on-ramps--anyplace where police and passersby will not bother them.

By daylight, they roam downtown Ventura, fetching aluminum cans and hot meals wherever they can and greeting the familiar faces of those in the same gritty predicament.

But at night, some of them still retreat to the relative safety of their tucked-away shelters, not far from the river bottom that for years they called home.

“We don’t have a lot of people here, and that’s what draws the cops--a lot of people,” said Jack Shaw, a 47-year-old transient camped out with two others in a thick grove along the shoulder of California 33.

“Pretty soon, they’ll be coming around here.”

For homeless people kicked out of the Ventura River after the January floods, every night presents a new challenge.

Some lucky ones have found transitional housing through an emergency assistance center opened in late January. Others shun traditional shelter in favor of the outdoors.

Still others are straggling back to the river bottom after nightfall, creeping back to the camps they knew for years and hiding out from authorities--who would lock them up--and the bulldozers cleaning out the riverbed.

“Most of us are just living in the streets, the alleys,” said Tammy, a 30-year-old woman eating a lunch of baked beans and bread at the Total Life Christian Center recently.

“But I went back down there after the second rains and I haven’t been caught yet,” said Tammy, who climbed a rope ladder to safety the morning floodwaters overran her camp. “I missed it because it’s my home. I made a nice place there. It had couches, carpets, a tarp, a garden.”

Tammy is not alone. Though most of the camps in the Ventura River bottom appear empty and abandoned, some homeless people on the street say they avoid the area during the days, but hike back in at night.

“My whole camp was flooded, but the next morning I found a tent and set it up in the river bottom,” said Emilio Montanez, a 40-year-old who had lived in the river area for more than eight months before authorities kicked him out.

“The police have left notes saying they’ll come back, and if we’re there, we’ll be arrested,” Montanez said. “But we’re farther up the river now.”

Don Viers of California Industries Inc., the company hired by the city to clean up the river bottom, said he sees people hiking out of the area almost every day.

“Up past the city limit there’s a lot of them living there,” said Viers, the construction supervisor, pointing north. “I saw five of them walking out this morning.”

Nonetheless, Ventura police officers and Sheriff’s Department deputies patrol the once-bustling shantytown by car and air every day, looking for evidence of people staying overnight.

“There is a city ordinance prohibiting them from being down in that area,” Police Capt. Randy Adams said. “We do plan on enforcing that and keeping them out of there.

“My special enforcement team is making periodic sweeps of both (the Ventura and Santa Clara rivers) to make sure that nobody is taking up residence there,” he said. “And we plan on continuing to do that.”

The zero-tolerance policy irks many of those displaced by the floods, including Al Sanders, a product of local schools who found himself homeless several years ago.

“There’s more problems with the homeless now than there were before the floods,” said Sanders, who lived near the Simpson drain off the Ventura River. “They knew where we were and we were out of the way.

“Now, we’re not allowed to go back to our homes,” he said. “We’re just looking for a place to crash. We had homes, but they took them away.”

Mayor Tom Buford voted with the City Council earlier this year to ban homeless people from the river bottom after city officials ignored the encampments for decades.

The risk to emergency crews forced to rescue river-bottom dwellers outweighs the convenience for squatters, Buford said. He had not heard of people returning to the area since the floods, but said he was not surprised.

“I’ve never had the expectation that we were going to solve the problem,” Buford said. “I don’t think it can be solved by the city of Ventura or local government.

“But we’re going to have to continue to deal with it with the kinds of programs we’ve had,” he said. “It’s just that some people don’t want anything to do with the government.”

Michael Airey, a member of the Ventura Avenue area Westside Community Council, said the ordinance and regular police patrols are not working.

“They’re right back in the river bottom,” he said. “I know because I see an awful lot of them. My street on Harrison (Avenue) is one of their corridors because there’s a hole in the fence at Westside Park.

“The City Council can make laws, but how do you enforce it?” Airey wonders.

Lauri Flack, treasurer of the community council, said Ventura Avenue has a disproportionate share of services for homeless people. But other sections of the city need to pitch in, she said.

“The problem of homelessness is one that we all share,” said Flack, who has taken her complaints to the City Council. “The solution should be shared equally and not borne by any one particular segment of the community.”

The council treasurer said she is well aware that transients are straggling back to the river bottom, despite the council ban.

“There’s no alternative for them,” Flack said. “And if there’s no alternative as appealing, they will find their way back to what is known.”

Since the Jan. 10 flood forced 100 or more people from the riverbed, the city, county and nonprofit agencies have combined efforts to help the homeless community.

Within weeks, the emergency assistance center registered nearly 300 people, all seeking help and a place to stay. Of those, more than 100 were identified as residents of the Ventura River.

They were helped getting jobs, immediate medical attention, transitional housing, I.D. cards and driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers and other staples of mainstream America.

But most of those people are still awaiting a new standard of living. Some are growing increasingly frustrated, said Mary Ann Decaen of Catholic Charities, which serves meals and provides showers for transients.

“There were complaints even when they were living in the river bottom,” she said. “We just need to look at various levels of housing to solve some of the problems.

“But there will always be some who never really fit into housing for very long,” Decaen said.

Sanders sees it differently. He spent nearly a week in transitional housing before calling it quits.

“If you’re willing to abide by extremely strict rules, then you can fit right in and get whatever you want,” he said.

Officials at the homeless assistance center said they are doing the best they can to provide for those in need. But, they admit, patience is wearing thin among many former river-bottom dwellers.

“People do get frustrated,” said Vikki Smith of the Ventura County Mental Health Department, which is coordinating the center. “They’re expecting to walk in and walk out with a housing voucher. But it just doesn’t happen that way in a bureaucratic environment.”

Jeff Sanderson is a former auto mechanic who lived in the Ventura River bottom for more than a year until the flood forced him to evacuate. He tried transitional housing but decided there were too many rules and policies.

“Some of these people have been living on the streets for years,” said Sanderson, 40. “You can’t tell them they have to get a job or not to have a beer.”

For more than two months, Sanderson has camped by some railroad tracks near a west Ventura Park.

“There’s a lot of people down there (in the river bottom),” he said. “But they’re hiding out. I’m tempted to go back down there myself.”

Instead, Sanderson said, he is counting on a temporary job doing beach cleanup work through the Job Training Policy Council of Ventura County. He already has filled out the forms and is waiting for an answer.

He also is among dozens of people who have completed applications for 50 federal Department of Housing and Urban Development vouchers that will provide housing assistance for at least two years.

Those applications will be combed through and considered later this month. Sanderson said the HUD voucher could be his last chance at a normal life.

“I’m ready to re-enter mainstream life,” he said. “For the last four years I’ve been doing what I should have been doing after high school--traveling around and seeing the country.”

Dennis Ogden is another transient who vows to return to his camp under the Main Street Bridge. Since the January rain, he has camped in a lemon grove blocks off Ventura Avenue, but he is growing weary of getting run off by police and landowners.

“It’s peaceful down there,” he said last week, pushing a beat-up shopping cart down Ventura Avenue. “Nobody bothers you.”

But his efforts to return, so far, have not worked.

“We went down there to check and see what was left of our camp, but they stopped us,” Ogden said. “The cops took our picture and told us if they caught us again, they’d arrest us.”

Still, like others, Ogden says he will return to the river eventually.

“Just as soon as I can get away with it.”